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Which is why it stimulates the economy so much better than giving the same amount of money to millionaires through tax breaks.
oh, i'm not against raising the minimum wage, i just don't think $15 is worth the justifications they are providing, i could care less about "living" wage or other excuses of a "basic" lifestyle, I don't buy "lifestyle" as an excuse for a raise. IF they want a lifestyle, they need to make enough to pay for it on their own
my reasons for increasing it however have nothing to do with improving their lives, it won't because they are still continuing to be minimum wage workers, until this changes, their lives won't change
1) it increases their taxable income = more tax revenue
2) it bumps them over the welfare limit = less people on welfare
Speaking of "inflate", I see this a lot from the other side of the coin... Many critics seem to think that all people who are struggling can just "skip the $800+ iPhone, skip the 4K TV, skip cable TV, skip eating out, etc." when they already were NOT doing those things! As covered by others, some of them have ongoing medical bills. One person I met had to pay back a huge medical bill for emergency surgery, so making a lot of money doesn't get you very far when that's hanging over your head.
The biggest way to be convinced is to just see for yourself. People who've converted to this sort of thinking became believers when they moved to certain places like certain parts of DC, talked with those people, visited them, and gotten to know them. They're people who hold down steady jobs, have good work ethic, know the differences between "need" and "want", but are still struggling. They too have medical bills to cover, dealing with a nasty divorce, etc. When you're working 2 jobs and need to take care of kids, a sick spouse/parents, or whatever life has to throw at you, it's difficult to "better yourself". THESE are the people who can use a better standard of living.
Yes, there will be slackers who want the good life without putting in the work, but I don't think it's worth it to punish those who are good people just to get to them. It reminds me of that saying we have in our legal system... "better 10 guilty men go free than to lock up one innocent person". In a perfect legal system, the 10 guilty men would be locked up, leaving the innocent person free to go, but we don't have a perfect legal system.
Smart people who made it to a good position in life or even to elite status know better than to think its iphones and avacado toast keeping people down. These are people that built MULTImillion dollar buisnesses, they are preditors and phycopaths. Anyone with a few brain cells knows that the issue is real estate and rental costs, that is it, that is all. Its not a $900 iphone every 4 years, its 300 THOUSAND dollars for a single family home or 4 figures for a slummy appartment for a month, thats what 24 iphones a year for a slum lord apt so you dont die of exposure.
The establishment profits greatly from these inflated real estate prices and they have no intention of letting housing become affordable in areas where anyone has the hope of a good opprotunity (oh but thats hip urban centers, if your not an elite then you can go live in the ghetto like a dirty beggar) if they can help it. If you can create scuttle butt about peoples avacado toast, iphones or the fact that someone may want a newer car or some nicer features you can pit lower middle class people against each other.
Hey your not that poor you have an iphone and I saw you order avacado toast with your americao you scum bag. As the elite sit in mansions siping vodka blended with the tears of children from their sweat shops and their mistresses are wearing blood diamonds. How dare you want to live in a hip urban center near where you work so you are not commuting 4 hours every day, 4 hours you can be spending with your family, you want to be in a hip urban center, we, the elite, are going to take it out of your hide. It wont just be expensive it will be an absolute price gouging fleece, it will be so outragiously expensvie that you will be in debt for most of your life to pay for it. But hey we bought up all the land during some economic event (becasue we have buddies in the govt/banks who gave us the hook up), forced everyone out (using tax payer police force) and low balled some desperate contractors to work for cheap and voila we have a hip urban center. Welcome to boston proper, where a small condo is ONLY 1.3 million, what a deal. Could you even imagine what the taxes are on that every year.
all a $15 dollar minimum wage is going to do is increase the cost of your dollar burger at McDonalds to a 3 dollar burger, your toilet paper from 3 dollars to 6 dollars are roll, etc.
Why do people think that these companies are not going to increase the costs of their products with facing an increased mandated wage enforced upon them?
It's really a very simple concept to understand, but this will fall on deaf ears.
all a $15 dollar minimum wage is going to do is increase the cost of your dollar burger at McDonalds to a 3 dollar burger, your toilet paper from 3 dollars to 6 dollars are roll, etc.
Why do people think that these companies are not going to increase the costs of their products with facing an increased mandated wage enforced upon them?
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So that will make it more difficult for the $15 an hour person to get by on that wage.
These fast food jobs are becoming automated. It's super easy for the customer to punch in their own order on the kiosk. The counter person isn't needed. If a job can be dispensed with that easily, it's not worth even paying $5 an hour. Although the cooks who work in the back should probably earn $10 an hour, at least. But if I was an order taker at a fast food restaurant, I'd be going back to school really fast to learn an employable skill.
Speaking of "inflate", I see this a lot from the other side of the coin... Many critics seem to think that all people who are struggling can just "skip the $800+ iPhone, skip the 4K TV, skip cable TV, skip eating out, etc." when they already were NOT doing those things! As covered by others, some of them have ongoing medical bills. One person I met had to pay back a huge medical bill for emergency surgery, so making a lot of money doesn't get you very far when that's hanging over your head.
The biggest way to be convinced is to just see for yourself. People who've converted to this sort of thinking became believers when they moved to certain places like certain parts of DC, talked with those people, visited them, and gotten to know them. They're people who hold down steady jobs, have good work ethic, know the differences between "need" and "want", but are still struggling. They too have medical bills to cover, dealing with a nasty divorce, etc. When you're working 2 jobs and need to take care of kids, a sick spouse/parents, or whatever life has to throw at you, it's difficult to "better yourself". THESE are the people who can use a better standard of living.
Yes, there will be slackers who want the good life without putting in the work, but I don't think it's worth it to punish those who are good people just to get to them. It reminds me of that saying we have in our legal system... "better 10 guilty men go free than to lock up one innocent person". In a perfect legal system, the 10 guilty men would be locked up, leaving the innocent person free to go, but we don't have a perfect legal system.
Yep and in many cases the divorces are due to money issues, when your rent costs a gillion dollars a month and you and your wife cant even go out once a week that's going to cause more work load on everyone and stress. And when there is no clear path out of the weeds some people just snap, I mean what is the clear path these days ... become a purple squiril rocket surgon, ok great get right on that and in a decade when you have the 20 certs and 3 degrees and upgrade your skills every 2 years maybe you can go get some Mexican food once a week.
I don't think people understand how much time, energy and MONEY it takes to build these skills. Classes are not for free, testing is not for free, equipment to practice and teach yourself on is definitely not free.
Has nothing to do with what you are worth. There were people not worth $1.65 an hour when that was the minimum wage too.
It has to do with why we work. Most people would not work if they were given a choice. But things like wanting to eat and have shelter forces them to work. When you work full time and don't make enough money for a very basic decent living...why work? Work needs to be a way to get out of poverty. It's not supposed to doom you to poverty forever. It shouldn't take multiple jobs to just make the rent. Wages have not kept up with inflation for decades. Most people working for hourly wages are underpaid.
When you work full time and don't make enough money for a very basic decent living...why work? Work needs to be a way to get out of poverty.
that's the part I don't get, there are a lot of jobs paying what they want, $15/hr
but they keep sticking to minimum wage jobs for some reason. It doesn't even that much training to do it. It's pressing different buttons instead of a cash register, but it's buttons none the less
So that will make it more difficult for the $15 an hour person to get by on that wage.
These fast food jobs are becoming automated. It's super easy for the customer to punch in their own order on the kiosk. The counter person isn't needed. If a job can be dispensed with that easily, it's not worth even paying $5 an hour. Although the cooks who work in the back should probably earn $10 an hour, at least. But if I was an order taker at a fast food restaurant, I'd be going back to school really fast to learn an employable skill.
I'd say for me about $30. Almost 40 years experience working on everything from 300 ft warships to scale models. And I mean everything. I make slightly less than that now but I like my work so i can live with that. There's an element of misery too. I spend a lot of time in mud cold and rain.
The problem we're facing though is wages that are not keeping up with the cost of living. I live well. Many people I know are struggling even though they work hard and are smart about life. The system is out of balance. I remember in the 70s America bragged about how we would help the 3rd world rise up to where we were. It's not going that way, the 3rd world is here.
I think one thing that would help us immensely would be for government to compete with the realestate industry. The cost of housing is way out of control. Cut the rents by a third and see what happens.
The last time we gave the government lots of power over the housing industry, they caused the Great Recession!
<$15 hour is basically the market saying you are not worth the resources to keep alive ie have food clothing and shelter. So the market does its work and enough people die so that there is enough loss of labor supply to force wages to levels where people can survive. Do we really want to let the market correct itself that way?
Or think of it like this. A ship wrecked onto a deserted island. Fortunately there is enough food for everyone. Except it is decided that one person should get 90% of the food, more than he could ever eat and everyone else gets 1% not enough to sustain themselves. That is basically what is happening with capitalism right now.
Actually, it could be true under communism (see North Korea as an example) or under feudalism. We're currently heading toward some mixture of both. I don't know what to call it other than evil and know that we need to STOP it!
Under true capitalism, it only works as long as the people keep supporting it with their purchases. The businesses should be LOSING money due to the DECREASE in purchasing power of their buyers. The fact that they are still making record profits shows that something else is propping them up. (Like something keeping their competitors down, government subsidies, etc.)
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