Discussions

https://news.gov.mb.ca/news/index.html?item=55959&posted=2022-08-18&fbclid=IwAR0Lr8iXkynZK1L1USD8USLZo4pBp9Zm4voRucy89NnB7BFnE7O7gSYNVNo

Unfortunately wage increases now will only serve to fuel further inflation rises causing increased cost of living and necessitating future interest rate increases making people poorer.  
Nothing is more likely to drive the economy into recession.  
 
Edited by Farmergeorge, 2022-08-19 09:30:27

This will bring Manitoba in line with a number of other provinces that are already in this range.  
 
Here's a question - is the cost of most items/services lower in Manitoba than it is in provinces with roughly $15 minimum wages? Not that I have seen. This shouldn't have a huge impact - and frankly it shouldn't be the responsibility of minimum wage earners to continue earning completely unlivable wages in order to prevent the province or the country from going into recession.  
 
Lots of things are more likely to push us into recession - like years of poor governance leading to low business investment in Canada, and a housing market that was allowed to go completely off the rails.

The local job market and individual employee performance should dictate wages.  
These kind of policies is exactly what makes us uncompetitive and reduces business investment.

Left up to the "local job market" I would be making much less than I am now. I work for a big box store that wants to pay me and my coworkers as little as possible and has cut down hours to "maximize profits".  
 
If someone struggles to simply survive even when working a full-time job, they are not being paid enough. If paying people living wages is what screws up the economy then we have much larger problems on our hands.

My wife is in a similar position, earns minimum wage in a grocery store. But increasing the minimum wage doesn’t automatically equate to her being better off. It simply results in everything she buys becoming more expensive, it’s counter productive. All that will happen as workers price themselves out of the market is their hours will be reduced and more part time staff hired or they will be replaced by automation, Artificial intelligence and robotics.

It is difficult to argue that people in Manitoba and Brandon in particular need more money in their pocket. At the same time, business is in business to make a profit - that's what makes the economic world go around. The inevitable result of increasing the minimum wage is that layoffs will occur and/or prices will increase. That effects everyone including the minimum wage earner that now has to pay more for everything they purchase. A better approach to help low income earners would be to raise the personal tax exemption. That would mean workers' net paychecks would be bigger without costing their employer more to operate.

Most products in stores already cost more money. So at this point, even if we do nothing, the buying power of minimum wage workers is reduced.  
 
The effect of increasing the minimum wage is tough to determine, because businesses will react differently and in complicated ways. But as of now, doing nothing certainly doesn't help anyone earning minimum wage. And that's kind of the point.  
 
The lack of business investment in Canada has lots to do with other factors - I don't think a lot of business would cite minimum wage as the main problem, or even one of the top problems. Some of the big problems are mountains of regulation that can vary between provinces, regulatory uncertainty, political uncertainty, lack of clarity around natural resource development, and government spending, which tends to be focused on individuals, driving up consumption but not really investment.  
 
I get what you and others are saying - but the current inflation issue has nothing to do with the minimum wage. And quite honestly, a failure to do anything here will only further burden the government who, for many minimum wage and low-wage workers, is making up the gap through social benefits, subsidies and tax credits.  
 
The wide range of social programs, benefit payments and tax credits provided by all levels of government are effectively subsidizing big businesses that pay their employees poorly, by making up for those poor wages.  
 
This minimum wage increase isn't going to solve that problem - but neither will doing nothing.

While I am happy to see minimum wage increase it is a double edged sword. While I make more than minimum this increase isn’t given to those of us who are making more but not by much. Our wages are now not that much more than minimum and now the price of things will rise.  
 
I don’t know what the answer is but we work multiple jobs and still struggle. Something has to give

I'm curious for those who maintain that raising the minimum wage will only make things more expensive and be counter-productive:  
 
What effect will reducing the provincial personal exemption have?  
 
Manitoba has among the lowest personal exemptions in the country, meaning many provinces allow a person to earn much more income before they are taxable. The president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce was on the radio yesterday basically slamming the wage raise, saying something like raising the basic personal exemption should be done instead.  
 
Other than it costing businesses less, whats the difference? Both put more money in people's pockets, ergo making things more expensive (assuming that rhetoric is true - I don't know either way).

Here's my take.  
 
Reducing the provincial person exemption would be absolutely horrible. I'm hoping you meant increase.  
 
The President of the Winnipeg CofC is correct in my opinion. We would be much better off to increase the personal exemption vs raise minimum wage. Here's a quick example of how I look at it. Let's say minimum wage goes up 50 cents. Lets assume a person works 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. They make an extra 1040 dollars a year. Subtract your 10.8 (I think, I'm too lazy to go look) % tax and you're now down to 927.68 for the year. Now, lets pretend the government increased the personal exemption 1000 dollars. I'm pretty sure that would still have us on the lower side in the country (again, I'm too lazy to double check) but now, that minimum wage worker is actually pocketing an extra 1000 without being taxed on it. Increasing the minimum wage helps the government. Simply, they collect more taxes.  
 
Now the double edge sword to all this is: minimum wage goes up, all other workers will follow. Trades, professional workers, skilled workers, all their wages have to go up. Minimum wage is exactly that, if they went to school or learned a trade or whatever, why would they want to move closed to the bottom of the ladder? They would want to stay at least at their current level above minimum wage. And then added to that, once wages across the board go up, that cost has to be covered somehow. Sure, lots of big corps could eat the cost, give their GMs less of a bonus, but they won't. Not only that, a lot of the smaller guys can't eat the cost. So now, prices are going up so business can keep their margins/offset their added costs and the people are going to pay for it. Prices increase and you're wage increase doesn't increase your buying power like you thought it would.  
 
What do I know though, I'm just a dumb tow truck.