SF's Living Wage: Good Or Bad? (San Francisco, Oakland: 2013, rent, unemployment)

[Motion]

What have been the results of San Francisco's living wage? Has it helped or hurt the local economy?


San Francisco Minimum Wage Increase Makes It Highest In The Nation (VIDEO)

[Motion]

As far as a living wage lifting people out of poverty isn't this more complicated? I mean how well this wage increase will benefit people will come down to how many mouths they have to feed and cloth and how they manage the extra money they get. I once listened to an NPR story on the effects of the living wage in L.A and they interviewed this guy wo was spending his extra money on expensive tattoos. When asked by the interviewer if he had saved any money towards his kid's eduction he said that he hadn't thought of that. So once you recieve a living wage you need to know what to do with it for it to make a difference.

[DocGoldstein]

It doesn't make a difference unless those same people live outside of S.F and only "work" in S.F

Otherwise any subsidy or help from the local government will simply result in "reflexivity" where corresponding rents and other "must haves" increase in price.

If you live in Albany, and work in S.F, then it actually helps you.

[pch1013]

Originally Posted by Motion

they interviewed this guy wo was spending his extra money on expensive tattoos.

... which means more money in the tattoo artist's pocket, which he or she can then spend on other things, thus boosting the local economy.

That's the nice thing about increasing wages and/or transfer payments to the lowest earners: the money gets immediately recycled back into the economy. Maybe not always wisely, but it does happen.

[AngusHsu]

The min wage needs to be lowered. 10.55 is so high that it increases the cost of anything tied to entry-level labor. Fast food is one prime example. It also leads to wage compression. No need to dabble into technical economic theories- it hurts more people than it helps.

The min wage was never intended to be a living wage. Most people need impressive skill sets to have the job that can pay for the rent in such a cosmopolitan city.

Employers and small business owners hire fewer waiters and bus boys for restaurants as labor costs increase. This leads to higher unemployment.

[Mack Knife]

Living wages are feel good things that accomplish virtually nothing.

When you impose a living wage salary for a job never intended to be more than an entry position, you don't put money back into the economy, you create an incentive for people not to do better.

A living wage for working at McDonalds? Really?

Why stop with a living wage, why not just make it $20/hr?

We started with a minimum wage. Now comes the living wage. Now businesses must pay for jobs that aren't designed to allow someone to "live".

Take those jobs at McDonalds. They were designed by the virtue of the skills and knowledge necessary to perform them for entry level workers, not someone trying to support a family or even themselves. They are supplemental.

The problem isn't a living wage for cleaning up a store room, the problem is the failure to create a business environment where better paying jobs exist. The living wage in San Francisco? What a joke. San Francisco taxes everyone out of existence. What is left is a city where it is impractical to raise a family.

A living wage only insures that the entry level jobs become a rut and the people holding those jobs depend on an artificial wage. Living wages have the opposite effect desired.

So what does the business owner do? Instead of hiring someone to perform certain jobs, they add them to other jobs and reduce their work forces.

[mayorhaggar]

Nobody fusses about techies making huge incomes by producing shovelware and driving up rents for everyone else. Surely their high incomes contribute to the costs of your iphone? You don't care? Ok.

$10.55 an hour still isn't enough to live somewhere like SF or even Oakland, hell it's not enough to get by on in Texas or Florida for that matter.

[blancagt]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

Nobody fusses about techies making huge incomes by producing shovelware and driving up rents for everyone else. Surely their high incomes contribute to the costs of your iphone? You don't care? Ok.

$10.55 an hour still isn't enough to live somewhere like SF or even Oakland, hell it's not enough to get by on in Texas or Florida for that matter.

agree.

[shooting4life]

All a living wage does is increase the cost of everything associated to the products being produced by non skilled workers. Someone's check will be higher but the amount of stuff they can buy with that money will remain the same.

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by shooting4life

All a living wage does is increase the cost of everything associated to the products being produced by non skilled workers. Someone's check will be higher but the amount of stuff they can buy with that money will remain the same.

As has been alluded to, how is it that the growing prevalence of so many techies, finance flackies and executives getting ridiculous salaries, bonuses, pensions, and golden parachutes for very questionable 'output' does not add to the costs of living while Pablo rolling burritos in SOMA sinks the state economy by getting another buck and a half per hour?
Just can't stop worshipping the rich, and can't stop stomping on working people, can we? And we wonder why the gap between the 1% and the rest races out of control.
And who determines just what is allowed to be designated as an acceptable income? If all you can get is a low-wage job, that's what has to pay the bills. Doesn't necessarily mean someone is too lazy to go to Berkeley or Stanford, or become the next Steve Jobs. Means they're working their ass off just to make ends meet, while the indignant blithely wag fingers from their couches and keyboards.
Kind of like pointing at the guy in the wheelchair and commanding, "You're just not trying hard enough! Get up! Stop just sitting there and being lazy!"