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On January 27 2021 05:47 Mohdoo wrote:
Biden ending federal use of private prisons is wonderful. Man this has been so good so far. Biden is doing really well
Yeah. The one thing that really is a stain on his career has been his advocacy and his role in designing the policies that ended up putting such a ludicrous amount of people behind jail. He really has work to do to redeem himself there but that's a great first step.
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The thing with minimum wage in the US is that the cashflow to pay for minimum wage seems like it's already there. Every customer in the country is conditioned to pay an extra 10-15% to subsidise the wages of their waiter, knowing that the cafe owner is an asshole who would otherwise let that person starve. I get irrationally angry at this every time I'm there.
Maybe this wouldn't play well to a domestic audience, but if I were a cafe owner whose margins would get blown up by this, I'd just include the tip in the price and put up one of those signs that says "please don't feel obligated to tip, we actually pay our employees".
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15-20%, actually. If you tip 10% everyone thinks you're an asshole.
Is anyone here against the minimum wage increase? In theory free market types hate minimum wages, but these days it seems like even the fiscal conservatives are pretty fine with the idea.
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United States44203 Posts
On January 27 2021 07:39 ChristianS wrote:
15-20%, actually. If you tip 10% everyone thinks you're an asshole.
Is anyone here against the minimum wage increase? In theory free market types hate minimum wages, but these days it seems like even the fiscal conservatives are pretty fine with the idea.
Wegandi hated it because it robbed people of opportunity to choose exploitation. Basically same argument used to argue against child labour laws etc. I can make that argument if anyone wants to hear it.
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Eh, I have a libertarian in my head too, if I need one. Unless someone else is interested in hearing the position defended, I don't think it's needed.
I guess the question I'd be more interested in would be whether $15/hr is actually a "living wage" most places. I made less than that as a lab assistant in 2015, and barely more than that when I was promoted to chemist (and those were jobs that required a degree!), but I was under no illusion that the money I was making back then would actually allow me to afford an apartment, let alone a house or something. I was just living with my parents and hoping the experience would lead to a decent-paying job some day.
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15 an hour isn't a living wage in most major cities I don't think but definitely in rural areas and even in most 2 teir suburbs its a living wage. You can get a lot of great one floor apartments at less than 1k out in in the country and pay a lot less tax than say LA.
Focuseing on 15 an hour and ignoring the housing crisis in America though won't change much. The increase in minimum wage will just be swallowed up by rent in a few years.
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On January 27 2021 08:05 Sermokala wrote:
15 an hour isn't a living wage in most major cities I don't think but definitely in rural areas and even in most 2 teir suburbs its a living wage. You can get a lot of great one floor apartments at less than 1k out in in the country and pay a lot less tax than say LA.
Focuseing on 15 an hour and ignoring the housing crisis in America though won't change much. The increase in minimum wage will just be swallowed up by rent in a few years.
I can think of tons of jobs in Portland that pay less than $15 per hour. $15 still isn't enough, but this is still a giant improvement for a lot of people who work expensive jobs in Portland.
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Ultimately, living wage measures suffer from the same problems that a UBI will, which is a disconnect from the price of the essentials that those cash benefits are exchanged for. Unless those benefits are accompanied by heavy regulation or provided in end service/product form, they'll be preyed upon in one way or another and won't be sufficient in short order.
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Assuming full time, 15/hr is decent depending on where you live and what your expenses are. It'll be tight in Chicago, but not impossible. I think it'll force companies to raise wages regardless to attract "talent" help if they really want to compete. So starting at 15/hr will improve short term for sure for a lot of people. Just needs to consistently increase with the cost of living/quality of life.
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Canada11586 Posts
I think minimum wage has unintended consequences. For instance, I suspect pushing for higher and higher minimum wages in the fast food sector will simply increase the already in progress automation which will reduce those entry level jobs overall. You might go to a restaurant for an experience. Not so much for fast food. Same thing for grocery tellers as people become used to swiping themselves, more space will be devoted to automated machines with one or two workers to troubleshoot for confused customers.
Having said that, the jobs that remain will be higher paying.
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On January 27 2021 07:39 ChristianS wrote:
15-20%, actually. If you tip 10% everyone thinks you're an asshole.
Is anyone here against the minimum wage increase? In theory free market types hate minimum wages, but these days it seems like even the fiscal conservatives are pretty fine with the idea.
I wouldn't say I'm against a minimum wage increase, but I do think it would be better served to have it happen locally rather than federally. Even at the state level, your rural Maryland worker cost of living is substantially different than someone around DC. One wage for the whole country doesn't make sense, but wage increases are also long over due.
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Bisutopia19371 Posts
On January 27 2021 08:05 Sermokala wrote:
15 an hour isn't a living wage in most major cities I don't think but definitely in rural areas and even in most 2 teir suburbs its a living wage. You can get a lot of great one floor apartments at less than 1k out in in the country and pay a lot less tax than say LA.
Focuseing on 15 an hour and ignoring the housing crisis in America though won't change much. The increase in minimum wage will just be swallowed up by rent in a few years.
The rent escalation is a major issue. If we are forcing a national minimum wage, then something to help moderate rent prices better come with it otherwise property owners know they can now get an extra couple hundred bucks out of you each month with all the surplus cash. I’d be willing to entertain those policies because, from experience, paying rent and student loans leave you with nothing in the first 4-5 years in the work force.
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On January 27 2021 07:59 ChristianS wrote:
Eh, I have a libertarian in my head too, if I need one. Unless someone else is interested in hearing the position defended, I don't think it's needed.
I guess the question I'd be more interested in would be whether $15/hr is actually a "living wage" most places. I made less than that as a lab assistant in 2015, and barely more than that when I was promoted to chemist (and those were jobs that required a degree!), but I was under no illusion that the money I was making back then would actually allow me to afford an apartment, let alone a house or something. I was just living with my parents and hoping the experience would lead to a decent-paying job some day.
I'm reasonably thrifty, a result of not growing up and going through my 20s without having much money, and honestly, it would help a lot. It'd be the difference between buying a car being affordable instead of using my dad's car, which is only available because chemo left him, at 6'2", at sub 140lbs and COVID exists. Alternatively, it would pay for my share of the rent entirely if I was to split a 2 bedroom apartment with a roommate.
And I'm significantly closer to the $15 than the $7.25 already as it is.
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take it from a guy who lives in the country with the highest minimum wage in the world. raising minimum wages does pretty much fuck all to solve any of the problems you think it would.
the cry to raise the minimum wage never ends and you just spiral into an endless cycle of rising costs of living in every other category to balance the rising wage expenses.
lowering the costs of living over a prolonged period of time would be much more effective and would actually solve the underlying issues at play. obviously fixing those core issues is easier said than done, but thinking that a minimum wage increase is going to magically improve the lives of minimum wage earner is being naive.
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Canada11586 Posts
On January 27 2021 09:33 BisuDagger wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2021 08:05 Sermokala wrote:
15 an hour isn't a living wage in most major cities I don't think but definitely in rural areas and even in most 2 teir suburbs its a living wage. You can get a lot of great one floor apartments at less than 1k out in in the country and pay a lot less tax than say LA.
Focuseing on 15 an hour and ignoring the housing crisis in America though won't change much. The increase in minimum wage will just be swallowed up by rent in a few years. The rent escalation is a major issue. If we are forcing a national minimum wage, then something to help moderate rent prices better come with it otherwise property owners know they can now get an extra couple hundred bucks out of you each month with all the surplus cash. I’d be willing to entertain those policies because, from experience, paying rent and student loans leave you with nothing in the first 4-5 years in the work force.
Unless it's dealt with on the supply side, I don't think anything changes. We have some left-leaning goverments that tried helping first time house owners to buy. However, all that did was take people who were out of the market and put them into the market... increase demand without increasing supply and what was supposed to help with rising house prices only exasperates it.
On paper, we should have a super-coalition of pro-immigrant, pro-low-income housing liberals, environmentalists, and pro-development conservatives to build high-density mixed residential-commercial housing. In practice, where I live, the majority of all three groups (or else a significantly vocal minority) become anti-development at the municipal level- classic NIMBY.
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On January 27 2021 12:13 evilfatsh1t wrote:
take it from a guy who lives in the country with the highest minimum wage in the world. raising minimum wages does pretty much fuck all to solve any of the problems you think it would.
the cry to raise the minimum wage never ends and you just spiral into an endless cycle of rising costs of living in every other category to balance the rising wage expenses.
lowering the costs of living over a prolonged period of time would be much more effective and would actually solve the underlying issues at play. obviously fixing those core issues is easier said than done, but thinking that a minimum wage increase is going to magically improve the lives of minimum wage earner is being naive.
I don't think that's quite true. I have lived in several countries, and in my experience the ones that opted for supply side economics were doing much, much worse than the ones that protected workers.
The UK for example is by far the worst country I have lived in. Lots of people get paid an absolute misery, lack of protection in the workplace means that life quality is rubbish, inequalities are absolutely grotesque, and so on and so forth. Sure life is quite cheap. And what.
I have lived in Scandinavia for the past 6 years. Minimal wage is just as high as in Australia, and yeah, goods and services are very expensive, but inequalities are much lower, and those are way more harmonious societies.
That's just my anecdotal experience.
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Norway28873 Posts
Technically Norway doesn't have a minimum wage - but in reality we certainly do, and it's higher than $15. (Some forms of work where a lot of foreigners are employed like construction work or farm work have introduced minimum wages as a way of combatting 'social dumping'.)
Mostly we just have collective agreements between unions and employers. (And no individual salary negotiations. )
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What are the odds this thing where Reddit fucks with the stock market and wrecks a hedge fund has any impact on the farce that is the American belief that the stock market is the economy?
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On January 27 2021 19:53 Zambrah wrote:
What are the odds this thing where Reddit fucks with the stock market and wrecks a hedge fund has any impact on the farce that is the American belief that the stock market is the economy? Can America afford to admit its a farce? Or are its roots so deep that it would bring the economy crashing down and make the great depression look like a fun picnic?
Would it even do anything positive?
certain Politicians don't want to help the lower and middle or they could do so any time they wanted. Exposing the lie of the stock market won't change that, they would simply find something else to cover for their inaction.
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On January 27 2021 20:29 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2021 19:53 Zambrah wrote:
What are the odds this thing where Reddit fucks with the stock market and wrecks a hedge fund has any impact on the farce that is the American belief that the stock market is the economy? Can America afford to admit its a farce? Or are its roots so deep that it would bring the economy crashing down and make the great depression look like a fun picnic? Would it even do anything positive? most Politicians don't want to help the lower and middle or they could do so any time they wanted. Exposing the lie of the stock market won't change that, they would simply find something else to cover for their inaction.
Let me fix that for you. 
I mostly hope it has an effect on the populace's perception, but I don't think this will see enough MSM play to really spread that far.
I'm just kind of tired of the state of things economically. Situations like this make me wonder what it takes to see America actually take a shift towards giving a proper shit about its underclass.
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