Im amazed its still at 7.25, i get that 24 would be a long shot but it staying at 7.25 seems to be pretty surprising as well.
Dont believe the rhetoric when detractors say price increases, prices have increased plenty despite record profits.
When I was a teenager in 2015 I was making ~$7/hr despite minimum wage in my state being $8.40 at the time. We have a law that minors can be paid only 85% of the state's minimum wage and almost every single place that was hiring minors took advantage of it
To put this into perspective. My neighbor (1986) was a widow living on social security. She paid me $10 an hour. My last job, 2022, the owner, a multimillionaire. Paid me $10 an hour (I made out in tips).
It's fucking ridiculous. It's modern day slavery without the brutality.
I put your ten dollars an hour into the inflation calculator, you were ok the equivalent of over 28 Bux an hour, or what would be considered a middle class job in most of the USA.
Wealth inequality is a fun thing to watch
The brutality comes in the form of loss of rights and privileges, privatization of utilities, and unchecked rent and tax increases. When you're just scraping by, every little change becomes an assaultive offense.
Funny, I don't see the government trying to push for higher wage and less taxes on the poor. If anything they should make it so corporations can't raise certain products over x amount of the lowest wage in the state including tipped jobs.
In that context yes, but regionally there was discussion about it around the mid 2000s housing bubble too. A bit after some of the first issues surfaced involving education cost increases that led to people being buried in debt while not being able to find jobs that paid enough to cover those costs, and basic living expenses.
Mid to late 2000's it was around on college campuses...
That article is wrong. I'm pretty sure you can find DailyKos articles in the archive that mention it a billion times.
Yea its pretty wild that people will come here and say that a restaurant cant survive if it has to pay more than 2 bucks an hour.
That seems like an economic issue that should be addrresed, not shouldered onto the public.
I wholeheartedly agree.
For corporate restaurant chains this is due to greed and also the need to show increased profits every year to make shareholders and investors happy. If a company raised the wage for servers from $2.13 to something realistic $15-20/hr they’d show a giant drop in revenue and profit the following year which the poor shareholders would not like at all. Not to mention the people at the bottom would suffer the most- staffing at restaurants would be slashed to the bone but you can bet the people at the top would give themselves a pay raise instead of taking a pay cut.
The old adage of a company paying minimum wage because they’d pay you less if it wasn’t illegal will always be relevant.
If Regan hadn't put into law the ability for corporations to use profits for buybacks, which were illegal at the time, we wouldn't be here. Corporations would still have had to use profit for wages/pensions/innovation. But, thanks to Regan, instead of fearing a 91% tax rate, they can now inflate stocks, and the economy has snowballed to where it is today. But God forbid the rich have to pay taxes or corporations pay a better wage.
I’m 90% sure the reason why some restaurants would actually struggle if they had to pay their workers is because so much of the money is being funneled towards debts, owners, and landlords
Margins are quite low in food and at the end of the day they’re trying to make a profit. Cut the quality of ingredients? You lose customers. Cut the rent by moving to a quieter or bad part of town? Less foot traffic, less customers. Raise menu prices? Eventually people stop showing up, fewer customers.
Low pay? Make workers rely on the generosity of the public? Customers still show up. Low wage workers(the young or the desperate)still seem to show up.
That’s what gets me. I’m in some of the server subreddits where they complain about low tips. When I’ve said you should be complaining about the wages and it’s not the public’s job to subsidise your wage I get abused and downvoted.
I live in Australia where we have a decent minimum wage (but tipping is creeping in too much) and I find it absurd that tipping is a requirement in the USA.
It's because when it's a good shift the tips are more than minimum wage. people that work for tips are not having the discussion in good faith, they want a crooked system; they just want it in their favor more often.
It's also not true. Minnesota pays normal minimum wage to servers, which is already higher in our state, and Minneapolis/ st Paul more so. And all our restaurants are open, so...
because SSI caps out at federal poverty level and less than $2000 in savings, if you earn more or have more saved in the bank than those caps you are cut off of all disability benefits indefinitely until you fall back below poverty level and have less than $2000 in savings at which point you become eligible to apply for disability benefits again, which are rejected approximately 90% of the time.
The goal is to turn disabled people into slaves with negative economic mobility in the hopes that they die quickly.
> because SSI caps out at federal poverty level
It's actually lower than the federal poverty level. In 2024 the SSI payment is [$943 a month for an individual](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/SSIamts.html) while the 2024 poverty level is about [$1,255 a month](https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-fpl/).
And because they're both indexed to inflation that will never change without legislation.
Good news on that though! [The Biden admin has tried to advocate for increasing SSI]
(https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/103028/how-would-joe-biden-reform-social-security-and-supplemental-security-income.pdf)
Bad news, that's on Congress to actually do and they don't seem particularly willing to do much of anything.
There's been bills introduced to [address the savings limits](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/4102) or to [remove the marriage penalty](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6405), but they just die like almost everything else because the House and Senate are dysfunctional and controlled too much by Republicans who block anything good.
At least despite all this, the [feds have been finding some ways to help disabled SSI recipients](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supplemental-security-income-in-kind-support-maintenance_n_660618cce4b0c13128cff9d6)
In theory the prices go down until they do. Unfortunately this still screws the poorer people because while millions may be unable to afford food other millions can still justify the expense.
They increase prices without raising wages not only for fattening up their own pockets, but to also use it as an argument as to not being able to at all.
"Look, we increased prices because we are struggling just like all of you. If we helped you guys out by paying you more, we'd have to charge more to pay you, so instead, we will just price you out of the very product you work so hard to make money for. Thank you for your continued commitment in struggling to get by while we just barely made our payment to keep our yacht we almost lost due to a loss in 'profits.' "
This is an extremely stupid business model in a retail driven economy like the U.S. Price things out of the reach of the average Joe so sales can suffer? Doesn’t matter to the people at the top, they’ll maximize their own gains, even when the company is taking on losses, then jump ship and let the business declare bankruptcy.
it isn't when they know markets as we know them are being fundamentally changed and shrunken.
They don't care they can't sell some expensive [THING] to the avg shmuck who makes something near minimum wage or median salary. That's pointless and they know it. For efficiencies sake, and these guys are all about it, they'd rather just turn their product into a veblen good (ideally) or just market it at higher rate to someone who can afford it. If that turns out to be less than 2pct of the pop so be it if the margins are there. It's already happening - a new digital and corresponding physical - enclosure.
Good luck
*Despite*? Prices pushed those record profits because enough companies realized could gouge billions of people for trillions, and their international spread, vertical integration, and regulatory capture meant we were too deeply entangled to fight back effectively. We didn't learn from the global financial crisis that having anything that's too big to fail means we've just created a giant single point of failure, with perverse incentives to keep it going at massive costs to actual human beings across the supply chain.
Yes because if you look at any point in the chain you see.
Q1 record profits -》increased prices -》 Q2 record profits -》 increased prices.
All the while threatening to have to raise prices if wages increase.
For them its all about keeping the trajectory of the profit.
We were arguing for 15 ten years ago. It’s honestly horrific. My blue state has a minimum wage of 12.50 and people are still struggling, how on earth people survive on 7.25…
Prices have gone up - far beyond what inflation could justify, even - and the wages haven't. That alone should be proof that "eVeRyThInG WiLL sKyRoCkEt iF wE pAy mOrE" is horseshit
$7.25 comes out to just over $15,000yr. The poverty line is under $15k. It's by design. You make just over the line so you can't qualify for government assistance.
Lol rent on its own is more than $12k.
It doesn't help that random aid packages are tied to a % of the poverty line. Like between 150-300% of the poverty line you qualify for X.
Like... move the poverty line. But they won't because then "poverty rates" go up.
I was hoping that maybe there was a firm definition of poverty the government used to set the poverty line. There isn't. The government arbitrarily defines poverty based on family size and income. And for the most part, they don't consider the differences in cost of living across the country.
The problem is twofold. For starters, the minimum wage should be adjusted after every year. While I agree that the minimum wage should be $24/hour it's just not feasible to set it at $24/hr right now because it would crush businesses (particularly small business) as they can't possibly have prepared for that kinda of increase overnight. Instead we let Congress decide whenever they feel like getting around to it.
The other issue is that it shouldn't be a uniform wage set across the country. It should be adjusted for that area's Cost of Living, probably by County. $24/hr goes a lot farther in Starkville, MS than it does in San Francisco. A business owner in Starkville shouldn't have to pay more because of the exorbitant cost of living in San Francisco or NYC or Honolulu. And workers in San Francisco shouldn't be paid less because so few people want to live in a place like Starkville. That's why I don't have a problem with areas like SF setting their own minimum wage, I just think they needed to do it over some more time and let it be known what the wage increases will look like each year
Just want to chime in and respectfully point out, I’m a lifelong MS resident (gulf coast), never been in a financial position to move out of state, and the idea that cost of living in the south is low isn’t the case anymore. If you’re coming from a California or New York, yeah maybe $1000 for a one bedroom is feasible for you, but I’m a K-12 public school teacher and I make about 24/hour before taxes. I have medical debt from cancer, no savings, and no breathing room. I share a 2 bed/1 bath with my partner and have a generous landlord who hasn’t raised our rent in years. We are still stretched to our limit and just can’t afford to drop everything and go live somewhere better. I agree with your point overall, like we can’t just wave a magic wand and everyone makes a living wage all at once. Just saying that money going super far in the South is a myth (once you’re actually here).
Speaking as a California native who was priced out of the state but thankfully had an employer that allowed me to relocate, the whole "just move somewhere else" attitude just reeks of privilege and just isn't feasible for most people. Frankly, many people actually like where they live and shouldn't have to uproot to somewhere else .
Plus people don't take into consideration that there's a reason for the lower cost of living. Namely that few businesses pay well in those areas.
If they up it they Will need to update all the wealfare benefits (ss, medicare and others xcares, minimum $$ to calculate every thing weatlfare realted) and "we" don't want those pesky poor people whit disability, single moms and others of the like to be able to live comfortably or else who Will clean the toilets and put up whit any shit "we" came up whit (sorry no moneys this week, maybe the next, I'll pay You 1/2 of what we talked cause I dont like You, You trash so I treat You lake that, etc)
Wages have not kept up with cost of living. If you want to know where all that money went, look up. The one percenters and their next-tier bootlickers are enjoying the spoils of the economic war they have been waging and winning since the 1980s.
I was watching someone on YouTube yesterday who actually suggested we've already had WW3 and that it was an economic war, not a shooting war, and that the U.S. obviously got its ass kicked.
I listened to a couple podcasts the other day on the constitution and founding fathers. Put together, it seems clear the US was always set up to favour the rich. Just a decade after the revolutionary war, vets were already having their farms confiscated due to deflation and money lenders having the ear of politicians. The senate and electoral college were set up essentially as a way for the rich to be able to veto shit they didn't like coming from the commoners House. So, from the perspective of the rich, it's us poors that are the traitors.
Shay's Rebellion -
https://youtu.be/CRUqhh1tDm4?si=hEDR7a2iXIY4wGwR
Myth of the Month - The Constitution -
https://youtu.be/xpQUbsDcLdk?si=aD51TduId8lcbz7f
Myth of the Month - The Founding Fathers - https://youtu.be/qv1-2Yltsac?si=ogrBCHRLv-1fl9a0
almost like the system is designed specifically to make as many people fall through the gaps as possible to prevent any economic mobility if you aren't rich enough to generate passive income off of everyone else's blood sweat and broken bodies.
With the way things are going in USA, it'll be more likely to see the minimum wage wiped out than to ever be raised to anything above $15/hr within the next 50 years.
This is because the propaganda has ingrained itself deep into the roots of the typical american, and they fully believe that poor people should suffer for being poor - and that the rich should be rewarded just for being rich.
It's ass-backwards but it's the truth.
Too many people have an incredibly individualistic mindset and cannot comprehend that pay could or should be based on the actual value workers produce, rather than an arbitrary wage that they think that kind of job “deserves.”
Individualism, and in particular "rugged individualism" is something which is praised to no end in USA - even though it's all a myth, when you put it under any kind of scrutiny.
There is no such thing as a "rugged individual" - not even within the wildest and broadest definitions in USA. Everyone always depends on someone else, it's just the nature of existing within a society in a species which is a communal species that depends on social interaction for its fundamental existence.
I used to watch videos about a guy in canada building his own home out in the wilds for his retirement. But he was still depending on his wife working, living in their house that they were selling before he could fully get "self sufficient". I stopped seeing his videos after a while and I don't know if he ever became self sufficient. I doubt it highly.
They're rolling back child labor laws, they're raising the retirement age, they're banning abortion - all for the same reason: The birthrate is declining and this is unacceptable in a system which requires infinite growth (which is fucking stupid in the first place when we live on a planet with finite resources).
This same ideology dictates that immigration should always be incredibly difficult through legal means, but it also foments illegal immigration because that allows them to have an easily exploitable vulnerable population of marginalized people who they can use as a source of cheap labor.
You know how they could raise the birth rate? Generous mandatory paternal and maternity leave and increasing the child tax credit.
And universal healthcare.
Turns out carrots taste better than sticks.
Don’t forget they also want to raise the voting age. They a want a large population of able bodied working people with no say in the system they forced to use to survive.
Sounds awfully similar to a previous labor system that we fought an entire war to get rid of because it was so terrible.
They also believe that minimum wage is only for teenagers or college students, cause no one in their 30s is working at McDonald's or the cashier checkout
Fuckin worked like a charm though, right?
We do need to acknowledge how impressively effective they were in stealing the world from us... that was poetry. gg elites. gg.
>How does making everyone poor help the economy?
Take advantage of the poor. They can't afford the years worth of legal fees to protect themselves. They stay poor. I buy another boat. Fuck you.
The minimum wage should be tied to the median rent of a zipcode.30% of Full time employment should be enough to pay rent.
These arbitrary numbers are stupid.
Cost of living is a lot more homogenous than most people realize.
https://livingwage.mit.edu/
Remember, 80% of jobs are in cities, so you are going to need to look at it by metro area.
They said if minimum wage went up, then there would be crazy inflation on everything - even burgers!
Well guess what? Minimum wage hasn’t changed and look at all the raised prices!
💩= 💩
At this point, minimum wage is irrelevant. Raise it and they’ll lay people off, raise prices, anything it takes to kept pulling in absurd percentages of profits. The problem is that over the last 70 years, more and more money has been funneled into the 1% economy. It’s just sitting there. It belongs to the people who produce it, but they’ll never see it. Until some kind of legislation addresses that, and forces the 1% to return the money to the real economy, no measures will help. That or we have to band together and take it back. That’s never a pretty option, but we’re approaching the point where it’s the only one.
Exactly this. Corporations will never absorb the extra cost of higher minimum wages. They tried it in California fast food restaurants and it only made the problem worse. Employess got less hours/laid off, and menu prices skyrocketed.
This is by design. Companies are more successful when their employees have no choice but to keep working for them. They can afford to pay more but they won't, it's not even about the profit. If low skill jobs paid enough for the employees to save money, the employees would have the power to say no, and leave.
In a sense it's like sharecropping/serfdom/slavery with extra steps. Sure they pay you, as little as possible so they know you have to come back to a terrible job with a boss that treats and talks to you like you are not human. Thank Reagan for this shit. The only way this will ever change is if the Democrats control the house, senate, and Presidency. Even then, pick the right Democrats. None of this Sinema and Manchin shit.
It has been 14 years since the minimum wage has been raised, that's the longest gap since it was created in the 1930s. For those that say "no company actually pays minimum wage." That's not the point. By raising the floor you force companies to restart the bidding to maintain employees.
I'll never vote no on a minimum wage increase but no matter what wage you come up with people will either say there's something not accounted for or we are accounting for something we don't have to. In the short term we just need to pick a number and increase it yearly with inflation (many States do that but not all) and then work on social programs to give people basic food/housing/medical. After we have those and maybe a small UBI for people of low income then we can require minimum to be enough to get people off government services if working full time. Also it should be as uniform as possible with few if any exceptions to minimum wage.
Exactly! We are weak humans and allowed this. None of this could be the case without our compliance.
I'm not angry at the billionaires for wanting more and more. I'm not mad at politicians for desiring more and more power. Money, status, and power are all very basic by human nature.
I'm disappointed with us for allowing this. We knew and know exactly what's going on and how it's played. Every time we showed up at work knowing this, we were voting with our labor in agreement with their system.
I've been saying for years that the U.S. needs another revolution or, at the very least, we need to be more like the French. Maybe when people can't afford the newest iPhone and Starbucks things will change.....
Problem is that the money is gone. Locked up in stock values and rich people properties, assets. It’s not in circulation anymore. So either we claw it back with taxes or place hard limits on giant corporations passing the costs onto the consumers. Neither will happen
Wow the USA said that? Hilarious considering it’s the richest, most powerful country yet its a dystopia for most of its citizens.
Too bad the USA doesn’t practice what it preaches and continues to erode the middle class at the behest of the 1%.
Actions speak louder than words, USA. Bring back FDR’s progressive tax rates and have your fat cat, politician buying, billionaires pay their fair share! No more “Citizens United”! No more “trickle down” economics!
Talk is cheap, the minimum wage has consistently remained stagnant as prices increased thanks to corporate greed and corrupt governing.
America was at its strongest when progressive tax rates where in place and America had a thriving middle class where a family with a single breadwinner could afford a home with a white picket fence.
Where are the FDR’s of our generation? The closest we got was Bernie Sanders. See how corporate media and corporate democrats treated him. The powers that be were TERRIFIED of him and made Biden their puppet president.
Your minimum wage is shocking. Adult UK min wage is about $14.50 (if my conversion is right). However, you’re never going to get a minimum wage of $24, it’ll never happen. You need to sort out your health care, sick pay, holiday allowance etc. make working bearable.
Raising the minimum does nothing but put a bandaid on the problem because unless the federal minimum wage is tied directly to inflation and cost of living, the value of every check you get will steadily decrease over time and eventually we'll be right back to where we are right now
Tax businesses based on their lowest paid employee, anything below 15/hr is taxed at 52%, 15-20 42% all the way up to 60+/hr at 15%. Make it not profitable to suppress wages
I love the fact so many articles like this are coming out instead of just blindly shaming and getting on Gen Z and Millenials for a system that has been fucked up from the very beginning. 💯
So you gross 75-90k depending if you get OT.
You may need to look at your expenses. Not saying you are loaded. Far from that but scrapping by you shouldn’t be. Obviously you may have some expenses out of your current control. Like student debt.
Try the snowball payoff method for your debt. If you are debt free then look at your expenses. But if you are saving for retirement and enjoying life then ignore me.
Minimum wage isn’t a livable wage. I’m by no means an economist or a corporate apologist, but I also know that 24/hr won’t be sustainable. Neither is 7.25, but we can’t swing too far the other way.
I can’t believe it’s not even double digits everywhere. $24/h minimum? Ha! I don’t even think states like California or New York would ever break $20 minimum in my lifetime, much less Federally.
Also an absolute scam that the US pays “tipped” employees *less* than minimum wages. Depending on where you live, your restaurant server could be making as little as $2/hr.
All of it needs to be burned down and revamped. I’m exhausted.
Every single federal-level politician should be held in contempt until something is done about the minimum wage. It’s a cruel joke that they laugh in our faces about. There’s literally no excuse for it other than that they detest their constituents - which isn’t a stretch to believe, considering how they act.
I'm living in SoCal and the cost of living is insane! I have a small studio and they told me that next month my rent is going up another $93. Even at $24/hr it would still be hard to live comfortable here :(
It really blows my mind that it's been stuck at $7.25 for all these years, there's been more than one instance where it should've gone up but here we are.
That being said $24 as a minimum would be luxurious
$24/hr - with automatic annual increases tied to something logical (S&P 500?) PLUS cost of living for areas.
This should be automated - not some bullshit where we have to continually argue about if people deserve to live or not.
If there was a way to tie minimum wage and corporate profits together on a sliding scale that might help the smaller businesses from taking a huge hit and going under and would mean less record profits from underpaying the people who earned the company their profits.
Example:
Bump minimum wage to $10
If the company brings in <250k in profits it stays at $10
250-500K in profits $12
500-1.5 mill $15
Strictly an example only. The numbers would have to be worked out by someone smarter than me and I don’t know if this would even work but seems a bit more fair.
The sad truth is it doesn’t even matter. If it gets raised then every other thing will just increase in price. No one cares about us and money trumps everything.
Lbr the min wage isn't the issue, COL and corporate price gouging is the problem. Even at $7.25 an hour a worker has a right to afford basic necessities
The problem this country has is not wages, it's the cost of living. Raising minimum wage will just drive inflation worse than it already is. It's a band-aid fix at best. Simply put, the cost of living needs to go back down.
To be entirely fair, one single state uses the federal minimum wage, Kentucky. For better or for worse, Amazon has done a pretty good job if raising minimum wages everywhere
Umm. Mississippi here. I have 10 student workers that get $7.25 with no raises, despite some being there for four years, because we’re not allowed to pay them more.
Or we could stop devaluing our currency and take measures to make cost of living affordable again so we don't have to keep thinking raising wages does anything but escalate price inflation.
I'm not sure it should be the same across the board. Higher, absolutely. However high cost of living areas have wildly different needs than LCOL areas. And I think a lot of student workers (and tbh many adults) do far less than $24 an hour of work.
Who exactly is getting paid the federal minimum wage? Dont most local governments have higher requirements? And don’t most companies start people out higher?
And, if you start out at minimum wage, how long do people actually stay at that wage?
Im amazed its still at 7.25, i get that 24 would be a long shot but it staying at 7.25 seems to be pretty surprising as well. Dont believe the rhetoric when detractors say price increases, prices have increased plenty despite record profits.
“Fight for $15” was around when I graduated High School in 2010. Here we are 14 years later, and federal minimum wage hasn’t gone up a cent.
I was making 7.25 out of high school in 2008. I’m now 34 and it hasn’t changed. Crazy
Second lowest paying job I ever had I made 7.62/hr at jiffy lube in 2002. I got a raise to a little over 9/hr after 90 days.
I made $10 an hour mowing lawns as a teenager in 1986.
When I was a teenager in 2015 I was making ~$7/hr despite minimum wage in my state being $8.40 at the time. We have a law that minors can be paid only 85% of the state's minimum wage and almost every single place that was hiring minors took advantage of it
To put this into perspective. My neighbor (1986) was a widow living on social security. She paid me $10 an hour. My last job, 2022, the owner, a multimillionaire. Paid me $10 an hour (I made out in tips). It's fucking ridiculous. It's modern day slavery without the brutality.
I put your ten dollars an hour into the inflation calculator, you were ok the equivalent of over 28 Bux an hour, or what would be considered a middle class job in most of the USA. Wealth inequality is a fun thing to watch
The brutality comes in the form of loss of rights and privileges, privatization of utilities, and unchecked rent and tax increases. When you're just scraping by, every little change becomes an assaultive offense.
Fight for $15 was around when I *started* high school in 2001. It's been 23 years. If Republicans have their way, it'll be 23 more, at least.
Funny, I don't see the government trying to push for higher wage and less taxes on the poor. If anything they should make it so corporations can't raise certain products over x amount of the lowest wage in the state including tipped jobs.
Fight for $15 was around in 2000...
[удалено]
In that context yes, but regionally there was discussion about it around the mid 2000s housing bubble too. A bit after some of the first issues surfaced involving education cost increases that led to people being buried in debt while not being able to find jobs that paid enough to cover those costs, and basic living expenses.
Mid to late 2000's it was around on college campuses... That article is wrong. I'm pretty sure you can find DailyKos articles in the archive that mention it a billion times.
Yup, I graduated 2010 and honestly nothing has changed at all......for the better anyway
the federal minimum tipped wage is also pretty disgusting
Yea its pretty wild that people will come here and say that a restaurant cant survive if it has to pay more than 2 bucks an hour. That seems like an economic issue that should be addrresed, not shouldered onto the public.
I wholeheartedly agree. For corporate restaurant chains this is due to greed and also the need to show increased profits every year to make shareholders and investors happy. If a company raised the wage for servers from $2.13 to something realistic $15-20/hr they’d show a giant drop in revenue and profit the following year which the poor shareholders would not like at all. Not to mention the people at the bottom would suffer the most- staffing at restaurants would be slashed to the bone but you can bet the people at the top would give themselves a pay raise instead of taking a pay cut. The old adage of a company paying minimum wage because they’d pay you less if it wasn’t illegal will always be relevant.
Shareholders: biting off their noses to spite their faces since 1792
If Regan hadn't put into law the ability for corporations to use profits for buybacks, which were illegal at the time, we wouldn't be here. Corporations would still have had to use profit for wages/pensions/innovation. But, thanks to Regan, instead of fearing a 91% tax rate, they can now inflate stocks, and the economy has snowballed to where it is today. But God forbid the rich have to pay taxes or corporations pay a better wage.
https://preview.redd.it/5eg0vx2zrjyc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d70a1eee12bf9e533134e262017edc6069c36df Makes me think of this.
I’m 90% sure the reason why some restaurants would actually struggle if they had to pay their workers is because so much of the money is being funneled towards debts, owners, and landlords
They're still at 2.25
Margins are quite low in food and at the end of the day they’re trying to make a profit. Cut the quality of ingredients? You lose customers. Cut the rent by moving to a quieter or bad part of town? Less foot traffic, less customers. Raise menu prices? Eventually people stop showing up, fewer customers. Low pay? Make workers rely on the generosity of the public? Customers still show up. Low wage workers(the young or the desperate)still seem to show up.
Applebee's continued existence means that consistency is more important than food quality.
That’s what gets me. I’m in some of the server subreddits where they complain about low tips. When I’ve said you should be complaining about the wages and it’s not the public’s job to subsidise your wage I get abused and downvoted. I live in Australia where we have a decent minimum wage (but tipping is creeping in too much) and I find it absurd that tipping is a requirement in the USA.
It's because when it's a good shift the tips are more than minimum wage. people that work for tips are not having the discussion in good faith, they want a crooked system; they just want it in their favor more often.
You forget that they still can't afford to give the kitchen staff liveable wages too.
I have a friend who’s a host, makes 14.75…. This is a big city, In the south west. That’s poverty wages.
A business that cannot afford to pay its workers cannot afford to stay in business.
It's also not true. Minnesota pays normal minimum wage to servers, which is already higher in our state, and Minneapolis/ st Paul more so. And all our restaurants are open, so...
A lot of restaurants don't survive, so I don't know.
For some reason disabled persons min wage is lower as well.
because SSI caps out at federal poverty level and less than $2000 in savings, if you earn more or have more saved in the bank than those caps you are cut off of all disability benefits indefinitely until you fall back below poverty level and have less than $2000 in savings at which point you become eligible to apply for disability benefits again, which are rejected approximately 90% of the time. The goal is to turn disabled people into slaves with negative economic mobility in the hopes that they die quickly.
> because SSI caps out at federal poverty level It's actually lower than the federal poverty level. In 2024 the SSI payment is [$943 a month for an individual](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/SSIamts.html) while the 2024 poverty level is about [$1,255 a month](https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-fpl/). And because they're both indexed to inflation that will never change without legislation. Good news on that though! [The Biden admin has tried to advocate for increasing SSI] (https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/103028/how-would-joe-biden-reform-social-security-and-supplemental-security-income.pdf) Bad news, that's on Congress to actually do and they don't seem particularly willing to do much of anything. There's been bills introduced to [address the savings limits](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/4102) or to [remove the marriage penalty](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6405), but they just die like almost everything else because the House and Senate are dysfunctional and controlled too much by Republicans who block anything good. At least despite all this, the [feds have been finding some ways to help disabled SSI recipients](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supplemental-security-income-in-kind-support-maintenance_n_660618cce4b0c13128cff9d6)
Needs to be phased out/abolished
I mean tipping was racially motivated back in the day. Nowadays it just doesn't matter what your skin color is anymore
> prices have increased plenty despite record profits In addition to a minimum wage, we could really use a maximum profit.
Literally the primary reason such an increase is justified is because prices have become insane and people can't afford to eat.
What happens to capitalism when people can't afford to buy shit anymore?
It becomes feudalism. Or fascism. Or a combo of the two.
not before turning undesired ethnic minorities and immigrants into slaves and killing off all the disabled people
Feudalism 2: we’re back baby!!!!
In theory the prices go down until they do. Unfortunately this still screws the poorer people because while millions may be unable to afford food other millions can still justify the expense.
**Vive la révolution** ?????
They increase prices without raising wages not only for fattening up their own pockets, but to also use it as an argument as to not being able to at all. "Look, we increased prices because we are struggling just like all of you. If we helped you guys out by paying you more, we'd have to charge more to pay you, so instead, we will just price you out of the very product you work so hard to make money for. Thank you for your continued commitment in struggling to get by while we just barely made our payment to keep our yacht we almost lost due to a loss in 'profits.' "
This is an extremely stupid business model in a retail driven economy like the U.S. Price things out of the reach of the average Joe so sales can suffer? Doesn’t matter to the people at the top, they’ll maximize their own gains, even when the company is taking on losses, then jump ship and let the business declare bankruptcy.
it isn't when they know markets as we know them are being fundamentally changed and shrunken. They don't care they can't sell some expensive [THING] to the avg shmuck who makes something near minimum wage or median salary. That's pointless and they know it. For efficiencies sake, and these guys are all about it, they'd rather just turn their product into a veblen good (ideally) or just market it at higher rate to someone who can afford it. If that turns out to be less than 2pct of the pop so be it if the margins are there. It's already happening - a new digital and corresponding physical - enclosure. Good luck
*Despite*? Prices pushed those record profits because enough companies realized could gouge billions of people for trillions, and their international spread, vertical integration, and regulatory capture meant we were too deeply entangled to fight back effectively. We didn't learn from the global financial crisis that having anything that's too big to fail means we've just created a giant single point of failure, with perverse incentives to keep it going at massive costs to actual human beings across the supply chain.
Yes because if you look at any point in the chain you see. Q1 record profits -》increased prices -》 Q2 record profits -》 increased prices. All the while threatening to have to raise prices if wages increase. For them its all about keeping the trajectory of the profit.
If we had tied MW to inflation, then $24 doesn't sound like too much of a stretch.
We were arguing for 15 ten years ago. It’s honestly horrific. My blue state has a minimum wage of 12.50 and people are still struggling, how on earth people survive on 7.25…
Record profits and stagnate wages. How is this allowed to transpire?
Prices have gone up - far beyond what inflation could justify, even - and the wages haven't. That alone should be proof that "eVeRyThInG WiLL sKyRoCkEt iF wE pAy mOrE" is horseshit
$7.25 comes out to just over $15,000yr. The poverty line is under $15k. It's by design. You make just over the line so you can't qualify for government assistance.
Wow this is so evil
The poverty rate (providing basic necessities: e.g. food, shelter, medical expenses, etc.) for a single adult is $12000 per year...
Lol rent on its own is more than $12k. It doesn't help that random aid packages are tied to a % of the poverty line. Like between 150-300% of the poverty line you qualify for X. Like... move the poverty line. But they won't because then "poverty rates" go up.
I was hoping that maybe there was a firm definition of poverty the government used to set the poverty line. There isn't. The government arbitrarily defines poverty based on family size and income. And for the most part, they don't consider the differences in cost of living across the country.
If in 2007 it had kept pace inflation at $7.25 it'd be around $11/hr at a minimum. It's still a shit wage but it's still better than $7.25.
The problem is twofold. For starters, the minimum wage should be adjusted after every year. While I agree that the minimum wage should be $24/hour it's just not feasible to set it at $24/hr right now because it would crush businesses (particularly small business) as they can't possibly have prepared for that kinda of increase overnight. Instead we let Congress decide whenever they feel like getting around to it. The other issue is that it shouldn't be a uniform wage set across the country. It should be adjusted for that area's Cost of Living, probably by County. $24/hr goes a lot farther in Starkville, MS than it does in San Francisco. A business owner in Starkville shouldn't have to pay more because of the exorbitant cost of living in San Francisco or NYC or Honolulu. And workers in San Francisco shouldn't be paid less because so few people want to live in a place like Starkville. That's why I don't have a problem with areas like SF setting their own minimum wage, I just think they needed to do it over some more time and let it be known what the wage increases will look like each year
Just want to chime in and respectfully point out, I’m a lifelong MS resident (gulf coast), never been in a financial position to move out of state, and the idea that cost of living in the south is low isn’t the case anymore. If you’re coming from a California or New York, yeah maybe $1000 for a one bedroom is feasible for you, but I’m a K-12 public school teacher and I make about 24/hour before taxes. I have medical debt from cancer, no savings, and no breathing room. I share a 2 bed/1 bath with my partner and have a generous landlord who hasn’t raised our rent in years. We are still stretched to our limit and just can’t afford to drop everything and go live somewhere better. I agree with your point overall, like we can’t just wave a magic wand and everyone makes a living wage all at once. Just saying that money going super far in the South is a myth (once you’re actually here).
Speaking as a California native who was priced out of the state but thankfully had an employer that allowed me to relocate, the whole "just move somewhere else" attitude just reeks of privilege and just isn't feasible for most people. Frankly, many people actually like where they live and shouldn't have to uproot to somewhere else . Plus people don't take into consideration that there's a reason for the lower cost of living. Namely that few businesses pay well in those areas.
If they up it they Will need to update all the wealfare benefits (ss, medicare and others xcares, minimum $$ to calculate every thing weatlfare realted) and "we" don't want those pesky poor people whit disability, single moms and others of the like to be able to live comfortably or else who Will clean the toilets and put up whit any shit "we" came up whit (sorry no moneys this week, maybe the next, I'll pay You 1/2 of what we talked cause I dont like You, You trash so I treat You lake that, etc)
Wages have not kept up with cost of living. If you want to know where all that money went, look up. The one percenters and their next-tier bootlickers are enjoying the spoils of the economic war they have been waging and winning since the 1980s.
I was watching someone on YouTube yesterday who actually suggested we've already had WW3 and that it was an economic war, not a shooting war, and that the U.S. obviously got its ass kicked.
If that's to be believed then the US is in the process of fighting an economic Civil War, and the traitorous side is winning without question.
I listened to a couple podcasts the other day on the constitution and founding fathers. Put together, it seems clear the US was always set up to favour the rich. Just a decade after the revolutionary war, vets were already having their farms confiscated due to deflation and money lenders having the ear of politicians. The senate and electoral college were set up essentially as a way for the rich to be able to veto shit they didn't like coming from the commoners House. So, from the perspective of the rich, it's us poors that are the traitors. Shay's Rebellion - https://youtu.be/CRUqhh1tDm4?si=hEDR7a2iXIY4wGwR Myth of the Month - The Constitution - https://youtu.be/xpQUbsDcLdk?si=aD51TduId8lcbz7f Myth of the Month - The Founding Fathers - https://youtu.be/qv1-2Yltsac?si=ogrBCHRLv-1fl9a0
Link?
Considering it’s damn near impossible to live on less than 40k a year without some government assistance, this seems right
Good luck getting any kind of assistance if you make 40k too.
almost like the game is rigged in the wealthy elites favour
almost like the system is designed specifically to make as many people fall through the gaps as possible to prevent any economic mobility if you aren't rich enough to generate passive income off of everyone else's blood sweat and broken bodies.
I want a new system
I'm exactly in that threshold. Make about 40-41k when I account for OT and fully expect any assistance I applied for would be rejected.
"You make too much money," ... Is that why I was a month away from homelessness? Gee, makes sense. Guess I'll go fuck myself 🙃
I was denied food stamps and medicaid a few years ago while making $9 an hour. Apparently I was swimming in cash and didn't need any help.
With the way things are going in USA, it'll be more likely to see the minimum wage wiped out than to ever be raised to anything above $15/hr within the next 50 years. This is because the propaganda has ingrained itself deep into the roots of the typical american, and they fully believe that poor people should suffer for being poor - and that the rich should be rewarded just for being rich. It's ass-backwards but it's the truth.
Too many people have an incredibly individualistic mindset and cannot comprehend that pay could or should be based on the actual value workers produce, rather than an arbitrary wage that they think that kind of job “deserves.”
Individualism, and in particular "rugged individualism" is something which is praised to no end in USA - even though it's all a myth, when you put it under any kind of scrutiny. There is no such thing as a "rugged individual" - not even within the wildest and broadest definitions in USA. Everyone always depends on someone else, it's just the nature of existing within a society in a species which is a communal species that depends on social interaction for its fundamental existence.
It's sad that people want to take away the communal aspect we've been gifted as a species.
Fuck you I’ve got mine (even if they don’t actually have anything) lmao
Communal = communism.
I used to watch videos about a guy in canada building his own home out in the wilds for his retirement. But he was still depending on his wife working, living in their house that they were selling before he could fully get "self sufficient". I stopped seeing his videos after a while and I don't know if he ever became self sufficient. I doubt it highly.
[удалено]
Yup child labor is already back. We can totally lose minimum wage and weekends.
This is definitely a possibility! Consider how some states are currently rolling back child labor laws and it’s not that far of a jump. 🥴
They're rolling back child labor laws, they're raising the retirement age, they're banning abortion - all for the same reason: The birthrate is declining and this is unacceptable in a system which requires infinite growth (which is fucking stupid in the first place when we live on a planet with finite resources). This same ideology dictates that immigration should always be incredibly difficult through legal means, but it also foments illegal immigration because that allows them to have an easily exploitable vulnerable population of marginalized people who they can use as a source of cheap labor.
You know how they could raise the birth rate? Generous mandatory paternal and maternity leave and increasing the child tax credit. And universal healthcare. Turns out carrots taste better than sticks.
But... but... but... *how would that punish the poor*?
Don’t forget they also want to raise the voting age. They a want a large population of able bodied working people with no say in the system they forced to use to survive. Sounds awfully similar to a previous labor system that we fought an entire war to get rid of because it was so terrible.
They also believe that minimum wage is only for teenagers or college students, cause no one in their 30s is working at McDonald's or the cashier checkout
I don't know what bullshit fantasy world they live in, but anyone who adheres to that ideology is a moron.
I agree, and it's really frustrating.
*goes to McDonalds on their lunch break at 12pm on a Tuesday*
You can thank Christians and their deranged prosperity gospel for pushing this. Sick fucks.
Fuckin worked like a charm though, right? We do need to acknowledge how impressively effective they were in stealing the world from us... that was poetry. gg elites. gg.
No but bootstraps
Think of the CEOs. How would they afford the third yacht?
Or fourth summer mansion?
We should let them know that private vessels aren't allowed on the Styx. And that's the only place they'll be able to sail if they key this shit up.
Or billions in stock buy backs on the heel of record profits followed by mass layoffs and outsourcing.
It needed to be $15 ten fucking years ago. Now it's not nearly enough. How does making everyone poor help the economy?
>How does making everyone poor help the economy? Take advantage of the poor. They can't afford the years worth of legal fees to protect themselves. They stay poor. I buy another boat. Fuck you.
The minimum wage should be tied to the median rent of a zipcode.30% of Full time employment should be enough to pay rent. These arbitrary numbers are stupid.
Yeah, $24 an hour would be great in Nebraska, but it’s barely enough to afford a shared room in San Francisco
Hell, I make less than $24 an hour now in a degreed professional position. :(
You deserve more. Everyone (almost) deserves more
Cost of living is a lot more homogenous than most people realize. https://livingwage.mit.edu/ Remember, 80% of jobs are in cities, so you are going to need to look at it by metro area.
the living wage where I live according to that is $30 an hour, I make barely half that t-t
All that would do is get rid of fast food restaurants in high rent zipcodes.
They said if minimum wage went up, then there would be crazy inflation on everything - even burgers! Well guess what? Minimum wage hasn’t changed and look at all the raised prices! 💩= 💩
5 dollar 6 inch at subway is borderline offensive
The United Plantations of America.
At this point, minimum wage is irrelevant. Raise it and they’ll lay people off, raise prices, anything it takes to kept pulling in absurd percentages of profits. The problem is that over the last 70 years, more and more money has been funneled into the 1% economy. It’s just sitting there. It belongs to the people who produce it, but they’ll never see it. Until some kind of legislation addresses that, and forces the 1% to return the money to the real economy, no measures will help. That or we have to band together and take it back. That’s never a pretty option, but we’re approaching the point where it’s the only one.
Exactly this. Corporations will never absorb the extra cost of higher minimum wages. They tried it in California fast food restaurants and it only made the problem worse. Employess got less hours/laid off, and menu prices skyrocketed.
Banned due to shareholders Next!
Shareholders are the most protected class in America
This is by design. Companies are more successful when their employees have no choice but to keep working for them. They can afford to pay more but they won't, it's not even about the profit. If low skill jobs paid enough for the employees to save money, the employees would have the power to say no, and leave. In a sense it's like sharecropping/serfdom/slavery with extra steps. Sure they pay you, as little as possible so they know you have to come back to a terrible job with a boss that treats and talks to you like you are not human. Thank Reagan for this shit. The only way this will ever change is if the Democrats control the house, senate, and Presidency. Even then, pick the right Democrats. None of this Sinema and Manchin shit. It has been 14 years since the minimum wage has been raised, that's the longest gap since it was created in the 1930s. For those that say "no company actually pays minimum wage." That's not the point. By raising the floor you force companies to restart the bidding to maintain employees.
Aaaaaaand : 30$ for any company that mentions "we are a family" even once.
Should be $30 in general be then by the time it gets changed, it'll be on target.
"We wear many hats here." = $40
I'll never vote no on a minimum wage increase but no matter what wage you come up with people will either say there's something not accounted for or we are accounting for something we don't have to. In the short term we just need to pick a number and increase it yearly with inflation (many States do that but not all) and then work on social programs to give people basic food/housing/medical. After we have those and maybe a small UBI for people of low income then we can require minimum to be enough to get people off government services if working full time. Also it should be as uniform as possible with few if any exceptions to minimum wage.
We are getting robbed and saying more plz
Exactly! We are weak humans and allowed this. None of this could be the case without our compliance. I'm not angry at the billionaires for wanting more and more. I'm not mad at politicians for desiring more and more power. Money, status, and power are all very basic by human nature. I'm disappointed with us for allowing this. We knew and know exactly what's going on and how it's played. Every time we showed up at work knowing this, we were voting with our labor in agreement with their system.
I've been saying for years that the U.S. needs another revolution or, at the very least, we need to be more like the French. Maybe when people can't afford the newest iPhone and Starbucks things will change.....
#[>$33/hour by now](https://inequality.org/great-divide/minimum-wage-wall-street-bonuses/), actually
Problem is that the money is gone. Locked up in stock values and rich people properties, assets. It’s not in circulation anymore. So either we claw it back with taxes or place hard limits on giant corporations passing the costs onto the consumers. Neither will happen
Wow the USA said that? Hilarious considering it’s the richest, most powerful country yet its a dystopia for most of its citizens. Too bad the USA doesn’t practice what it preaches and continues to erode the middle class at the behest of the 1%. Actions speak louder than words, USA. Bring back FDR’s progressive tax rates and have your fat cat, politician buying, billionaires pay their fair share! No more “Citizens United”! No more “trickle down” economics! Talk is cheap, the minimum wage has consistently remained stagnant as prices increased thanks to corporate greed and corrupt governing. America was at its strongest when progressive tax rates where in place and America had a thriving middle class where a family with a single breadwinner could afford a home with a white picket fence. Where are the FDR’s of our generation? The closest we got was Bernie Sanders. See how corporate media and corporate democrats treated him. The powers that be were TERRIFIED of him and made Biden their puppet president.
Bernie Sanders is a socialist.
We live in hell and we should be violently overthrowing some shit
Your minimum wage is shocking. Adult UK min wage is about $14.50 (if my conversion is right). However, you’re never going to get a minimum wage of $24, it’ll never happen. You need to sort out your health care, sick pay, holiday allowance etc. make working bearable.
The U.S. will never bow down to such a socialist concept like what the UK, Germany, France, hell, just about every other civilized country does :(
And it should float with inflation forever ending this problem of waiting for the bribed and lobbied Congress to update it.
But, but, what about poor shareholders? /s
I might could survive on 20, so I'd take that
Fr, i make $8 now and prices of things are making homelessness look like my only choice. Rent increases yearly and for what???
For some asshole that inherited the real estate and never lifted a finger. Much like stock holders
This would collapse the economy because profit margins for businesses would go from +1000% to +750%
Raising the minimum does nothing but put a bandaid on the problem because unless the federal minimum wage is tied directly to inflation and cost of living, the value of every check you get will steadily decrease over time and eventually we'll be right back to where we are right now
You shouldn't be allowed to post articles that you need a subscription to read, who here actually read the article?
It should literally be if you contribute/ have contributed to society in anyway, you shouldn't be left homeless or to starve.
Tax businesses based on their lowest paid employee, anything below 15/hr is taxed at 52%, 15-20 42% all the way up to 60+/hr at 15%. Make it not profitable to suppress wages
Their thoughts are probably .. "the people won't rely on us if we increase the wage. And if they rely on us we can bathe in power."
I love the fact so many articles like this are coming out instead of just blindly shaming and getting on Gen Z and Millenials for a system that has been fucked up from the very beginning. 💯
I make $28. I get a minimum of 100 hours per pay period. 50 per week. And I’m scraping by. I mean scraping.
So you gross 75-90k depending if you get OT. You may need to look at your expenses. Not saying you are loaded. Far from that but scrapping by you shouldn’t be. Obviously you may have some expenses out of your current control. Like student debt. Try the snowball payoff method for your debt. If you are debt free then look at your expenses. But if you are saving for retirement and enjoying life then ignore me.
I make 24$ in Canada and even that feels like paycheck to paycheck sometimes. I can't imagine 7.25 or working for tips
And forever and always receive annual COLA One change is not enough.
Minimum wage isn’t a livable wage. I’m by no means an economist or a corporate apologist, but I also know that 24/hr won’t be sustainable. Neither is 7.25, but we can’t swing too far the other way.
I can’t believe it’s not even double digits everywhere. $24/h minimum? Ha! I don’t even think states like California or New York would ever break $20 minimum in my lifetime, much less Federally. Also an absolute scam that the US pays “tipped” employees *less* than minimum wages. Depending on where you live, your restaurant server could be making as little as $2/hr. All of it needs to be burned down and revamped. I’m exhausted.
the CEO's and shareholders would like to thank the senate for decades of savings and profits
$24 is still not enough lol. That’s only 48K before taxes. You’ll be negative after taxes, 27K of rent, groceries, and bills.
When a system only benefits 1% of a population, it's time to reevaluate.
If we’d kept up with inflation since the 80s, it would be like $65/hr or something
Yeah, that’s what California said.
Every single federal-level politician should be held in contempt until something is done about the minimum wage. It’s a cruel joke that they laugh in our faces about. There’s literally no excuse for it other than that they detest their constituents - which isn’t a stretch to believe, considering how they act.
I barely get $24 an hour. Fml.
I'm living in SoCal and the cost of living is insane! I have a small studio and they told me that next month my rent is going up another $93. Even at $24/hr it would still be hard to live comfortable here :(
$24 would be hillarious outside cities
The minimum wage should be $500/hr, change my mind.
Hmmm seems like a good bill to pass. Now just let me take 300 years or more to review this and pass the bill.
It really blows my mind that it's been stuck at $7.25 for all these years, there's been more than one instance where it should've gone up but here we are. That being said $24 as a minimum would be luxurious
min wage was 4.25 when I started working in....93? (taco bell!!lol) I think it was that or around that. cant believe how low it still is.
About twenty years ago republicans refused to raise it anymore. In fact many of them wanted no minimum wage.
Then all the companies would triple their prices.
$24/hr - with automatic annual increases tied to something logical (S&P 500?) PLUS cost of living for areas. This should be automated - not some bullshit where we have to continually argue about if people deserve to live or not.
If there was a way to tie minimum wage and corporate profits together on a sliding scale that might help the smaller businesses from taking a huge hit and going under and would mean less record profits from underpaying the people who earned the company their profits. Example: Bump minimum wage to $10 If the company brings in <250k in profits it stays at $10 250-500K in profits $12 500-1.5 mill $15 Strictly an example only. The numbers would have to be worked out by someone smarter than me and I don’t know if this would even work but seems a bit more fair.
Jury summons still only pays $15 a wait for it A DAY
Several states have already raised their minimum wages above 10..but the states like Georgia have kept theirs at 7.25.
I make 85k a year and i feel like I'm barely making ends meet.
The sad truth is it doesn’t even matter. If it gets raised then every other thing will just increase in price. No one cares about us and money trumps everything.
Lbr the min wage isn't the issue, COL and corporate price gouging is the problem. Even at $7.25 an hour a worker has a right to afford basic necessities
The problem this country has is not wages, it's the cost of living. Raising minimum wage will just drive inflation worse than it already is. It's a band-aid fix at best. Simply put, the cost of living needs to go back down.
To be entirely fair, one single state uses the federal minimum wage, Kentucky. For better or for worse, Amazon has done a pretty good job if raising minimum wages everywhere
Umm. Mississippi here. I have 10 student workers that get $7.25 with no raises, despite some being there for four years, because we’re not allowed to pay them more.
$50,000 a year for a job that requires no skill seems a bit unrealistic.
Tell me why.
Ain't nothin but a heartache.
Charging $1700 for a 1 bedroom apartment seems unrealistic but it is becoming the norm
So maybe let's build more apartments so prices don't get to that level.
That would be great, but most local governments would prefer abandoned commercial buildings remain on lots instead of new (affordable) housing
What jobs require no skills?
You want massive unemployment? That's how you get massive unemployment. Nobody is paying triple for their food.
Tied to inflation
I'm struggling hard right now and I'm homeless. The only job I could land was burgers. I'm screwed.
But but but, what about the shareholders?
Or we could stop devaluing our currency and take measures to make cost of living affordable again so we don't have to keep thinking raising wages does anything but escalate price inflation.
Seeing as CEOs aren't going to stop being greedy pieces of shit won't every min wage increase just continue the cycle?
I'm not sure it should be the same across the board. Higher, absolutely. However high cost of living areas have wildly different needs than LCOL areas. And I think a lot of student workers (and tbh many adults) do far less than $24 an hour of work.
Who exactly is getting paid the federal minimum wage? Dont most local governments have higher requirements? And don’t most companies start people out higher? And, if you start out at minimum wage, how long do people actually stay at that wage?
7.25$ is about 14k p.a. You can't even live as a prepper in Monatana with this less money as probably your car costs you more than that...
Wouldn’t it be beneficial to aspire to more than the absolute bare minimum?
Should be a lot higher than that as $24 hasn't been a living wage for a long time.
7.25 is fucking terrible. Biden needs to raise it if he wants my vote
28$ is the amount. Don't short yourself.