Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
And in the two places that private land is being used to go for oil and natural gas (western N.D. and Middleton, Texas) they can't find enough people to fill all the high paying jobs.
So yeah...the oil industry is looking for people. And all the other businesses in those areas are desperate for workers too. The pay is so high for the oil work that nobody wants to work at Walmart and McDonalds (or anything else).
So those businesses are forced to raise their pay.
I read that in Middleton the starting pay at Walmart was $17 an hour!
And THAT is how you get people to make more money. Not by raising the minimum wage and trying to force it.  |
I don't want to raise the minimum wage, I think it should be eliminated entirely. I am a Libertarian for the most part.
Domestic energy production is fantastic and I support it 100% -- but it won't reverse the larger trend. Businesses exist solely to maximize shareholder value. Every year we become more and more efficient. We do more work with fewer employees.
$17 an hour to work at WalMart is great. Except you have to consider what that money can buy. In these micro-boom situations, a shitty 1 bedroom will rent for $1,500 a month... so those Wal-Mart workers aren't banking much of that cash.
I worked and lived in Silicon Valley during the first bubble. Right out of high school making $60,000 a year and I was in the shittiest apartment and barely making ends meet. I was living worse than most of the people I knew who went to live in college dorms and eat at cafeterias.