My advise to people under thirty.

Thank you. If you accept a job paying $8/hr, do you not understand that you are agreeing to work for $8 per hour??? Have we become that dimwitted in this country?

There was an article in the local paper recently where employers were interviewed on why people were still complaining about high unemployment when there are 'help wanted' signs everywhere. Every one of them said...can't get people to come to work. They'll come till they make next month's rent or car payment, but then they stop. Even people with good work skills can have zero soft skills....how do you run any business with workers like that?

I started nursing school in 1984 and worked at Kmart for $3.85/hr while I was going. And that job kept me in school, because I knew without skills and a work ethic I was going to be making $3.85, or the equivalent, for the rest of my life. It was up to me to advance my earning levels, not my employer.

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Don Henley

I am also in TN and honestly $8.00 an hour is not a living wage here. By the time you pay rent or mortgage, utilities, food, medical, gas, auto upkeep, and insurance you cannot do that with an after tax income of approx. $1,000 a month.

That said I also agree that if and when you accept a job no matter the pay you give it your all by being there early, staying late and doing the best job you can. My last job before retirement I was hired as a temporary file clerk and made $5.50 ah hour. They decided to keep me around and my salary jumped $2.00 an hour. When I retired some 20 years I made well over $40,000 a year, all because I worked hard and went over and above.

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Judy Peters

No need to yell at someone who does the job wrong. There is a quick and simple solution. Let the shoddy worker finish the shift, take them aside, pay them what they have earned, and tell them that they are not welcome to come back tomorrow. Then hire someone who can do the job right, and has a sense of pride in doing a job well done.

There are a few at some fast food joints that should not even be making 7.75. They just are not worth the time in training etc. And those sure don't deserve anything over 8 say nothing about the ridiculous 15 an hour that some think they are worth.

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Why does every job have to be a "living wage"? Sometimes I work for $0.00 just because I like the people, the work, the cause, or figure I can learn something useful. Many people learn farming that way and in times past, many trades type jobs were taught at a low wage because the trainee was getting an education sometimes more valuable than a college degree.

And why do you argue for higher wages if salary surveys mean diddly squat? Is it you are only willing to consider the salary survey you have imagined is the right one because it fits your argument and will ignore all others?

It is interesting that your signature is a quote from Mrs. Roosevelt - "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent". While she had a point, I would argue that anyone who accepts "food stamps, free or subsidized rent, free health care, subsidized utilities, etc..." and who "(chooses) to stay home" instead of being gainfully employed, even at a wage of $8.00/hr, has consented to being inferior as compared to a person who makes an honest living.

I think many of you miss the point on a $8 per hour job.

If I hire a worker for $8 per hour, I pay 1/2 the SS taxes, unemployment inc, liability inc, holiday pay, over time pay, portion health care.
Some places pay for uniforms, safety shoes and small perks like discounted meals etc.

So, yea $8 per hour isn't much to you, but the overall cost to the employer can reach $15 or more per hour over time. So, you as a employee will have to provide $30-45 per hour in sale-able goods or services for my business to survive.

If the problem was the employer rather than the employee, don't you think that there would be 15 quitters instead of 15 people who were fired?

I have to say that I find the amount of pay does NOT bring in better people. When I ran my boarding barn back in the late 90's and early 2000's, I paid 10.00 an hour to the barn help. The barn help had to feed horses, turn them out, and muck the stalls. If one was industrious, it could be done in less than 3 hours (ten stalls).

So..I had ONE girl from England who was a real good worker, I paid her 10.00 an hour, paid for her apartment (it was near my farm and paid for her utilities), plus she had every other weekend off and during the week, she would rotate days off when it wasn't her weekend off. I also allowed her to teach lessons and charged 5.00 per hour for the use of a lesson horse and she kept the 20.00 per hour she made (lessons were 25.).

She was fantastic but..another barn on the north side of Atlanta offered her 15.00 an hour and she came to me and wanted to know what to do. I told her to take the job if she felt she was going to get a better deal. So she took the job.

I hired a series of people and none of them would show up on time, one was a drunk, and one said she could only from 8-5..(uhm no..horses are out by 8 am) after she took the job. So I shut the barn down, disbanded my long time boarders and went back to a private barn.

Long story short - my great girl came back and said she was working 16 hour days, six days a week and only had two half days off and had to pay her own rent and utilities. She wanted to come back to my barn but I told her I had shut down.

When you can't hire decent help at 10.00 an hour to pour feed into a bucket, lead a horse out to the paddock and sling horse poo into a muck bucket, it's time to shut it down.

So..I can sympathize with the OP. I offered decent wages, but most people don't want to work outside, in the cold and heat, doing manual labor anymore. Oh and for comparison, local mills were only paying 8.00 an hour to start. Most paid minimum wage.

I am so glad I don't have to deal with hired help anymore.

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The only problem with your analysis is that apparently these 15 workers were fired, and at least one had a hard time rolling out of the sack to show up for the job on time. If they had quit and got hired by someone who paid more, then you might have a point, but as it is it seems that they were simply lazy.

Who hired the 15 quitters, or no shows? Getting fired for not coming to work is as good as quitting.

i apprenticed when my living expenses where on someone else (my parents)
I've helped people out because it was the neighborly thing to do for zero wage no arguments there. My point he thinks he's paying a fair wage for no work and you get exactly what you pay for with thiose wages.

As far as the wage surveys well most companies won't pay a nickel more than they have to, to get qualified help so everybody is within pennies of one another for like industries.

Oh and you have to have a living wage be that one or ten jobs because in this society livin on love doesn't fill the kiddos belly.

In 1990 the starting wage for a UAW job was $23.66 per hour. In 2015 the starting wage was $13 to $14 per hour. There was a massive change in the worth of physical labor between 1990 and the present.

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For we used to ask when we were little, thinking that the old men knew all things which are on earth: yet forsooth they did not know; but we do not contradict them, for neither do we know.

You have just demonstrated that the employees that were fired were the problem.

If they wanted to work, then they would have shown up and done the job.

No one pointed a gun at their head and made they work for the OP.

I heard that. Just because you pay more does not mean you get better workers. And it sue does depend on what area a person lives in as to what employers can pay before they are put of of business because nobody can afford to buy or get use their services. High wages is just another liberal wage on those that have made it in this country. You have a right to Pursue happiness not have that happiness giving to you on a silver platter in the way of a high wage that you are not ready for. There is such a thing as a training wage and that should be left up to the employer and not anybody else. When that person does a good job and is WORTH more they will get more, but as in the case of the OP going over and having to wake a person up is never going to impress a boss no matter how much money was being paid.

You should not only be on time but even a few minutes early to get things set up for the day.
We sure did that at the place I worked you got there early enough to find out what the previous shift was like any problems etc. and NO we Did NOT get paid for that 5 minute early we ALL were glad to just have a good job in good working conditions even if it was a 12 hour shift. LOL I was there 8 years before I left for health reasons. Made tiny computer parts and worked in a clean room situation. Very good working conditions to say the least.

Heck we didn't even have a time clock to tell us when to work when to take a break None of those things were present.
YOUR WORD and Your Honesty was taken very seriously.

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Certain elements have to exist for supply side economics to even be relevant. It begins with tax incentives to foster innovation. Ford was doing what you stated before and right about the time that the 16th Amendment instituted income taxes. Supply side economics were not a concern of Ford because the oppressive income tax system had not yet been fully implemented. Ford was just doing what worked in his time. You can't in any way compare economic realities in 1910 with those of 2015.

I have to say that I am amazed at the responses to the OP......I must live in a different US from the rest of you. Physical labor jobs here are some of the cheapest paid.....course lot of folk doing that are getting cash pay, SSI check , 800/900 dollars in food stamps, and HUD housing......Better paying jobs like the Nuc plant pay good enough........considering how many hours the fellows say they have to sit and wait............for inspections and sign offs
Jobs that pay over $10 an hour are not just labor jobs in this neck of the wood....and there are alot more of $8 to $10 hr jobs than there are $10 and above

While you are spot on, I don't think that Timbuktu is the analogy you are seeking. Timbuktu was a major trading center and was highly prosperous. Number Nine Ditch, Arkansas (citing The Silence of the Lambs - the book by Tom Harris) might be a better allusion.

YES, I started to see the trend starting in 2005 in my corner of the world.

Of course it isn't, which is why $8.00/hr is close to minimum wage in most parts.

You aren't supposed to subsist on a minimum wage job. It is an entry into the working world and you need to use it for experience while acquiring skills that will increase your value so that you can ask for and receive a higher wage.

All this "living wage" nonsense is exactly that - nonsense. If you can't live on what you are making, it is incumbent on you to increase your value so that you can earn what you need.

When did living within ones means become a dirty term?