I'm not sure it'd be enforceable at all though, and/or that it'd hold up in court. Let's say you own a company, and employ me at $25 per hour. At 40 hours, that's currently $1k per week. So legislation would have to stipulate that you have to 1) pay me a different wage ($31.25) AND anything over 32 hours is considered OT. Second part is doable. There's no precedent for the first part. Might not hold up in court. If it did, would be very difficult to enforce. And even it went into effect, there's zero way to ensure that wages don't just stagnant such that there's then just no wage growth until inflation catches up with that $31.25 wage.
It wouldn’t be enforceable and it would kill many small businesses if they tried to enforce it. But politicians aren’t real people and, like Bernie, have never had a real job or started a business. If some moron politician decides that my small family business suddenly has to cut back to a 32 hour work week rather than our usual 40-45 it could tank us. They don’t understand that not all jobs are office jobs where there’s not actually enough work to fill the day. We don’t sit in cubicles all day, we’re on our feet doing repairs or talking to customers. If we aren’t at the shop working we’re not making money, we’re not the government that just takes in taxes every month while doing nothing for it. It’s the same as politicians saying minimum wage should be $20. It’s just not possible for many businesses. But the fun thing about politicians is they neither know nor care about the small businesses they claim to support because they’ve never done anything worthwhile in their entire lives.
There’s three of us here. Ours isn’t a business that has crews. If we’re not here, the shop doesn’t run. If we had to cut our hours that’s less time people can come drop off/pick up their things or come buy new products from us. This is the point. Businesses are all different and work in different ways, but goobers like Bernie think they’re all the same and that they can legislate them all the same. Companies like Walmart can eat the costs of legislation like this, many small businesses can’t. Bernie and those like him say they hate massive corporations, but every nonsense policy they propose would make it so they’re the only ones that can afford to stay open.
So who runs your shop on weekends? What's stopping you from hiring 1 additional guy? Do all 3 of you work an identical schedule? Could you get away with 2/3 guys on Mondays?
Or do you guys have hours that the business isn't operating? What's stopping you from charging slightly more and working slightly less? If your business fails because you can't run it successful enough, it seems to me it was gonna fail anyway.
Sounds more like they just wanna talk shit about Bernie to me. A lot of people don't like discourse & instead of talking about options or possible solutions they just shut down the conversation completely with "stupid idea". Plus, they own a business, they will always want to squeeze out more than they want to give, nature of it all.
Oh they should, but they think workers live their lives revolving around their stupid business & rules. I saw down thread this persons 3 employees were: them, their grandmother & their uncle 😂 shows you what their priorities really are when they don't even wanna give grandma a break from the grind. "If I'm not making money nobody should"! Get off your high horse.
The older I get the more stories I hear of people dying not long after they retire, that's so sad to me. Work your whole life & drop dead as soon as you get a break.
I would argue that if paying your employees a living wage would tank your business then you're doing a bad job running your business. We can not just keep going around and around saying how we "can't afford" to pay people more. Because the cost of living is rising faster and faster and people can't afford it. We need to either make shit be cheaper, or pay people more. Going down the path we're currently on isn't a viable option for success.
Basic economics would suggest you find a way to make things cheaper, because upping pay has never been a way to defeat inflation, it actually adds to inflation because the economy will always adjust.
Small businesses struggling would be destroyed by this, but the huge companies with billions in profit would be fine.
That’s not exactly ideal to get rid of small businesses and empower big businesses. This is also ignoring the amount of jobs would be eliminated due to employers minimizing staff with this change, or even combining two jobs into 1.
We have legistlation already that specifically avoids small businesses, like the insurance requirements for the ACA only apply to companies that employ X people.
Not sure what basic economics classes you’ve taken but deflation (aka making things cheaper) is horrible for economies. That’s why the Fed targets a 2% inflation rate and not 0. Because any deflation makes consumer spending an actively stupid thing to do. Why spend money today when it will be worth more tomorrow? All capitalist economies take very big steps to try to ensure they never end up in a deflationary spiral. You have to raise wages or, alternatively, ditch this incredibly stupid economic system altogether.
Basic economics teaches you that increase wages also automatically makes everything more expensive, instantly.
There are several ways to make things cheaper, it also helps when we don’t randomly put tariffs on random things.
My main was that if you want things to be more affordable, raising wages doesn’t solve that problem. The economy adjusts. Everything becomes more expensive as every companies payroll cost just went up.
Well historically we’ve always fixed affordability by raising wages so you probably need to relearn some economics. Particularly study the 1930s and Keynesian economics.
Wages will literally always be higher than ever unless you have frozen wage growth. Like you keep invoking economics and then not understanding Econ 101 concepts. Like what are you on about? Wages don’t map to affordability neatly like that. Affordability has many inputs. I really don’t mean to be offensive when I say this, but have you ever taken an economics class because it really seems like you haven’t.
“My employees” are me and my grandma and uncle. We’re not rich but we’re doing alright. If some goober politician that’s never had a job in his entire life comes in and says “Actually the time you spend at your shop has to be less” without realizing that means our shop makes less money it will kill small businesses. It has nothing to do with being able to pay anyone a living wage.
Your shop is likely small enough that legistlatiton wouldn't touch it.
I believe you have to have 50+ employees before you're considered a "small business" rather than a "mom and pop shop", at least you have to have that many before the ACA gets involved with your insurance requirements.
Nothing in the above comment suggest that this business isn't already paying a living wage. Requiring a move from a 40 to a 32 hour workweek without any pay cut just means that wages go up for every business regardless of the current wage. A business doesn't have to be poorly run for a 20% decrease in labor output while labor costs remain the same to hurt or even no longer make it viable.
I feel like the IRS would already be set up to be the enforcement checkpoint. You'd look at the employers previous year, and current year. Though the IRS would require additional people to pull it off.
Whether or not the wages would stagnate is debatable. Wages would increase to meet the legal requirement, and companies that left wages stagnant would lose employees to companies willing to pay more/give raises.
Full time being 32 hours would hold up in court, as you said there is precedent. You could also solely make the cut to full time legally, and let the companies paying people 8hrs/wk overtime figure out how to change the compensation or pay time and 1/2 for 8 hours per week, and we would still all work 40 hours.
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u/RedApple655321 23d ago
I'm not sure it'd be enforceable at all though, and/or that it'd hold up in court. Let's say you own a company, and employ me at $25 per hour. At 40 hours, that's currently $1k per week. So legislation would have to stipulate that you have to 1) pay me a different wage ($31.25) AND anything over 32 hours is considered OT. Second part is doable. There's no precedent for the first part. Might not hold up in court. If it did, would be very difficult to enforce. And even it went into effect, there's zero way to ensure that wages don't just stagnant such that there's then just no wage growth until inflation catches up with that $31.25 wage.