[Darth-Apple]

So here in the US, anything over 40 hours requires 1.5 times your regularly paid rate for those extra hours. I personally am not a fan. It really discourages people from hiring employees to work more than 40 hours, and with today's wages as far as "minimum wage jobs" (with "minimum wage jobs" really meaning anything less than about $10/hour or so), you can't really make good money working 40 hours/week. 

What results? People work two jobs to get 50 hours/week rather than just working 50 hours/week at one job. It's a lot more stressful to work two jobs, especially when you end up with scheduling conflicts, and you can't commit as easily to one job. That said, it has its advantages too. It's easy to pick up a ton of hours when you need them, and you have a backup plan if you get fired from one job. I've done the whole two jobs thing before, and I've seen the advantages and disadvantages first-hand. 

I'm paid just under $10/hour right now, which is good for what I do, but it definitely puts me in the lower working class for sure. That, my friends, is why I'm in college. However, the real struggle comes in when you end up working 36 hours/week because they want to keep a buffer to prevent you from reaching 40 hours. That's 10% of your monthly income that you lose all because they can't risk letting you go into so much as one hour of overtime. 

I can't really make the best case against raising minimum wage at least a bit, considering 7.25 is not enough at all to support yourself at 40 hours/week unless you get very creative. However, the 10.15/hour minimum wage seems excessive to me because a large part of the market can't support it, and yes, I have worked minimum wage jobs before. I know exactly how it feels, and in my opinion, the other solution for the average worker is to, well, work more. More work = more productivity = a better America, and when people have to get two jobs because they can't work the 45 hours they need at one job, or they get scheduled 36 hours/week instead of 40, it gets rough. (Not saying 40 hours/week isn't the ideal, but the fact remains. Many of America's lower working class industries can't afford the upcoming $10+/hour minimum wage, and Americans can't afford to work for lower wages and to only get 40 hours/week. )

This thread is in the mature discussions section primarily because this is where most debates end up landing, so just for the sake of consistency, it's posted here. Anyway, what is your general opinion on overtime pay? Should it remain at 40 hours, have the 40 hour limit raised, or be removed altogether to let the market do its own thing? Are the labor regulation laws something that could be considered a good thing? 

EDIT: I feel I should clarify my own personal point of view here as well. If a company requires you to work 70+ hours a week, I think that could be considered excessive with today's cost of living, even at low wages such as $8.25/hour that is commonly paid for many lower class jobs. I personally feel the definition of full time should remain, but that the requirements for overtime pay should be adjusted. I do see a huge difference between working 45-50 hours/week at one job, and working 70 hours/week, for example.

[Guardian]

I'm currently on salary, and even if I did go over, I don't make any extra. For overtime with an hourly wage, I think it should be optional for the employee and employer. Some employees won't work for less than time and a half. Others would love to work more for the same employer. So long that the employer doesn't require the worker to work over 40 hours a week to keep their job, then I think the optional would be a great idea.

[TRUE LIBERTY]

Minimum wage and overtime laws create less jobs overall. It is not governments place to tell a privately owned business what to hire somebody at. If a business can only afford $5.00 dollars a hour to hire someone and a person who wants a job is willing to work for that pay that is a private contract between two people and no business of the government to interfere with that decision.

Switzerland has no minium wage laws or overtime laws and there unemployment rate is consistently better then most countries around the world. There standard of living is also better then most countries around the world.

Money, while it cannot buy happiness, is an important means to achieving higher living standards. In Switzerland,the average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita is 30 745 USD a year, more than the OECD average of 23 938 USD a year. But there is a considerable gap between the richest and poorest – the top 20% of the population earn close to five times as much as the bottom 20%.

In terms of employment, 79% of people aged 15 to 64 in Switzerland have a paid job, above the OECD employment average of 65%. Some 85% of men are in paid work, compared with 74% of women. People in Switzerland work 1 632 hours a year, less than the OECD average of 1 765 hours. Having a good education is an important requisite for finding a job. In Switzerland, 86% of adults aged 25-64 have earned the equivalent of a high-school degree, higher than the OECD average of 75%. This is truer of men than women, as 89% of men have successfully completed high-school compared with 83% of women. This difference is higher than the OECD average and suggests women’s participation in higher education could be strengthened. In terms of the quality of its educational system, the average student scored 518 in reading literacy, maths and science in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This score is higher than the OECD average of 497. On average in Switzerland, girls outperformed boys by 6 points, less than the average OECD gap of 8 points.
In terms of health, life expectancy at birth in Switzerland is almost 83 years, three years higher than the OECD average of 80 years. Life expectancy for women is 85 years, compared with 81 for men. The level of atmospheric PM10 – tiny air pollutant particles small enough to enter and cause damage to the lungs – is 19.8 micrograms per cubic meter, slightly less than the 20.1 micrograms OECD average. Switzerland performs better in terms of water quality, as 95% of people say they are satisfied with the quality of their water, compared with an OECD average of 84%.
Concerning the public sphere, there is a strong sense of community and a moderate level of civic participation in Switzerland, where 94% of people believe that they know someone they could rely on in time of need, higher than the OECD average of 89%. Voter turnout, a measure of public trust in government and of citizens’ participation in the political process, was 49% during recent elections. This figure is the lowest rate in the OECD, where average turnout is 72%, due to the high frequency of elections in the country. Voter turnout for the top 20% of the population is an estimated 61% and for the bottom 20% it is an estimated 43%, a broader difference than the OECD average gap of 11 percentage points.
In general, people in Switzerland are more satisfied with their lives than the OECD average, with 84% of people saying they have more positive experiences in an average day (feelings of rest, pride in accomplishment, enjoyment, etc.) than negative ones (pain, worry, sadness, boredom, etc.). This figure is higher than the OECD average of 76%.


http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/count...itzerland/

[Guardian]

I can say from experience, that when the minimum wage jumped to $5.85, the restaurant I worked at 'fired' everyone. Started paying everyone under the table at $5/hour. Despite losing $0.15/hour, we still made out better because it was untaxed. When the restaurant was finally forced to pay the minimum wage, they didn't last 3 months, and went under. Overall, about a dozen people lost their jobs when it happened. It's amazing how much that $0.70/hour made in wages to the bottom line of the business. That is only one place too, think about across the country.

[Darth-Apple]

I'm glad the minimum wage isn't $5/hour anymore. That'd be absolutely horrible. It is definitely true that people lose jobs in businesses without a lot of money when the minimum wages go up though. It's sad. The market will adjust, but the result will be at the price of some small businesses in America. Then again, the same thing could have probably been said when it was raised to 7.25, and I can't necessarily disagree with the 7.25 adjustment.

I suppose I'm a proponent of letting the market do its own thing a bit more, but I'm not overly conservative about it. I do think that some labor laws are definitely a good thing.

[Guardian]

I suppose I'm a proponent of letting the market do its own thing a bit more, but I'm not overly conservative about it. I do think that some labor laws are definitely a good thing.

I'm a libertarian myself, so I think the less hand government has in it, the better off things will be overall. My experiences in the working world working from below minimum wage to the comfortable salary I earn now only reinforces my belief. Some laws I agree with, and in some cases there are even some missing, but most are over-regulation that causes more issues. Inflation is my biggest annoyance with government policy driving the cost of living ahead of the living wages far faster than most people can keep up.

[SpookyZalost]

personally I think minimum wage is a good thing however the bigger issue isn't so much the minimum wage but that the cost of living is too high for any one person to live by themselves without being in that upper %20 of jobs that pay enough.