Holy shit, what dirt does Putin have on Elon?
At this point, it should be 28
Ah, early 2021… back when $15/hr was at least somewhat decent. Heck, $15/hr was being fight for about a decade before even then. Maybe in ten more years $15/hr will become minimum wage and politicians will pat themselves on the back and claim they’re the most pro-worker politician in US history for instituting a minimum wage that was argued for two decades in the past.
The answer to all of these is actually no… Because it should be $23.
This is how long the fight for 15 has been going on. We will finally get 15 when minimum wage should be 46 dollars
I suspect a number of middle-class workers are against the idea of a minimum wage increase because their wages have been mostly stagnant and they feel it’s not fair that the lowest paid workers might approach their income, while billionaires and CEOs are buying up everything.
They’re right, it isn’t fair, but they’re looking in the wrong direction. Instead of trying to prevent the lowest paid worker from approaching their income, they should be trying to reign in the top 1%. But I guess it’s easier and feels better to say huge swaths of people are don’t deserve to make anywhere near as much money as they do rather than enduring the inconvenience of finding alternatives to Amazon, Facebook, Insta, Xitter, etc.
Not to dismiss the real problem of monopolies and market dominance- but the docility and lack of resistance of such people would be startling if it weren’t over shadowed by their misplace contempt for the poor.
Studies have shown that when minimum wage increases you see increases all up the pay scale, and the closer to minimum wage the greater the increase is. The reason being why would I be an EMT for $17 an hour when I can go be a burger flipper for $15 and not have to get PTSD? So these lower middle class people making 20ish dollars an hour would see a pay bump for sure. Which brings me to my next point other people have pointed out, it should be a fight for 20-25 and hour.
It’s like that cartoon of the guy with a whole pile of cookies telling the guy with one cookie “Look out! That immigrant wants to steal your cookie!” You can substitute any other demographic for the immigrant - socialist, burger-flipper, victim of medical extortion - and it still works.
Sure, I want a cookie too. I look out the window of my ground floor (first floor for the US) apartment at my neighbour watching a beautiful sunset through the wide glass front or his fancy first floor living room (second floor for the US) that seems to be about the size of my whole apartment, and I want that too. I see another guy move his Mercedes from the driveway so he can drive his BMW today instead, and I want a nice car too. I hear a colleague cursing the bureaucratic bullshit of having to do the property taxes for both his own parents and his in-laws on top of his own, and I can’t help but feel a sting of envy at his luxury problems. I want property too. I want a nice cookie too.
But the critical word in all these examples here is too. My neighbour can have his apartment with the beautiful view, the other guy can have his cars (climate consciousness notwithstanding, we have bigger sinners to worry about), my colleague’s parents and in-laws can have their houses too, and it’s a wonderful thing that they have the support of someone helping them as they age and struggle with these things who also has experience from his own property. I don’t want to take these things away. Hell, even when I see my landlady’s constant vacation pictures that I know my rent is sponsoring, I don’t begrudge her that vacation (though I do resent having to pay rent). They can all keep their cookies.
But if a corporate CEO gets a multi-million annual salary and another multi-million bonus while I got a “generous” thousand for an internship, he can well spare a cookie or a thousand. And even he pales next to private investors earning - whether through dividends or through their stock value increasing - just as much without even carrying any degree of responsibility. At least the CEO still does some work, even if it doesn’t justify his salary.
To be clear, I still don’t give a shit about the small-time middle-class pension fund investor. They participate in a fucked up system and I wish their pension would be funded differently, but if their investment pays my wages, I’ll be content. Let them have their cookie. Hell, I’d even be content to let them have a second cookie, if that was the price for me and everyone else getting at least one.
I can cope with some level of inequality as a concession to the unfair and imperfect nature of humanity. It would still be better than having to pick up the crumbs off the table while watching as the big guy shovels another tray of cookies I baked onto his pile.
For anyone worried about their cookie: Let’s work together. Let’s topple the cookie-hoarders and distribute their cookies. Let’s get you another cookie. And if I have a cookie of my own, you don’t need to worry so much about me wanting to take yours. We all win.
Except the hoarders, but fuck them.
I love asking them to explain what negative consequences raising minimum wage would have for inflation and the economy, then asking them to explain how lowering income taxes wouldn’t be even worse.
Imo there is an issue if you do nothing but increase minimum wage. You also need to limit price inflation and make sure the companies don’t just return the increased cost to the consumer. Then you’ll have gained nothing. Example. Burger grill pays their workers 10$/hr - burger costs 4$. Now you force the burger grill to pay workers 15$/hr, a 50% increase and they go, alright, burgers now cost 6$. Most places do this and the worker, even though they now earn 50% more, can’t actually buy more because cost of living has increased equally. We need regulations on how companies operate their profit or actually get back to a point where competition would punish pricing like that. But somehow with only a handful owning everything that is kinda fucked.
Why does the cost of living go up by the same amount though? Yeah some domestic industries that rely on low income workers like food and agriculture would have increased payroll costs, but how are other major living costs like rent, foreign made goods, and transportation tied to minimum wage?
because if they can charge you more for that ramshackle hut they will, housing is tied to who will pay for it, if the hypothetical burger flipper makes more, he or she is also willing to spend more of that on housing, as is every other hypothetical burger flipper, meaning the hut-lord can increase his price, as there is now more funds in the system, and more competition due to those funds, no new huts are built, so the price of all previous huts will just rise. Without regulation, this is how it goes.
They also conveniently forget how recently these jobs were hailed as being essential to the function of society…covid taught us nothing lol
Sounds like even a minor general strike would get concessions pretty quick
Haha hard to argue that one
“Did you have this list of people you don’t respect ready to go, person I made up for this fake conversation?”
lol, come on now
(I assume, because I can’t fathom a criticism of paying someone more than the value their labor creates, therefore I’ll just assume it’s actually a value judgment of the person themself)
If the value a person’s labor creates doesn’t support their basic necessities even though they work full time, either things cost too much or that labor is undervalued. Anyone who does a job full time deserves to be able to cover their basic necessities.
Anyone who does a job full time deserves to be able to cover their basic necessities.
Okay, but I’d add also that no one should be forced to hire someone at a literal loss. After all, it’s a business, not a charity.
And the fact is that there exist jobs that don’t create enough value that it’s possible to satisfy both of the above conditions. So what’s the solution? This isn’t such a simple problem to solve.
If you say ‘fuck the employers, they have to pay a living wage, no matter how valuable the labor is’, then new small business creation will be smothered to a standstill–no one is going to want to start a new small business if they’re unable to attain the same ‘living wage’ they’re forced to pay every employee, regardless of what they bring to the business.
And if you say ‘fuck the workers, low/no minimum wage’, it becomes much easier to exploit/intimidate individual workers into accepting unfairly low wages.
That’s why I think the most effective system is something I heard of in a few countries, I forget which, where there is no minimum wage, BUT there is a lot of strong codified protection for things like unionization and collective bargaining, which enables the best possible compromises possible, in every industry (and for certain, compromise will be necessary to a degree, for the reason stated above). The result in those countries, as I recall, is that the median wage tends to be higher than what the ‘baseline’ minimum wage set by law would end up being. Another advantage is that it’s much better finely-tuned to each individual industry/job, and also much better at reacting to changing circumstances, than the beauraucracy of legislation could ever hope to realistically match.
Okay, but I’d add also that no one should be forced to hire someone at a literal loss. After all, it’s a business, not a charity.
Then don’t hire them. Done.
Problem solved?
Fix your business model? Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything.
And business owners complaining that nobody wants to work for scraps, that sounds like a business problem.
The fact that your response to the dilemma of a particular job position creating less value than the minimum wage you intend to force upon it with “fix your business model” reveals a massive ignorance of what goes into starting a business, and of how thin profit margins are in the majority of small businesses.
You’re unwittingly advocating for there to be insurmountable hurdles for starting new small businesses, which will inevitably result in megacorporations with deep enough pockets to eat those inflated costs (and having a lack of competition to the degree that they can easily mark up their product far beyond where they normally could without being punished for it, to more easily eat said costs) being the only ones employing anyone.
And then, invariably, the same ‘advocates’ will come along and complain about monopoly and lack of competition, oblivious to their own facilitation of that end result.
In short, your ‘solution’ is objectively foolish, and merits no serious consideration.
Yeah it’s not an easy problem to solve. Encouraging unionizing would certainly help, or if you wanna get even more radical, a supplemental UBI. Ultimately though, until those things are more attainable, if an employer hires someone to do a job, and the value created by the person doing that job doesn’t justify paying them* a living wage, I think it’s on the employer to reevaluate the job they’re asking someone to do for them. Maybe that means exploring automation options to help that worker generate more value, or maybe explicitly stating that the job is a part-time job that won’t provide a living wage, or maybe reorganizing/adding job responsibilities such that the hired worker can generate more value.
Fine points, though I think automation is much more likely (as we’ve already seen it begin to happen) to phase out the human being entirely, rather than make their labor more productive, by simple virtue of the fact that it costs less.
Plus, it only becomes easier for it to cost less, the higher wage the human beings are demanding (and/or forcing via legislation).
I’ve had dozens of conversations that went just like this. As long as a decade ago from fuckin cable pullers and surveyors (the ones that hike through shit and snow with flags not the engineers) making 14$ an hour in Alberta when everyone else that flew out there was making 30+. You could make the same shoveling shit back home and they were upset about BC paying Tim’s workers 18$ at the time.
People are fuckin stupid and unaware. So they guess, wrong at their situation 99% of the time because some yokel in a suit pointed fingers at a convenient distraction that plays on their already present xenophobia. None of their “issues” were geographically or economically pertainent to themselves but they liked to bitch about them all the same.
I’ve had these talks with people.
Like they get upset because they see a ice cream shop advertising $18/hour for a cashier and getting pissed at that?
Bitch, that’s your free market at work!
Y’all know that trick for toddlers where you give them a choice between two things so they don’t throw a tantrum? Maybe we could try that.
“We can either raise the minimum wage to $22–”
Conservative: “NOOOOO don’t WANT THAT, don’t want! Poor people will TAKE ALL THE CHEESEBURGERS”
“–Or implement UBI. How does that sound?”
“…Ok.”
So voting? Too bad we never get to actually vote on these things. All handled by geriatrics that don’t give a fuck about the current generations.
Why aren’t conservative parties illegal worldwide yet?
DAE free speech is bad???
Lemmy is such a fucking cesspit.
Because banning people you don’t agree with from running for Congress is fascist, even if it’s for what you believe is the right reasons. Everyone has a right to vote for who represents them, even if they’re garbage.
Awful take. Rejecting Fascism and refusing them a platform isn’t Fascism itself.
The right wing worldwide is adopting Fascism as an ethos. Fascism must be crushed as a existential threat.
Most Conservative politicians on this planet deserve to be locked up in a prison cell for the rest of their lives. A whole lot more deserving of that fate than those who fascists imprison.
Nah, fuck that shit. This shit (https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-top-1-own-more-wealth-95-humanity-shadow-global-oligarchy-hangs-over-un) is enough justification to treat right-wingers and their financers as Pinochet treated socialists.
Authoritarianism is cool when you’re the one being an authoritarian.
Really sucks when someone you don’t agree with decides what is allowed or not.
If you give a government power to decide who is allowed in the government, even if you think it’s for the right reasons, you’ve now created a system where all it takes is one or a few people to turn a utopia into a grueling dictatorship.
That’s not really a good gamble
If we want to get out from the late capitalist dystopia, repression against reactionary forces is the only way.
And then what? Yes, identifying and resisting an oppressive power structure is all well and good, but any revolution has to grapple with the fact that you will still have a massive population with cultural and ideological structures that can only conceive of the world in terms of the old system. Congratulations, you’ve toppled the government and now you have the power to implement a new system. What will you do with that power? Will you implement yet another system in which there is a powerful in-group that the law protects but does not bind and a disempowered out-group that the law binds but does not protect?
you will still have a massive population with cultural and ideological structures that can only conceive of the world in terms of the old system
We force them in the new system
Will you implement yet another system in which there is a powerful in-group that the law protects but does not bind and a disempowered out-group that the law binds but does not protect?
No, the new system would be “right-wingers and rich lobbyists fuck off while normal people thrive and late stage capitalist dystopia is finally unwinded, and whoever opposes it gets rekt”
Okay, but you haven’t really answered the question of “what’s the new system”. You don’t have to solve all the problems of creating a new society, but you should have a general idea. “Not the old system and not the past people” is not an actual system. “Normal people thrive” is not an actual system.
For example, monarchy would be a system where “capitalist dystopia is finally unwinded and whoever opposes it gets rekt,” but somehow I don’t think that’s what you want.
You have to make an actual positive claim about what you envision, about your ideology, values, ethics, etc.
Sure, let’s kill or jail everyone we disagree with. Surely that won’t lead to anything bad, right? It’s not like this hasn’t happened before and lead to millions of deaths or anything.
Oooh! A Purge!
Its been decades since humanity has had a good purge.
Isn’t there one happening in Gaza right now?
IMO No, that’s genocide.
Purges are based on political idealism, not ethnicity.
A sacrifice to be had for a better world.
You know, maybe casually advocating for the torture and/or deaths of millions of people might be the sign that you need to go touch some grass.
Like, seriously… do you even register what you sound like?
The point is that GOP and similar POS right-wing parties all over the world, all in the pockets of oil companies and rich lobbyists, have ruined the world long enough. Time to give 'em a taste of their own medicine.
Big “perpetually online” oof energy right here.
Go out. Meet people. Maybe consider a “dumb” flip phone if the Internet is too much for you. I promise you: the world isn’t as bleak as the Internet has made you believe it is.
Unless it’s you. Then it’s fascist horror.
As long as it’s your beliefs that are being forced, genocide is a-ok!
Because you are super smart and know what’s best!!
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others!!”
15$ is too little now. They would need to make more.
Thats by design.
They took 10+ years to finally implement the 15 dollar minimum wage, explicitly so it would still be too low to live on by the time it was in, so they can turn around and go and lambast people for being “greedy” after getting what they wanted…while willfully obviating and distracting from the shit like rent and home prices that are getting furthe and further out of the average americans reach.
Who is the artist behind this design?
the cool thing about capitalism is that evil can be effectively distributed
Greed and money. Collusion can be ideological, not planned
The same thing was done with healthcare.
Still better than fucking $7.25
That shit is insulting.
Yeah
Moving from nose deep in the septic tank, to chin deep, is technically an improvement, I guess.
There are tons of jobs around me that pay $11 or so. It’s above minimum wage, but you sure as hell can’t live on it.
raising min wage doesn’t raise prices… that’s conservative bullshit
“we find prices grow by 0.36 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage.”
Prices are rising on their own, before any wage hikes prices had risen already.
Have you accounted for the “wages” of the shareholders?
Assuming that math is linear, a $15 an hour minimum wage would be 100% increase and responsible for an additional 3.6% inflation. We can argue about whether or not this increase I’d wroth it, but it is hardly 0.
That being said, I suspect this math has changed since Covid. Wages have generally gone up I would not be shocked if many companies are already paying their formerly min wage employees more. The fewer people between 7.25 and $15 the lower the impact on “the economy”.
They never took econ 101 and don’t understand that elasticity is a thing. They think that literally all costs are passed to consumers.
“The economy” is just money in motion. Like how electric charges moving create light, moving money carries and creates value in the exchange. When rich people soak up money from millions of people, they destroy all that value and the economy stagnates. When millions of people are given money and then spend it in millions of ways, the global economy improves.
We optimize our economy around stagnate money sitting in septic pools, when we should be trying to build an ocean of money that never stops flowing.
It’s easy to shit on everything, so I’ll try to avoid doing that.
I do genuinely not understand the blind “minimum wage should be this” angle. All raising the minimum wage does is raise expenses for everything. It’s pretty much like fuel costs: price of fuel goes up - your bakery, pharmacy, grocer, etc all raise prices and in the end it is those on the lowest income that get impacted the most.
A bit of a mind dump:
- Most of us live in a capitalist system. You can dislike it all you want, but as someone who’s seen what happens when
ownership is shared, everyone is equal, a cook should be able to run a country- fuck that. I’ll take bad capitalism over that nonsense any day. - Everyone should strive to improve themselves. Every day. Doesn’t have to be monetarily driven improvement - it’s the mindset of constant improvement that I want. And when that happens - aiming for minimum wage becomes a thing of the past.
- Everyone is not equal. Everyone must be given equal opportunity. We’re good at different things, we absolutely suck at different things. Doesn’t mean we’re bad/wrong/mistreated if we try those things. What is wrong, however, is someone claiming they deserve something (great salary) when they suck at doing whatever they’re doing. Just go do something else; preferably something you’re good at.
- Deep inside - we’re apes. We need to keep ourselves busy as otherwise brain starts overcompensating for lack of activity and we end up being idiots on the internet. Given enough time that leads to us being idiots outside the internet as well.
- Mental health issues are real. They’re abused waaaay too much as an excuse to rot in the basement. Been there, done that. Start small, increment daily. Small, iterative steps. Everything takes time. Your choice on what gets your spend.
but as someone who’s seen what happens when ownership is shared, everyone is equal, a cook should be able to run a country - fuck that. I’ll take bad capitalism over that nonsense any day.
Nice strawman… You sure showed that completely made up political/economic philosophy who’s boss!
Time and again, it’s been demonstrated that minimum wage hikes do not have a 1:1 relation with price hikes.
Spoiler: it’s corporate greed.
If you work 40 hours a week you need to earn enough to live in the city where you do said work. Period.
Also, wages are only a small part of costs for pretty much everything. +10% wages does NOT mean +10% total costs for whatever that worker provides, and so does NOT mean +10% price, if the company is honest.
Now that my teens are working, I’m a bit uncomfortable with this. Does my teenager, whose living expenses are still fully paid by me, really need a living wage? We’re a $15 minimum wage so He’s excited about the money he’s making, but part of me feels like he’s taking some of that from someone who needs it
I guess it comes down to that it’s a job, that anyone can fill. Also that some teenagers may need a living wage
Think about the natural conclusion to the problem that you’re trying to address. What if we pay teenagers who don’t need the money less than everyone else. That would incentivize employers to … check notes … only hire teenagers who don’t need the money. Everyone else, who actually does need the money, they would have trouble finding a job. Facepalm.
Also. Because your teenagers are getting lucky, in that they have a family that’s paying all of their bills, you somehow wish that they weren’t getting lucky, and that some rich person was getting richer? Do I understand that correctly?
Furthermore. There might be value to your teens in working less so that they can do other things when they’re still teenagers. That might be something you would want to explore, since your family’s finances are in a solid state.
And hey, if you think your teenager is being overpaid, why don’t you encourage them to donate some of their money to charity?
In many other families, finances aren’t so strong. Maybe the parents can pay the bills, but if the kids want to go to college, they’ll have to take out student loans. Or they could start saving in high school, and use that money for college, or to get an apartment if they have to move out, or to buy a car, or whatever else they need after they graduate high school. All of a sudden the extra money sounds really important, doesn’t it.
Guess who works alongside your teenager? Grown ass adults. Should they suffer so your teenager (whom you deem to not be worth a living wage) can learn whatever libertarian lesson you’re foisting on them?
It’s certainly not my intent to judge you or make assumptions, but that seems like kind of a weird perspective, to believe your kid should make less than their peers for providing the same labor. There are plenty of households who humbly ask their working teens to contribute a portion to bills.
My kid lives at home! Therefore they should never make enough money to actually leave home and build a life for themselves!
Does my teenager, whose living expenses are still fully paid by me, really need a living wage?
Thank god it’s none of my employer’s business what my living conditions are. If I can make do with a lot less because of personal circumstances then that’s good for me, but that can’t be the metric to measure other people against.
part of me feels like he’s taking some of that from someone who needs it
He’s taking it from his employer who certainly doesn’t “need it more”, otherwise they wouldn’t employ your son.
All raising the minimum wage does is raise expenses for everything.
Demonstrably false. Prices will always go up regardless. Nobody should have to work for less than a liveable wage. If you disagree with me you are a piece of shit.
Demonstrably false. Prices will always go up regardless.
Uh, this is a total non-sequitur. It’s like arguing that also getting shot will not affect the situation of someone who’s been stabbed.
Just because prices are going up does not mean that something else can’t also make them go up (more/faster), what a bizarre assertion.
Nobody should have to work for less than a liveable wage.
Should people be forced to hire workers who cost more than they produce?
I don’t see how both of these conditions can be met simultaneously, and unless they both are, there is still unresolved unfairness to contend with. What do you suggest?
If you disagree with me you are a piece of shit.
You’re not nearly as omniscient as you think you are, to make such an arrogant statement.
lol fuck off moron
Someone’s mad that their idealism was confronted with inconvenient truths, lol.
I hope one day you’ll mature enough not to react so childishly to being contradicted.
Of all the things you could’ve said you chose one of the dumbest.
Why does the job exist if it’s so worthless, working it doesn’t allow you to participate in society?
- Most of us live in a capitalist system. You can dislike it all you want, but as someone who’s seen what happens when
No, they shouldn’t make $15 an hour. They should make whatever is needed to sustain themselves and a family, including a pension and any healthcar costs. That’s probably well over $15 an hour.
i think the last time i saw someone do the math, that by the time 15 is fully rollled out everwhere the minimum would need to be like 26-30 dollars an hour to keep up with ridiculous costs of everything.
Meanwhile the same job 70 years ago paid the equivalent of $34 plus benefits
The minimum wage in the US has never been higher than about $12 in today’s dollars.
you could go to college on a part time job and have no debt.
Also no health insurance, no IRA, eat only rice and beans/ramen, live in a small studio with a roommate, can’t afford anything new and salvaging from flea markets and thrift stores… And the college is community college with lots of grants from the government.
So you’re saying live extremely frugal and struggling?
That had nothing to do with the minimum wage (which has been lower than $15 of today’s dollars since inception), but because of how much cheaper college was back then.
“Its not about pay, its just about how more affordable things were for the pay you earned back then!”
College tuition has massively outpaced inflation, much less wage growth.
The policies (chiefly the change that made student loans no longer dischargeable in bankruptcy) that rocketed college tuition up are a MUCH more significant factor in college affordability, that’s just a fact.
When everything outpaces inflation, maybe we compute inflation wrong.
My rule of thumb is “the less I’d like to do a job, the more the person doing it should be paid.” It works well for all the so-called unskilled jobs that get routinely exploited.
Go cleaning staff! Also other slave like jobs. It’s a little bit sad that to make money you’d need to actively make your life worse, but it’s a great starting point. It would also make the story billionaires make up about working hard have a real point.
Not bad, has a few problems though, I would never want to be a banker, even worse an investment banker, yet those fuckers earn way more than I want them to
