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#52 Feb 27 2014 at 8:43 PM Rating: Excellent
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Here's an idea-- let's ignore the minimum wage and let it stay where it's at. Meanwhile the price of every day living continues to rise.

How is the "middle class" not affected when minimum wage workers need to steal the mufflers off their cars to pay their rent?
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#53 Feb 27 2014 at 9:03 PM Rating: Default
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Kuwoobie wrote:
Here's an idea-- let's ignore the minimum wage and let it stay where it's at. Meanwhile the price of every day living continues to rise.

How is the "middle class" not affected when minimum wage workers need to steal the mufflers off their cars to pay their rent?


Wont happen. Ok. Won't happen any more than right now. Normal wages will rise as cost of living rises, regardless of whether the government sets or raises a minimum wage. The overwhelming majority of workers earn more than minimum wage. 95.3% based on recent BLS data. Of the 4.7% who earn minimum wage, half of them are below the age of 25. Half of them (but not necessarily the same half) worked in leisure and hospitality, most of them in restaurants and food service (where the numbers are a bit skewed because they get tips that compensate for earning less than minimum wage).

If anything, what would happen if minimum wage were allowed to stay static while inflation continues to increase over time is that the percent of workers earning minimum wage will decrease. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. Fewer people earning the "bare minimum allowed by law", right?

But to directly address your question, if we raise minimum wage dramatically, as suggested, one of two things will happen:

1. Cost of living will adjust to the new minimum. So those at the bottom wont really gain anything, but you'll grow that bottom because all the folks who were earning more than the previous minimum but less than or equal to the new one will now be earning minimum wage. They'll be harmed because costs of living has increased, but their wages didn't (or didn't increase as much). Net result is negative for most and a break even for the 4.7% of workers who earned minimum wage previously.

2. Cost of living doesn't adjust, which means that wages for many entry level positions are just plain higher than the costs of the goods produced can justify. This will result in fewer entry level jobs. Which means that the guy who might have otherwise earned minimum wage is now unemployed. So, more likely to have to steal to get by than he would have been other wise.



There are no really good reasons to raise minimum wage. It's a fake issue that liberals toss around because it sounds good on the surface level, and they know that they can easily demonize those of us with enough sense to realize it's a bad idea. It's easy to just label anyone opposed to increasing minimum wage a hater, right? It's a lot harder to explain why raising minimum wage doesn't really help low income people, and will generally hurt them instead.
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#54 Feb 27 2014 at 9:05 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
And if we ignore all of the different things that can hurt people without causing the country to end, then you might have a point.
Well, as long as there are commercials that make you sad in the pants we know that won't happen. Do as you say, not as you do as it were.
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#55 Feb 27 2014 at 9:13 PM Rating: Default
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lolgaxe wrote:
gbaji wrote:
And if we ignore all of the different things that can hurt people without causing the country to end, then you might have a point.
Well, as long as there are commercials that make you sad in the pants we know that won't happen. Do as you say, not as you do as it were.


Dude. That's even more nonsensical than usual. WTF?
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#56 Feb 27 2014 at 9:21 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
That's even more nonsensical than usual.
I guess it would be nonsense for someone who is accustomed to being told how to think and behave.
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#57 Feb 27 2014 at 9:35 PM Rating: Decent
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TIL more people having money weakens the middle class. LOOOOOOL.

Please see my last post ITT for more clarity.
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#58 Feb 27 2014 at 9:47 PM Rating: Excellent
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I still like the idea of pegging to inflation so you don't have to have these silly debates every 5 years.

Does wonders for that kind of thing.
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#59 Feb 27 2014 at 9:49 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
I still like the idea of pegging to inflation so you don't have to have these silly debates every 5 years.

Does wonders for that kind of thing.


Thats what i like about the socialist country of Canada. We get increases to min wage everytime the inflation rate goes up a certain amount. We are getting a bump up to 11 bucks this year. Not bad for flipping burgers.

Granted its still about 15% below where it should be ideally but even great systems can't be perfect.
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#60 Feb 27 2014 at 9:50 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Kuwoobie wrote:
Here's an idea-- let's ignore the minimum wage and let it stay where it's at. Meanwhile the price of every day living continues to rise.

How is the "middle class" not affected when minimum wage workers need to steal the mufflers off their cars to pay their rent?


Wont happen. Ok. Won't happen any more than right now. Normal wages will rise as cost of living rises, regardless of whether the government sets or raises a minimum wage. The overwhelming majority of workers earn more than minimum wage. 95.3% based on recent BLS data .


Yeah. Almost NO ONE actually makes minimum wage. They make 1-25 cents more so we can claim 95.3% are just fine and dandy and won't benefit at all from a higher minimum.

I'm too tired to attempt to wade through whatever else you said. I'm sure I'm not missing anything.


The bottom line is, if you get a job that starts you at or NEAR minimum wage, you MORE THAN LIKELY are not going to double, triple, quadruple your pay, or come anything even close to that-- not after any amount of hard work or years of sucking the boss's ****. In fact, most places that pay wages that low don't even expect to keep you for more than one or two years. They are counting on you to realize what a waste of ******* time the job is so they can replace you with someone young and naive who will take one or two years to become complacent and/or completely disgruntled.

At this point, having a low wage job, whether it is ACTUALLY minimum wage or close to it, is not even worthwhile. People only work these jobs until they can't take it anymore, or realize what a sucker they've been. This is no way to run a business, no matter how you look at it.

Edited, Feb 28th 2014 7:00am by Kuwoobie
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#61 Feb 27 2014 at 9:58 PM Rating: Excellent
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Stalker rdmcandie wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
I still like the idea of pegging to inflation so you don't have to have these silly debates every 5 years.

Does wonders for that kind of thing.


Thats what i like about the socialist country of Canada. We get increases to min wage everytime the inflation rate goes up a certain amount. We are getting a bump up to 11 bucks this year. Not bad for flipping burgers.

Granted its still about 15% below where it should be ideally but even great systems can't be perfect.
We're up to $9.10 or something like that, it's just nice to not have to worry about it. There's less of a push for raising it, and less of a push saying it's too high. We agreed (more or less) on the amount years ago, and just make sure it stays at the same relative level.

Problem solved.
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#62 Feb 27 2014 at 10:07 PM Rating: Decent
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Stalker rdmcandie wrote:
TIL more people having money weakens the middle class. LOOOOOOL.


Arbitrarily raising the wages of entry level workers above what the market will naturally pay them *does*. I know that it's hard for some people to grasp this, but it really does. Not just the middle class. Everyone is harmed.

Quote:
Please see my last post ITT for more clarity.


Yes. You are quite clearly stating things that are incorrect. There is no reason to have a minimum wage. None. Zip. Zero. Nada. It's a myth invented by western socialists to help increase their base of support. Ironically by making more people poor. The objective is specifically to destroy the middle class and a minimum wage is one of the methods used to do that. When you raise the bottom, you destroy any upward mobility below the rate at which you're raising the minimum wage *and* you increase inflation so as to reduce the relative value of wages higher than that (the middle class).

You don't make the poor richer. You make everyone a little bit poorer. I know that this is hard to understand. It seems simplistic to just say that if people earn more money then they're better off, but money doesn't work that way. And wages really don't work that way. The total amount of money available for compensation in any business is going to be a function of revenue. If you increase the minimum, then you either have to raise revenue to match (ie: raise the price of your product), find a way to reduce your workforce, or adjust wages elsewhere (compress the middle basically).

I've explained this before. A store owner can afford to pay the single mom assistant manager $15/hour because he's only paying the high school kids working the counter $5/hour. Raising minimum wage causes wages to flatten within a given range of that minimum. Add in a sprinkle of inflation and the assistant manager job that used to pay enough to support a single mother (if barely) now doesn't. Multiply that by thousand of workplaces that employ workers at the low end of the wage scale, and you're ******** over a hell of a lot of people so that some high school kids get more fun money. It's a terrible idea.
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#63 Feb 27 2014 at 10:17 PM Rating: Decent
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Kuwoobie wrote:
The bottom line is, if you get a job that starts you at or NEAR minimum wage, you MORE THAN LIKELY are not going to double, triple, quadruple your pay, or come anything even close to that-- not after any amount of hard work or years of sucking the boss's ****. In fact, most places that pay wages that low don't even expect to keep you for more than one or two years. They are counting on you to realize what a waste of @#%^ing time the job is so they can replace you with someone young and naive who will take one or two years to become complacent and/or completely disgruntled.


Yup. That's the point. Those jobs pay very little because the output of them isn't that valuable. Those who want to earn more will gravitate away from those jobs, right?

Raise the wage for flipping burgers to $15/hour and more people will stay flipping burgers instead of leaving that job and seeking one with greater advancement (and more value to the economy as a whole). That's part of the problem, and yet another way that it weakens rather than strengthens the middle class. If more people stay at those crappy jobs because we've made it so that they can earn good money there, then fewer people will ever become middle class.

As I keep saying, the reasons not to have a minimum wage at all are massive. The reasons to have one, much less try to raise it to a "living wage" level are right around zero.

Quote:
At this point, having a low wage job, whether it is ACTUALLY minimum wage or close to it, is not even worthwhile.


Yes. That's because what the job does isn't worth much. We want to discourage people staying in low productive jobs. Anything which does the opposite is a bad thing.

Quote:
People only work these jobs until they can't take it anymore, or realize what a sucker they've been. This is no way to run a business, no matter how you look at it.


It's not about the owner ******** people over. It's about the product of the labor not being worth that much. The day people will pay $30 for a burger at McDonalds is the day that McDonalds can pay its burger flippers $15/hour. Get it? Wages are relative to the value of what the labor actually does. Arbitrarily raising the wage doesn't make the thing the wage is paid for more valuable. It just makes it more expensive. And, as I keep saying, one of two things will happen:

1. The labor costs become higher than people will pay for the product the labor makes, and the business will fold and the labor will become unemployed.

2. Inflation will occur, nullifying any value of the increased wage to minimum earners, but retaining the harmful effects to everyone who's wage wasn't raised.


Um... I suppose there can be some combination of those two things. Point being that it's all bad. Aside from just a knee jerk "but we should pay people more" rationale, can you actually tell me why you think this is a good idea? Cause I've listed off like 3-4 very simple and obvious negative effects. Are there any positives? I just don't see it.
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#64 Feb 27 2014 at 10:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
I just don't see it.
The benefits of never having to think for yourself.
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#65 Feb 27 2014 at 10:47 PM Rating: Decent
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gbaji wrote:
Stalker rdmcandie wrote:
TIL more people having money weakens the middle class. LOOOOOOL.


Arbitrarily raising the wages of entry level workers above what the market will naturally pay them *does*. I know that it's hard for some people to grasp this, but it really does. Not just the middle class. Everyone is harmed.

Quote:
Please see my last post ITT for more clarity.


Yes. You are quite clearly stating things that are incorrect. There is no reason to have a minimum wage. None. Zip. Zero. Nada. It's a myth invented by western socialists to help increase their base of support. Ironically by making more people poor. The objective is specifically to destroy the middle class and a minimum wage is one of the methods used to do that. When you raise the bottom, you destroy any upward mobility below the rate at which you're raising the minimum wage *and* you increase inflation so as to reduce the relative value of wages higher than that (the middle class).

You don't make the poor richer. You make everyone a little bit poorer. I know that this is hard to understand. It seems simplistic to just say that if people earn more money then they're better off, but money doesn't work that way. And wages really don't work that way. The total amount of money available for compensation in any business is going to be a function of revenue. If you increase the minimum, then you either have to raise revenue to match (ie: raise the price of your product), find a way to reduce your workforce, or adjust wages elsewhere (compress the middle basically).

I've explained this before. A store owner can afford to pay the single mom assistant manager $15/hour because he's only paying the high school kids working the counter $5/hour. Raising minimum wage causes wages to flatten within a given range of that minimum. Add in a sprinkle of inflation and the assistant manager job that used to pay enough to support a single mother (if barely) now doesn't. Multiply that by thousand of workplaces that employ workers at the low end of the wage scale, and you're ******** over a hell of a lot of people so that some high school kids get more fun money. It's a terrible idea.


Cryst, isn't there are country we can ship you where there is no minimum wage so you can see first hand the paradise you claim it to be?
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#66 Feb 27 2014 at 11:23 PM Rating: Excellent
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Yes. That's because what the job does isn't worth much. We want to discourage people staying in low productive jobs. Anything which does the opposite is a bad thing.


So what, then? People just won't work these jobs at all? You want to encourage people to work, but only work "good" jobs? But wait! There aren't any good jobs, and more and more companies are replacing their old workers who have either died or retired with young people they are paying much less than their old workforce-- and keeping them at a low rate of pay. Meanwhile, more and more jobs are becoming automated or getting outsourced.

It's not 1996 anymore, gbaji. These aren't the happy Bill Clinton years. This is the era of a controlled and artificial recession-- one they will hold onto as long as possible. They won't let it get so bad that we have to fix it again. We are going to boil this frog so slowly he won't know he's being cooked. Kids graduating high school today think the way things are is NORMAL. The ones who don't get the opportunity to en-debt themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in college can expect long, miserable lives as lower class worker drones who will never amount to anything, no matter how talented or hard working they may be. Their children will think even less of it all, and merrily accept their roles as worthless and disposable bags of meat-- and for what? So a very small number of people can enjoy having more money than God? There is no reason at all we shouldn't have a MAXIMUM wage to help offset the cost of paying all workers a respectable wage.

You are still assuming that all low wage jobs easy, require no skill and are simply undeserving of any kind of pay at all. In reality, many if not most of them are cruel and demanding-- both physically and mentally. I am the one speaking from experience now. No real person I have known, or myself, has ever had an opportunity to advance beyond anything above $13 per hour. The only exception were those in upper-upper management-- who show up wrapped in absolute luxury at their leisure, working, or not working, however they please. These are people you might consider "middle class"-- These one or two people out of thousands. They may have worked hard, or not. It doesn't change the fact that everyone who wasn't chosen for their role are MIRED IN **** and have little to NO CHANCE at having anything better for themselves.

If we raise the minimum wage for any reason at all, let it be because no job is worth that little.

What these people in the article are saying makes perfect sense. There is no secret. There is nothing hidden or hard to figure out here. The economy works when everyone has money to spend on goods and services-- you know, like circulating and stuff! Instead, we have this nasty clot where the economy's life blood is pooled into one area, with little to work with elsewhere-- but only just to the point things can keep going. A parasite cannot survive if it kills its host.
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#67 Feb 28 2014 at 12:50 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
The overwhelming majority of workers earn more than minimum wage. 95.3% based on recent BLS data.

Shouldn't the relevant stat be how many people make between Current Minimum Wage and Proposed Minimum Wage? Because that's the real number of people seeing a direct increase, not just the people making rock bottom.
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#68 Feb 28 2014 at 4:06 AM Rating: Good
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Stalker rdmcandie wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
I still like the idea of pegging to inflation so you don't have to have these silly debates every 5 years.

Does wonders for that kind of thing.


Thats what i like about the socialist country of Canada. We get increases to min wage everytime the inflation rate goes up a certain amount. We are getting a bump up to 11 bucks this year. Not bad for flipping burgers.

Granted its still about 15% below where it should be ideally but even great systems can't be perfect.
Its not pegged to inflation across Canada, because if it were there would be raises in minimum wage every year. That simply doesn't happen. Most yes, but not all.



And gbaji, it doesn't state $15 immediately, or even over 5 years. You added that assumption.
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#69 Feb 28 2014 at 7:42 AM Rating: Excellent
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Put it another way: Imagine you started working and earned $10/hour. 5 years later, you've earned raises and whatnot and are earning $20/hour. Then you boss decides to hire someone with the same starting skill/title/etc that you had 5 years ago, but decides to start that employee off at $20/hour. Would you be ok with that? I mean, you're still earning the same amount, right? Why do you care that the guy who started yesterday earns the same salary rate it took you 5 years to get to?

You'd be pissed.


Probably not, because my primary value isn't "worked here for a long time." If someone can come in with my skill set, they should be able to charge my fee. If I've developed new skills over 5 years, I should have a new title/job/role that value me more highly or I should ******* leave.

I realize that's not how it's worked for you, Comrade, but for those of us who actually have plied a trade in the free market, that's exactly how it works. No one gives a **** if you've made the buggy whip for 100 years, if someone else can do the same job for a nickel less per unit, they're getting the contract.

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#70 Feb 28 2014 at 7:53 AM Rating: Excellent
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As I said in the last thread where this came up (and Gbaji claimed to had been personally burned by it), I just went to the boss after minimum wage was increased and said "Hey, I deserve to be making more compared to starting employees" and got a raise because my labor was indeed more valuable than that of a starting employee. It was a retail job and someone who knew the floor, ran registers, had good customer service and actually showed up for work when expected had a good argument for being paid more than the usual teenage retail chumps.

when it happened to Gbaji, I suspect that either his labor at the Gas-N-Go wasn't more valuable or he was just too afraid to ask for what his labor deserved.
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#71 Feb 28 2014 at 8:00 AM Rating: Excellent
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He seems to be the kind of person who coasts under the radar and would be negatively affected if he were personally reviewed. Guess that is who he is fighting for.
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#72 Feb 28 2014 at 12:25 PM Rating: Excellent
Most companies give raises at a rate of 5% a year at most. So, you'd have to be working the same position for 20 years at that rate to double your salary.

Of course, the assumption is that you get promoted to new positions that give you a much bigger boost in earnings along with the new title, but for someone making minimum wage, it means they likely lack the education or training to do anything else. Experience can help in certain industries, but not in fast food if all you have is a GED.

And as we learned from the McDs lady who had been there for 10 years and was making the same pay she'd made when she started, not all companies bother with any kind of raise at all. If she was doing so poorly as to not deserve a raise for years of service, why was she still working there at all? And then they fired her after she had the audacity to ask that question to the CEO of McDs.

That, I think, is the biggest problem with the franchise model. The corporation is disconnected from the actual day to day operations of the individual businesses. The franchise owners are fully in it for themselves - they may give lip service to protecting the corporate image, but their primary goal is making as much money as they can after the franchise fees are taken out. And the corporation, trying to be helpful when they hear the franchise employees are broke, give a budget worksheet that assumes they'll be working two jobs, or fully admits they know their employees are on food stamps because they don't pay enough.
#73 Feb 28 2014 at 1:31 PM Rating: Excellent
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They don't pay enough. I see that over and over. Why do they need food stamps? The job or jobs they have don't pay enough. "Oh, but--" no. They don't pay enough.

If people get pissed because the bottom pay level is making a rate of pay closer to theirs, then by all means, raise their pay as well-- because I guarantee you that they aren't getting paid enough, either. This isn't just a matter of minimum wage not being enough. Ultimately we want to "strengthen the middle class," and ultimately pay raises across the bottom 80% of the board will benefit the economy as a whole.

...and this is the part where we pretend it is impossible-- that big companies (oh, and small businesses) simply can't afford this, because they can-- Or we will fumble about and say the cost of everything will go up, and maybe it will, but not NEARLY enough to matter. Like, "oh god, those kids in Australia make $16 per hour starting out, but their milk costs twenty cents more!" Oh noes! "Our workers have to have health insurance now, and that'll cost everyone 15 cents more per pizza! Oh woe for the middle class. Why must they suffer?"

We are so entrenched in this culture of anti-labor. We are so easily convinced that we deserve less, and that somehow the social elite have "earned" the obscene amount of money they command. As if any amount of work they do or have done is deserving of $7,412 PER HOUR. We shrug our shoulders when they ***** people and cut corners, because "eh, they are making money." I actually hear that a lot, and it takes everything in me not punch them in the face when they say it.

There is no other topic discussed on this forum that is so garishly one-sided-- yet if you ask the average Joe on the street about it, he will parrot MANY of gbaji's talking points-- This average Joe who busts his balls working 45 hours a week making not nearly as much as he should be making-- he has already devised a thousand ways to rationalize his bleak existence, and the lies they feed him are more than convenient when he knows there is nothing he can do about it.
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#74 Feb 28 2014 at 1:33 PM Rating: Good
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Catwho wrote:
Most companies give raises at a rate of 5% a year at most. So, you'd have to be working the same position for 20 years at that rate to double your salary.
More like 13 years or so.
#75 Feb 28 2014 at 1:42 PM Rating: Good
More like 30 years, if you want a doubling in real terms.

P.S. More like 14 years, Aethien. The italics indicate unwarranted cattiness.

Edited, Feb 28th 2014 7:47pm by Kavekk
#76 Feb 28 2014 at 1:43 PM Rating: Good
My job in TN gave 5% a year raises. Everyone I knew was always shocked, and said they gave 2-3% every year. I don't know where "most companies" came from.
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