Emergency thoughts and prayers please

[Asperion]

I have been thinking lately that the min wage laws need to be changed.  Here are some thoughts that I have:

1 - Make the wage uniform for everyone no matter what they do. This will mean tipped employees will get the same amount as everyone else, tips optional. 

 

2 - The wage will  AUTOMATICALLY increase every year by the inflation index  plus .5%. That removes it from the politicians and makes it an automatic event that they will then have to take the unpopular position to negate for that one year only. 

 

3 - (Doubt if this can happen) Link the min wage to their wage.  Any time they change theirs (up or down) it will make the same change to the min wage at the same time (and to the same amount).

[Cancer]

(Apologies if this probably belongs in the Politics thread.)

 

I think some of the low-level business wage laws are deliberately kept vague so as to let small single-family businesses stay afloat.  In (e.g.) the ma and pa teriyaki joints here which are often owned & operated by immigrants, no one but family members work there, and "wages" are not well specified in a legal sense.  The border between owner/proprietor (who doesn't have to be paid wages, because they own the joint) and employee is left fuzzy.  Small businesses like that don't have the profit margin, and could not operate if they had to obey strictly the same sort regulations as Microsoft or GM or Wells Fargo.  The traditional family farm is the same sort of thing.  In this sort of situation, the small-government anti-regulation element of the Republican Party has a valid point.

 

That *does* leave employees of small businesses open to exploitation, and a lot of small business owners take advantage of this ruthlessly.  Tips are not wages, and legally cannot be incIuded as wages.  Getting the state to pay attention is another issue.

 

I don't have a good answer to the problem, other than advise young people to be willing to change jobs and keep their eyes open.