Even today most lawn care guys aren't commercially insured, don't declare taxes, pay helpers cash, don't withhold FICA yet alone employer match it. No way was workers comp being paid. It's an under the table cash business where a wal-mart capital outlay of $500 for equipment puts you in business.

Again not saying it's not hard work just irrelevant when compared to the subject discussed.


.

You think I'm full of shit, but you could get off your ass go mow some yards and run a business right now using my old business model and make a profit. It's a very simple concept as long as you are smart enough to bid your jobs properly.

Hell I'll even tell you how to bid govt jobs. It's called the freedom of information act. If you know your local city/county/state gives out a specific contract each year to the lowest bidder, this is like money in the bank.

Say your city bids out the grass cutting of all your local parks (most cities do). Usually up to 3 months before the new bid goes out, you can file a freedom of information act for the previous year's contract. You now know what the winning bid was for the previous year for that contract.

Yes, my company had a lot of local city/county contracts. :winkwink:

We had to be, because of local govt contracts. Also in FL, even back then you had a little red tag you had to hang from your mirror (looked like a handy capped tag) which showed you were licensed and insured. You could only get that tag, if you were lic and insured and cops would check them, at least in my area.

You guys act like $15 dollars is big money. Try living on $15 an hour and come back and tell me what a cushie wage it is. lol
Also people dont seem to grasp,tax payers are making up the difference right now. Alot of these people would of been factory workers and those jobs are gone. The avg min wage worker is 29 yrs old. I cant remember the last time I saw a kid working one of these jobs.

I did start like that, I won't try to lie. In high school, I had a 4 door Pontiac pheniox. Total shit car, I ripped the back seats out and would stuff a push mower, weed eater ect.. In the trunk. I started that biz with literally shit of anything. I actually got my first riding mower, by making a deal with my mail man for his. I cut his grass for 6 months for that thing. :1orglaugh

I was in a class called DCT at school during my 11th and 12th grade, if you had good enough grades you could do it and get out of school early to work a job and it counted as credits. I ran my own business doing lawns while in that program.

The local airport authority owned a big trailer park and I used to cut all their vacant lawns very cheap ( like slave labor cheap, but fuck it I was young and it's how I started) The head maintance guy signed my paper work for the class and gave my reviews.. My teacher knew what was going on but she let it slide as long as my paper work was signed.

Yes my first 2 years before I was even 18 I was uninsured, but I was always licensed.. :1orglaugh

Minium wage in Australia is $17.29 per hour, which is $12.72 USD right now.

The median house price in Melbourne is over $600,000 and in Sydney is around $1million as a guide to cost of living here.

$15 USD sounds like a good deal.

Hilarious to see all the educated degree holding porn pushers whining about fast food workers making to much money.

:1orglaugh

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Um so it is currently operational business' fault that factory jobs are gone? they should be punished for it and pick up the slack?

"Tax payers are making up the difference now"....
Why are tax payers making up the difference? Government is giving out handouts through taxes, has nothing to do with a business. It is not the business' fault that there is an extreme number of government programs.

"avg min wage worker is 29 yrs old"
Again WHY is that a currently operational business' fault? MAYBE just MAYBE the government doesn't provide a quality environment to run a business and create jobs in?

The way some of you people think and supposedly run a successful business (which i am pretty sure you don't) is hilarious to me.

So you run your business' illegally and then complain about legal business' operation? /facepalm

I was 16 or 17 when I started and no one worked for me.. By the time I was out of high school I was making decent money and was legal.

Cry me a river..

Well congrats on your raise to $15 an hour then!

I don't live in NY or Seattle..

MacDonalds doesn't transfer employees?

And... You talk more shit than a Russian radio

won't happen what is going to happen though is "fast food" companies with more than 30 stores will be closing a lot of em so their UPGRADED plan on a Wage hike for the 85% under educated fast food workers to make more than some fresh out of college students wont fly its going to backfire in their face.

Come here to Vegas.

I'll take you to McDonalds, Taco Bell, Wendys, KFC, Arbys and every other starter job and show you teens working them right now.

Of course those young people WON'T have jobs anymore when the pay goes up to $15 an hour.

And of course...we in the porn biz haven't been able to raise prices in years now. Matter of fact we have to lower ours to try and compete with "Free". :(

If a person needs to make more than a few bucks an hour then they need to learn a SKILL that will make them that.

That's the way it's been since the beginning of time.

Come here to Denver, and I'll show you teenagers and adults whom make just under $10/hr at McDonalds as their starting wage. Then you can go to FL and see the same types of people making $8/hr doing the same job.

Amazingly enough despite paying almost $2/hr more in CO there are still McDonalds in business and a Big Mac costs the same before taxes as it does in FL..

Fucking amazing I tell you...

I have also not seen a single fast food joint, Home Depot, lowes, Walmart, target, ect..ect out here, that didn't have help wanted and now hiring signs plastered all over the place..

Come on Crockett, Florida under pays every state.

As of Oct/2015 the general minimum wage rate of $11.25/hr. in Ontario, Can. is $8.63/hr. USD.

Just throwing that out there.

For some reason they just dont seem to see this.

Hell I already started raising the prices of the memberships.

Wonder what a head of lettuce will cost in 1 year.

Similar in Manitoba. Oct budget will see minimum wage rise from $10.70 to $11 /hr CAD, which works out (right now) to $8.43 USD.

Only asshats scream about a result on something like this before they see the data. You don't launch a site and buy a new car because you expect it to do great... You watch the data that comes in and then decide to scale up or change course based on that data.

Digging into data to find impact of Seattle’s $15 minimum wage | The Seattle Times

The data is being collected but it isn't in yet. Give it until the end of 2016, by then you'll actually know if it works or not... Which is exactly what states are supposed to do, test out laws and then the fed scales up nationwide or the state changes course based on results.

Seattle Washington is doing the best at this currently. Min wage, legal weed, same sex marriage and more... Test it all, track it all, scale up what works and drop whatever does not... Why guess when you can know the actual answer?

CDSmith: Did you find this article by searching google for when you could expect a pay raise?

There will be more of this. With the economy no longer creating very many middle class wage paying jobs, most of the jobs being created are lower paying and those in them are going to demand more money as opposed to better jobs.

Why do idiots somehow believe the economy is a testing ground for policies and we will simply hit a button and rewind everything if the policies dont work?

It doesnt work like that. When companies close. They almost certainly close forever. There is no wait and rewind. Some of you just dont get it.

I suppose we will know the answer that way.

But of course anybody who runs a business knows that if costs go up...so does the cost of the product and/or you try to cut cost some other way (automation and less employees).

Also different areas will be different. Just like they are now.
People working at McDonalds in oil boom towns in North Dakota already make a high hourly wage.

And people living in a small town that isn't booming don't make that much.

Meanwhile McDonald's workers in NYC already made more than the ones in the small town.

Cost of living, location, etc.

But nope...let's put a "one size fits all" on this. That's worked so well for our govt.

And while we're at it...Pres. Obama is calling for the minimum wage to be raised nationally. That would be the same Pres. Obama who never ran a business in his life AND who's administration has overseen the Federal deficit going up from 9 Trillion dollars to over 18 Trillion dollars.

Politicians who run nothing BUT debt and never worked real jobs and bankrupt the country...probably not the best ones to be forcing companies to try out their theories on how stuff "should" work. :(

Meanwhile, let's "test" this. And to hell with the possible consequences to real live people. Maybe it'll all work out! Or maybe not. In real life that isn't so pretty.
But what's a few million more on foodstamps anyway? :)

Tell me, during those years you had employees did the gov't ever legislate (order) that you give them a 70% raise?

I doubt any fast food chain is going to just "eat that", nor would thousands of such business owners agree with what you've posted so far. Something will give in every business affected, either by cutbacks, raising prices, cutting employee benefits, etc, but somewhere that money will be accounted for by owners. And there will be fallout, to vendors, buyers, consumers and customers alike.

I seriously doubt it's going to take until the end of 2016 to figure out what that fallout is.

Nope, because crockett's "employees" were not his "employees"

They were just people with no real jobs that he paid to mow yards for him.

He didn't have to pay matching FICA funds. He never had to withhold taxes for them and 1099 them. He had no employees. He simply had guys he paid to mow yards.

HUGE difference compared to dealing with the govt., taxes, incorporation, FICA matching, and of course all the govt. regulations and rules on workplace safety, etc., etc.

So you had subcontractors?

You mean like the failed policy Republicans have been trying to push since Regan.. ie Trickle Down Economics.. It's never worked but the righties keep pushing that dead horse like its something new..

No, taxes were taken out, I just paid a flat rate.

You have zero clue what you are talking about. Taxes were with held. I simply paid a flat rate for a job instead of an hourly wage.. Seriously this is how all auto mechanics are paid. They get a flat rate for the estimated time of the job. If it takes them 2 hrs but the rate is for 3, then they still get paid for the 3hrs..

Honestly, it's an extremely simple concept, I dunno why you guys have such a hard time understanding it.

He has no clue what it means to have a large number of employees and then have someone else say "you have to double labor costs". He can't even comprehend of how that would impact a business or even begin to calculate the consequences.... because he's never had to deal with labor costs as a major expense.

George Bush put much of that 18t increase into place before he left office. bush started the bail outs which Obama had to continue, because the first year budget of any president is the budget from the previous sitting president..

You are an idiot.. I never said anything close to that. I said if your business depends on paying works under poverty levels, then your business model is one which leeches off the tax payers and is a failure.

Companies like Walmart, McDonald's ect, have gotten away sucking off the govt tit by paying their employees such low wages. Instead of being responsible employers like Costco for example they leech off the tax players. It's their problem if they can't see the writing on the wall and adjust their business plan to adapt to the future..

I would just like to know where in the hell someone is going to live on $15.00 an hour in NY or SF? Do they have 15 people to an apartment? Oh wait, no, the regulations most likely state that you can only have 2 per bedroom.

Fast food jobs are entry level jobs. This is why it's great for a teen still at home or sharing a place with other people. It's not meant for $15 and hour. A parent, or even two parents, working at McDonalds at $15 an hour in NY cannot possibly raise a family or even rent a room!

Rooms here in the bay area start at $800 per month. You can't pay rent, own a car, pay insurance, buy gas, clothes, food, and still pay $800 per month on a $15/hour salary in this area. Soon they'll figure this out and demand themselves more raises and out of a job.

It takes 2 branches of government to approve something unless the legislative branch has a majority and can veto. These were done post 2006 in which the democrats had control of Congress until 2011. No one can just assume it is from a single president. The problem we have right now is that NOTHING gets through. The House comes up with something. The Senate says no. If, by a fat chance, Congress actually pushes something up to obama, he vetoes it. It goes back. The Republicans don't have the majority and can't push it through.

This is unlike the last 2 years of Bush where the Democrats had the majority and the first two years of Obama where the Democrats had the majority. Unfortunately, Bush did banter with them and they got what they wanted. They (Democrats) effed everything up and it's still going on because everything is STALLED.

(WHY DO I GET INTO THESE CONVERSATIONS??? TOTAL WASTE OF TIME WHEN I SHOULD BE WORKING!!!)

Republicans have a majority in both the House and the Senate. They don't have a veto proof super majority, but yes, they most certainly do have a majority and still manage to get next to nothing done..