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I just went to the insurance exchange subsidy website. A single person making $10/hr loses a whole bunch of subsidy when suddenly making $15 an hour. At the current minimum wage he would be eligible for a subsidy of $1996 per year and a reduced premium based on his percent of FPL. At the new wage, he gets zero subsidy and has to pay more for his premium based on 268% of FPL. He loses about $3 an hour of his raise to health insurance.
Them liberals are real smart cookies...
As I have said many times. People should think about and investigate what they are asking for. Which is of more value... a raise or lower taxes and getting to keep more of their money?
When minimum wage is raised to $15 an hour it will be an interesting experiment to see what happens to Seattle. Perhaps not the best since Seattle is already a pretty expensive city to live in, but the minimum wage will be far higher than its suburbs.
The Colorado experiment with marijuana seems to be going well, but minimum wage is a completely different animal. The aftermath of what happens in Seattle will really tell us what raising the minimum wage that much will do to common jobs. I still don't like it, paying someone that much money will undoubtedly have an adverse effect on the economy as a whole, sure it will give them more buying power, but at the cost of a lot smaller labor market. You'll probably see unemployment rise.
Most teachers get paid more than 15-19 dollars an hour because most teachers and most faculty in higher education only get paid for the school year which works out to only 9 months. This explans why a lot of educators get part time summer jobs to tide them over or in the case of college Professors pay themselves from their Research grants or do consulting (rent an expert). Now the 15 dollar minumum wage would restore it to the value it had in the mid 1960s because the US dollar has lost 75% of its value since then due to inflation. In 1965 a gallon of regular leaded gas went for 35 cents and when was the last time a quarter would give you a 16 oz bottle of pop or a loaf of Wonder Bread. So a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage is reasonable. Imagine what shape our seniors or vets would be in if there weren't cost of living increases to SS or Military pensions.
Most teachers get salary pay, which they can choose to take in increments throughout the year, including the summer in most states, or just through the 9 working months of the year. Teacher starting salary pay in most states is 30-35k a year. My sister is a teacher in Indiana, been one for four years, she makes 33k a year, which averages out to around $16-$17 an hour.
When minimum wage is raised to $15 an hour it will be an interesting experiment to see what happens to Seattle. Perhaps not the best since Seattle is already a pretty expensive city to live in, but the minimum wage will be far higher than its suburbs.
The Colorado experiment with marijuana seems to be going well, but minimum wage is a completely different animal. The aftermath of what happens in Seattle will really tell us what raising the minimum wage that much will do to common jobs. I still don't like it, paying someone that much money will undoubtedly have an adverse effect on the economy as a whole, sure it will give them more buying power, but at the cost of a lot smaller labor market. You'll probably see unemployment rise.
I don't think there will actually be much of an unemployment rise. Seattle has been in somewhat of a boom for the past couple years to Amazon hiring, along with other tech jobs. Those tech workers still have to buy lattes, groceries, etc. I think there will be a move to contract out to companies based in the burbs, and a move to automate.
If you want to live in Seattle and work a low-wage job, now you will have to commute to the burbs to work, that's all. Or have a connection, like a friend whose father owns a restaurant. I've seen it in high-wage, low-skill union jobs. You have to have a connection to get the job.
Seattle does have one advantage with this experiment and that's geography. The city is roughly I-shaped, and both the eastern and western borders are bodies of water. You might expect to see gas stations mini-marts, etc, within a mile or so of city limits shutter, but in Seattle that is only going to happen on the north and south ends of the city.
As a democrat and strong supporter of what most people consider to be "liberal policies" I must admit I cannot say I am fully on board with this $15 an hour for minimum wage push.
Fast food workers across the country are striking for higher pay, and the mayor of Seattle is pushing hard to raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 an hour. That seems way too high for unskilled labor. I do agree that the minimum wage SHOULD be raised, I'm personally on board with Obama's proposal of about $10-$11 an hour. Minimum wage SHOULD be a living wage, that is what FDR said when it was first passed back in the 1930's. However, it should not be a way to live well or comfortably.
Minimum wage work is primarily for people who have little to no education and very little in the way of skills or laboring. It's mostly for high school kids or people who chose not to pursue a career path. There are a LOT of skilled jobs and jobs that require education that don't pay $15 an hour. Hell, teaching positions in most states pay a salary of around 30-35k annually, which is around $15-$19 an hour, so now we are proposing to pay minimum wage workers as much as a teacher with a bachelor's degree and a much more stressful job who can't get paid for overtime?
Also, I'm not sure how people think that more than doubling the minimum wage won't cause an increase in prices. Sure, you're giving more spending power to the poorer class, and that will likely mean that these people are less dependent on government programs, so that'd be a boost to the government's budget, but it would likely be at the cost of the economy. Businesses won't be able to afford paying people that much money, and if they are forced to pay that much they will then be forced to lay off a lot of their workforce.
Am I way out of line for thinking this way as a democrat? Am I that misinformed? Or am I just more of a realist? I don't know, I really don't understand how or why people think burger flippers are entitled to make over $30,000 a year. Maybe I'm not as liberal as I thought and people claim me to be.
No one in my part of the country is living well or comfortably on $15.00 an hour or 30-35K. It's enough with the cost of food, car upkeep(insurance, repairs, gas etc..) rent for one person to eek out a very humble existence without outside help from family or government but it will not allow for much in savings and big dental and/or medical issues can cause a real problem real fast.
$15.00 an hour and under $40k in income is absolutely, positively nothing in 2014. It's less than chump change especially if you have any compunction to go through life with more people than just yourself. The fact that 60% of the jobs in this country pay $20.00 or less should genuinely scare anyone who does not already have a good career or job or already has theirs because they started working 20-30 years ago.
No one in my part of the country is living well or comfortably on $15.00 an hour or 30-35K. It's enough with the cost of food, car upkeep(insurance, repairs, gas etc..) rent for one person to eek out a very humble existence without outside help from family or government but it will not allow for much in savings and big dental and/or medical issues can cause a real problem real fast.
$15.00 an hour and under $40k in income is absolutely, positively nothing in 2014. It's less than chump change especially if you have any compunction to go through life with more people than just yourself. The fact that 60% of the jobs in this country pay $20.00 or less should genuinely scare anyone who does not already have a good career or job or already has theirs because they started working 20-30 years ago.
True, $35k won't go far here either. This is just government throwing minimum wage workers a bone. It will get dems votes, the intended goal of politicians. People would be smarter not to wait for a bone and instead increase their job skills.
People always think if they make more all their financial problems will be fixed, not true.
True, $35k won't go far here either. This is just government throwing minimum wage workers a bone. It will get dems votes, the intended goal of politicians. People would be smarter not to wait for a bone and instead increase their job skills.
People always think if they make more all their financial problems will be fixed, not true.
That's probably true for most of the typical people we're discussing but not all. At a certain point a certain amount of money, whatever it is for a given individual, will solve that person's financial problems unless that person is a total dope.
As far as the skills thing goes sure it helps but it's not the panacea most make it out to be. Only 4 in 10 workers can make more than $20.00 an hour dollars in this economy. If you look at the income data and percentiles you'll quickly realize that there are only so many well paying jobs out there so at the end of the day you're playing musical chairs. If more people study and earn their engineering degree than there are engineering jobs than a certain amount of those people are out of luck. This can of course be applied to pretty much all jobs accept doctors since the AMA restricts the amount of people who can enter medical school every year for precisely this reason.
I'm not saying I know what the answer is. I don't. I don't even know if raising the minimum wage is the right answer. I don't know that either. I'm just describing the reality we're dealing with and the fact that inflation adjusted wages have not kept up with inflation for decades.
Well in Australia they have a min wage similar to that and it's not that bad. Things are more expensive but it's still a better deal than the States.
The population of Australia is a tenth of the population here and Australia does not have a porous border with millions of illegal immigrants.
It's just like how moron liberals point to Norway as a model of socialism, a tiny nation subsidized by oil with a GDP per capita almost double America's.
It's apples and oranges.
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