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Democrats want to make the minimum wage $17 an hour and give nearly 28 million workers a raise
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Minimum wage should be RELATIVE not absolute. When we started the fight for 15 that was OK but pretty sure after the inflation we had it’s not enough. Let’s make minimum wage relative to provide the minimum necessities to live in any city in the country. Or make it a percentage of the highest paid CEO salary. It’s gotta be relative, not a dollar amount but an amount of living you can afford.
Min wage should probably tie to inflation, and we've been doing fight for 15 for so long it probably should be fight for 25 now.
I completely agree with you in theory. Minimum wage should be the minimum amount someone needs to live a non-desperate life. Or some smarter way to say that. My only fear is that Goodhart's Law would come into effect "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." I'm worried that the dickbags would find ways to skew the calculation, to pay people less. Maybe that's still a better alternative than fighting to raise it to a defined amount over and over and over again, though. I just wanted to mention how I was worried. Because of the dickbags.
That’s a good point. I’m sure they’d do something like that. That’s why we tie it to a ton of measures: cost of a gallon of milk+minimum rent+average healthcare costs for a family+S&P 500+cost of phone and internet+etc. A huge, comprehensive reflection of the cost of living AND include the oligarchs favorite market metrics. If we have to bail out Silicon Valley venture capital, they should pay higher minimum wage when they are reaping large returns.
Question - do we also reduce wages if there's deflation?
Just make it so it never goes down. It is a minimum, no reason to lower the floor for the lowest earners
I agree with you, that sounds like a way to make it harder for them to screw with the measurement. I'd vote for it!
(My new worry is that they'd see it being an issue well before it was implemented, and pay Fox News to call it part of the trans, communist agenda or whatever, so it would never pass. Fuck. Maybe that's enough bubble bath white wine for now...)
In some European countries it is tied to the cost of living. All wages, not just minimum wages, are indexed to match the inflation.
I think ours is supposed to be, i'm Dutch and we get a yearly raise somewhat based on inflation. I say somewhat because it never fully covers the price increases across the board.
As of the past couple years there has been a housing shortage and i've watched rent go from €550 for 120m2 all the way up to €800 for 66m2.
For me personally i'm actually making less (amount per month) compared to rent being €550. While putting in more time and effort into my job, my current job i have the extra task of solving system issues(forgive me for not knowing the English name of this) when it encounters some trouble with faulty pallets up to 21m in height. I'm am "on call" for this too and have to work late shifts. All that for an even lower wage and higher rent.
We used to eat like royalty for €200 a month, we went to the gym daily as our diet allowed to eat enough to actually benefit from working out. Now we pay €400 a month and it's barely enough to have the energy to do my job and go to work on my bicycle (seeing i can maintain it myself, it is the cheapest form of transportation) every day.
But i got fired as a result of a reorganisation, so i'm finishing my last 4 weeks right now and hope i land on a better job with more oppertunities. I'm doubtful as i don't have any real education to my name and it isn't within my budget and energy to do it now.
Thing is a US wide minimum wage (which is what this news is about) would be like an EU wide minimum wage. There's crazy variation in living costs across the states.
Somewhere like California is pretty close to this amount already, the employers would just pay out an extra couple of dollars and everyone goes on as normal.
Where the effect in somewhere like the rural rectangle states would be enormous, with inflation skyrocketing, people probably losing jobs over it at smaller firms. People's savings would lose value overnight. People who thought they had enough money to retire will find themselves forced back to work. If you're a young person a $17 min wage sounds pretty great, but that's not the only thing to consider.
They need to tag it to a COLA element or something. They set it to a minimum that sounds ok when they increase it but then it sits there for 14 years and is completely laughable like it is right now....
Don’t most bigger cities have their own minimum wage requirements?
Every state in the US has its own minimum wage on top of the federal.
Edit - I meant "can." There is nothing stopping a state from increasing its own minimum wage over the federal level. I apologize for any confusion.
Kansas minimum wage is the same as the national minimum wage, so I wouldn't consider that "it's own minimum wage."
Pretty sure it isn't the only one.
Note: this includes the national $2 and something before tips minimum.
I don't think that's true if you look here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_states_by_minimum_wage
AL, LA, MS, SC, and TN don't have their own minimum wages if I'm reading it correctly.
Yes, and also: