CFN – I own a small business. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne just raised minimum wage which essentially is a big fat tax grab.
It’s already been seen in studies that Minimum Wage kills jobs. It also kills the opportunity for people to learn skills on the job because the more you have to pay to subsidize a position the more value you need out of it.
Right now we seem to live in a world where you can’t learn on the job anymore.
Minimum wage was never really meant to be a living wage or support a family. That it has become that for so many is tragic and a sign of the failure of our system, a system that in Canada’s case has allowed millions of good jobs to bleed to China and other countries that don’t even have a minimum wage and then ship up back low dollar junk.
Small business is screwed even more. Big businesses like Wal-Mart get subsidized. Our former Mayor and council here in Cornwall actually gave Wal-mart (via Smart Centres) a half a million dollars in corporate welfare to essentially move into a bigger store here in Cornwall while other communities fight having them in the first place.
What MW does is hurt low income earners and those on fixed incomes. It also creates an extra pool of taxes that the government collects. It’s heinous.
We need minimum incomes for those that need it the most. We live in a society that nobody should be homeless, hungry, and lack healthcare, yet we can’t say that these conditions truly exist. That is a failure and indictment of our system. It’s a sign of the systemic corruption of systems like Medicare which was created to save money via economies of scale.
Whose fault is it? Yours.
And we all will suffer until we start, one by one, to change things and hold those accountable that should be held accountable. People forget that their vote does count and change can happen.
Or they can take their cancer meds while watching TV with their illiterate children who may be considered lucky to get a minimum wage job in the future.
We need to change the channel. We need to wake up. We need to not applaud actions like raising the minimum wage blindly, which only causes inflation which is tied to salaries like those of teachers, fire fighters, and police.
Is it time? You can post your comments below.
Typical “catch 22” situation — you can’t get experience without a job and you can’t get a job without experience. It use to be that minimum wage jobs were entry-level jobs. Now it’s used by employers to save money.
Agreed that a minimum income is needed. But can the taxpayer afford to pay for this?
And are you giving yourself the .25/hr raise?
Hugger while it’s complicated we as a society have to take back control and decide collectively what our priorities are. The pendulum has swung too far in one direction and that usually only means one thing if you don’t push it back in the other direction.
OMG raising the minimum wage will so hurt economy,business that are just hanging on will have to reduce staff or shut the door all together. NDP wants to raise it to $ 15.hr & wonder brat living off his father,s trust fund has no idea what the economy is all about, did he not state that the ecomomy will take care of itself. God help us all
I agree Admin. But I get the sense of taxpayer fatigue. I know I am tired of taxes and tax talk.
As for raising the minimum wage to $15/hr would do more harm than good. How many small businesses would be forced to close? $15/hr would be the death knell of many small businesses.
Yes Mary. Paying people a living wage will surely bring about the downfall of our society. We need workers toiling for bread crumbs in order to maximize corporate profits.
Well Furtz, which is it for you, paying a living wage or destroying our economy, most business cannot pay higher wages & still make a profit. Restaurants & bars in particular would lose customers who are required to pay more plus be expected to leave a tip.More business would fold creating more loss of jobs
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.
No need to worry about the economy it is going down the cliff very soon and mark my word on it. You will start to hear more at the end of the summer in mid September and into 2016. The minimum wage in Australia is $16./hour and I read today in the US the American cities say that they have to raise the minimum wage – people cannot live on what they are making. My own daughter is only a part time worker on minimum wage and there are no jobs at all. All jobs listed is mostly advertising. Everyone is more than fed up and they know what is coming very soon.
You are absolutely right Mary, in every sense of the word. We need a large peasant population to keep our economy afloat.
@Wow!: Is your real name Archie?
Entry level jobs pay minimum wage to start. No problem there, there needs to be an A in order to get to Z. The problem seems to be the definition of an entry level job and expectations. Walmart plays a part in our economy as do other comparable entry level employees, Tim Hortons and the list goes on. Unless an individual has desire and ambition to improve themselves the job is just that a job and it pays accordingly, entry level plus small merit increases. Life becomes more crowded at the top and not everyone will earn a six figure salary that is reality.
Unions have assisted in the concept of entitlement by obtaining for their membership unrealistic and unsustainable wage increases regardless of productivity, merit or reality. This has weighed heavily in creating the gap between entry level and the reality of what a living wage is.
The arbitrary measure of forcing increases to the minimum wage has no relation to productivity and only further compounds problems facing an already weakened economic system. The net result will be a net loss of entry level positions. Thank you Ms. Wynne and your band of idiots.
When the minimum wage increases without foundation in economic reasoning the temporary benefit is not sustainable. I don’t hear any recent immigrants complaining but I do see in them desire and ambition something that I don’t see enough of in the rest of our population. You reap what you sow.
To be perfectly clear and fair the remedy to our economic woes does not rest upon political decisions alone. Any party is likely to do more harm than good because the truth of the matter is that the problem is not rooted in economics so much as it is mired in attitudes. Expectations and hopes have become entitlements. Look at the average Canadian and personal debt, generally people buy today to pay tomorrow. The recent immigrants that I am familiar with may have a mortgage and maybe a car loan but that is where it stops.
Living within yours means and continuing to improve your position is a simple formula that has always worked.
The Liberals are definitely doing more harm than good. The NDP potentially based on this provinces experiences would likely do even worse. While the Conservatives provincially continue to flounder without leadership and vision.
I agree Jules tough times lie ahead and while I heard it coming like a freight train in the distance and am very well prepared I definitely feel for those who are not.
Free Market Capitalism has been hugely successful at amassing vast amounts of wealth for less than ten percent of the population. For it to continue to succeed, it has to be fueled by large numbers of people working for starvation wages.
Mr. Oldham that freight train in the distance is not so distant and you will all hear more around September of this year 2015 and next year as well – things are fast approaching. I have heard about this economic depression going back to the 80’s from my mom who had a neighbor investing in stocks and both these old ladies would talk and they themselves went through the 30’s Great Depression as adults. My much older sisters of 16 and 20 years my senior have never forgotten the horrible hardship of those days. History always repeats itself.
Crystal ball, oh crystal ball what do you see tonight?
And Jules, when you add the fire and brimstone raining down to the economic collapse, it gets even scarier. Are you prepared?
Furtz….
A legislated minimum wage offers aids non-organized men and women against the practices of business that would go as low as the market would bear — even if it meant only subsistence, and a class of rootless labourers barely able to meet the lowest level of an individual’s (hierarchy) of needs.
It would be of even more benefit if the extra earnings of minimum wage workers were poured back into our economy instead of being sent overseas to maintain China’s established class of rootless labourers, and their autocratic keepers.
But instead we continue to prop up a false economy, as a steadily lowering class demands the dining out, the designer coffee, high-end electronic toys, credit… all the things they haven’t earned and can’t truly afford — except at the expense of a low paid workforce.
Too lazy or too stupid to recognize the economics of buying coffee and muffins for breakfast? Lunch at a restaurant? Dinner at a sugar, fat, and MSG orgy like Kelsey’s?
It’s not just turning your innards to mush… You can’t afford it!!! Not unless, someone else is getting shafted!
Go ahead Tim’s, charge $2 dollars for a small and $5 dollars for that sandwich, at least it’s more realistic and the cost easily handles the drop in business and with a newly appropriate number of workers, you can pay them more…
And, it’s doubtful that business would drop off at all.
Case in point, …even when McDonalds gives their coffee away, there is never a lineup, yet at Tim’s there’ll be as many as 15 or 20 cars idling and polluting while another couple of dozen people are lined up inside.
Unrealistic low prices, too easy credit, and a lazy-who-cares-about-the “uneducated” (as the Kelsey’s franchisee refers to minimum wage earners).
Mickey D’s coffee is better and neither advertises with us 🙂
A minimum wage of $15 may be achievable for some large companies. But it would put a lot of small businesses out of business.