Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
The problems we have in the country are solvable, but not solvable the way we’re approaching them today, because of partisan politics. Richard Helppie, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist seeks to find a place in the middle where common sense discussions can bridge the current great divide.
Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
Episode 10- A Quick Appetizer on Minimum Wage
As we head into the holiday season, Richard takes a look at aspects of economic policy that might surprise you. This week is a very quick take on minimum wage. It may surprise you.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to the podcast, the common bridge with Richard helpy. Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health and finance space. He and his wife, Leslie, are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, but with a primary focus on medically and educationally underserved children. My name is Brian Kruger. And from time to time I'll be the moderator and host of this podcast.
Speaker 3:You're going to draw a connection between, uh, uh, the, the minimum wage expectations, uh, in the U S and how that might, uh, kind of dovetail in with what Bloomberg may be proposing as such. Do you want to comment on that? Well, the Michael Bloomberg, uh, has many people in his employ, um, and they earn good wages and, uh, presumably have, uh, good jobs, um, you know, good lives and the, uh, Mark of any good economy, um, is whether or not people have adequate spending power. And, uh, I know that there is proposals. Let's make a$15 minimum wage. And I look at that and frankly, I don't think that's enough. Uh, it's doesn't get a$15 an hour isn't going to get the benefits people think it's going to get, then people would be surprised at that because they look at 15 now as being a dramatic jump. Tell us why. Well, if you, if you look at it, um, there's about 2080 hours in a year, right? 52 weeks times 40 hours to back off. Just three weeks of that. You're at about 1,960 hours and at$15 an hour, no overtime, you're grossing around 29,400. All right, you're going to lose, uh, out of that seven and a half percent, you're going to, for FICA, you're going to lose some more for taxes. Um, you know, you're going to be down around 20,000. Well, it's actually, if you do the math, it's more advantageous to perhaps not earn that amount and stay below a poverty level. Get you know, wage, get income, support, get housing support, get medical support. Um, years ago we had a business that helped, uh, employers, large scale employers, a lot of them quick service restaurants, um, digitize their hiring. Um, and that business, we did real well with that and it's done real well since we sold it. Um, but I talked to a fellow who owned, um, and I won't use the brand name, a series of sub shops and a real good manager at one of his shops. And he wanted her to take over a region and run three shops and with a nice increase in pay. And she turned it down and she told him that I, I'm keeping my income below this threshold because otherwise I'm going to go into a tax bracket, I'm gonna lose all these other benefits. Oh wow. Yeah. So I think we need to raise the minimum wage if we're going to go down this route to 22 to$25 an hour. So you think that's the number I, that's that's again, it, I, I will, you know, always look at someone else's calculations. And this is something I've not gone into great detail, but you're looking then at 43 to$49,000 a year. All right? Now that what that does actually lets people buy healthcare, get into a better housing, pay for their own transportation. All right? And if it's a two income household, now we're talking close to 90, right? Well at work it opens the door for a single job, single income home. If that's the choice for that family, it makes it more doable. It does. And now on the other side of that, um, it will also generate things that people keep talking about a$15 an hour, it will drive more automation. Absolutely. Right? You already, uh, see kiosks in quick service restaurants. It's going to become much more cost effective to automate because of the huge savings you get every time you eliminate a$45,000 a year job versus if at$11 you're at, you know, half of that. So, uh, be a great investment in robotics, great investment in artificial intelligence, great investment in other automation. Um, which is again why I've talked about some of the other topics like student debt because we have to educate people in order to get to that world. Right? Um, and, and the reason we support education so much philanthropically is because we have to educate people for those jobs in those trades.
Speaker 2:One of your themes that you keep coming back to, uh, that I think is important and that is, it's not just the individual that benefits from that education as a community. We all benefit from it. We have to benefit from it. It's, uh, it's almost like you, you can't not do it. Um, so this lead, you know, leads into what you're saying. Now you're getting a lot of pushback. There's a ton of pushback from the$15 an hour crowd from small business saying, this is going to, this is going to wipe me out. You're talking about bumping it up to 22, 23. Explain to me how you might sit down with a small business owner and say, look, here's how this is going to work for you. Better.
Speaker 3:It's not going to work better for them. It's a, it's, it's, it's, it's going to mean that, uh, you're, you're more likely to be out shopping for a machine or software or something. Um, but the guy that is coming into clean the floors at night, um, you're going to be paying more for, and so you're going to have that cost, but you're not going to be giving the opportunities to teenagers and such. Yeah,
Speaker 2:there's a lot of a help wanted signs all over our region and then all over the country as well. The beneficiary of a small, a short or a small unemployment rate. Uh, Henry Ford started the$5 a day, not just to be philanthropic. He wanted to keep a turnover down. He, his turnover was staggering and something like a 20 to$23 an hour minimum wage. Um,
Speaker 3:that might keep people in their jobs too. So think about this, that you have more automation, so less jobs, but the jobs are very attractive. So you're going to have people competing for the jobs and performing in order to keep the job because it's a job worth having. Yeah. And in today's economy, you've got more of free market capitalism. I mean, we don't have pure free market capitalism, but wages are rising because of the supply and demand. It's a demand. You can't get them. And so the, the numbers are coming up nicely and that is a good thing. We have to put spending power in the hands of people and they have to be able to support themselves. Sure. Otherwise, what's the point?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well thanks. I know we got off on that tangent, but I, again, I always appreciate your time and thanks a lot. And for folks who are out there, visit Richard helpy.com and thanks again for all of you that are signing up for, uh, to be a part of this and look for newsletters starting after the, uh, after the first of the year. Thanks rich.
Speaker 3:Thank you Brian. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 4:You have been listening to Richard healthy's common bridge podcast recording and post-production provided by stunt three multimedia. All rights are reserved by Richard helpy. For more information, visit Richard helpy.com.