DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Biden calls to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour

As a poster, it's not his job to put forth a plan.

I don't know about you, but I'm not paid for my time on here.

My plan is to explain to you that a single mother can't live in nine dollars an hour for four months. I had no idea that was such a complicated concept.

Once again, math is not emotional. Someone sounds emotional, but it's not me.

You guys aren't paid????

Suckers. Looks like my wages for DT will be raised to $15/hour now.

I think the valid anchors for people on both sides of this issue are:

1. $15 might be appropriate or even too low for heavily-populated urban areas, BUT...

2. $15 is very costly for less populated or rural areas.

I think the fact the minimum wage has not been increased since the Great Recession is a significant justification for increasing the wage, but I don't feel like there is a substantive discussion.

I feel like this is an area where negotiations could actually occur, but both parties will resolve to try and smash each other with hammers.

Is it possible to equate a minimum wage that is based in some type of cost-of-living formula? For instance, federal employees get paid differently on the General Schedule depending on their cost of living and it's separated into regions. So someone who is a GS-14 in Dayton, Ohio gets paid differently than someone who is a GS-14 in San Francisco.

Just a thought.

And thy shall be done. God bless America.

I'm simply taking "the plan" as you have laid it out and adding a dose of reality. Now if you persist in this farce, I will find the average cost nationwide of rent, food costs, child care and other expenses, but in case you seem to forget how things are supposed to work, it up to you to provide the validity of "your plan".

Let's look at a woman with a small child and her expenses that she will have to provide.

Rent

Food

Transportation

Child care

Diapers

Formula if the child is an infant.

I could go on but these are the very basics, and only the basics one would need to provide. Now can you show me that there is any possibility that your "nine dollars an hour plan" can provide these basics for a single mother? Because as I said, if you persist I can damned well show it won't.

Dude it’s going to get done there is no negotiable fact here. This helps rural area’s as well as inner cities. If people can’t afford to pay their employees a descent wage perhaps their business is a failure and should shut down or moved to a third world country that doesn’t care if business pay employees peanuts.

See, this is a rational idea. There are areas that it wouldn't take $15 dollars an hour and there are areas that would take even more.



But the suggestion here is that we could actually get politicians from both sides to have a rational discussion and come to a logical conclusion. We both know that isn't going to happen as you pointed out.

I will say one thing, you make a good argument but one that should be told to people on the state-level. This is the federal min wage. The math behind that list is very very different depending on where you live.

That’s why the feds are raising it to $15hr. It helps rural areas as much as inner cites. It’s been proven to be beneficial. Problem is conservatives spread those crazy wild theories on how it won’t work. No substantial evidence. No quoted economists. Only spin doctors.

I actually agree with you on at least some level and responded as much to dawglover05's post.

Yeah, that's the biggest problem, and I agree.

I also agree on not setting the $15/hour as a ceiling, either. Perhaps in a place like San Fran, that should move to $20.

Now, I imagine I will get stuck between the absolutist arguments of "well maybe people should just close their business if they can't pay a fair wage" and "$15/hour will crush our economy" rather than acknowledging points, providing supporting information, and talking things through.

There will always be excuses why we should continue on the path of having a sub culture that doesn't deserve to make a living or even be able to pay for the needed essentials when working forty hours a week in America. Sensationalized comments that accuse the other side of, "Destroying America as you know it!" It's gotten us to where we are now. All anyone has to do is look around to see that doesn't work anymore.

LOL Eve once said if you can’t afford too live in the big city you should move to a place where you can afford to live. Just keeping up that enthusiasm.

Oh BTW California or any other state can raise their min above the $15 min when they want. No big deal. Doesn’t effect those of North Dakota or Montana or other rural states.

I'm not being a skeptic here...honestly inquiring: what support is there for how it helps rural areas? I admittedly haven't read anything arguing substantially in either direction, but I look at the math example that GM (I think???) provided earlier in the thread and it makes sense.

If you are running a low-margin, small business in a rural area and have to significantly increase your payroll, you may eliminate your margin or run in the red, which causes you to significantly increase your prices and hope that you maintain the same level of demand as before from consumers that will have to pay more.

One other thing I can think about - again, just pure speculation - is what if you have a supplier that travels over state lines and/or competes with an inner city supplier who might be closer to the end user? They are able to offset shipping costs and overhead because they have a lower wage expense, while employees of both companies are enjoying relatively the same quality of life. If you level out the wage field, I could see it causing some issues. Again, I don't know that for sure, though.

I'm not a small business owner, but I'd like to hear from some who are to see if this is off or to see if there is something else I'm not considering.

I'm not saying that the minimum wage doesn't need to increase, but I think jumping in the deep end without knowing if you can swim seems concerning. If we are dead set on $15/hour across the board, what about doing a phased increase, so that it is not immediately jumping in the deep end?

I'm not saying any of this is right, but there needs to be more discussion on policy across the board and less dismissiveness.

Haha, I agree. The problem is that nobody wants to look around, though.

$15hr is a done deal. Why argue a moot point? You are dismissed.

To everyone on the board who wonders how Liberals lose swing voters to "unwinnable candidates", please see Exhibit A above.

I missed that. Must've hit submit right before I did, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to post mine. Thank you for the video.

This would probably help my business since most of my clientele is young people.

However, I feel it will mostly cause inflation and we will be at square one again.

We’ll find out soon enough.

Some inflation is generally thought to be a good thing -- when there is no inflation, there is very little slack in the system to restart economic slowdowns.

You can argue $$$ and months all you want, but the fact remains:

A standard minimum wage progression as outlined in my post makes a lot more sense than they lazy plan of $15/hour minimum.

A plan based on what it costs to live where you are located make sense. Not, "We'll let you make enough to live on..... eventually."

For that to be correct and even reasonable you'd have to prove that Minimum wage has even come close to inflation!

It hasn't

Who makes minimum wage for more than a few months?

Friends daughter made $17 an hour this past summer, with all the o.t. she wanted. (mainly because, around here at least, finding people that show up for 40 hours a week and can pass a drug test is tough)

McDonalds starts you off at $10 an hour.

There are factory jobs galore starting you at $12 to $18, full time, with full benefits.

I know of 1 company that adds $1 an hour if you actually show up for 40 hours - they start you at $14. Put in 40 hours, you made $15 an hour.

Companies working 7 days a week, IF the employee wants the o.t.

Should the fed. min. wage increase? Sure. But many states already mandate higher than the fed. min. wage.

And remember, rural areas aren't San Fran, or Chicago, or NYC.

Plus, again, who's making min. wage for even 6 months? Part time jobs are not, and never have been, designed to be self supporting, career jobs.

Which brings me to the second part of this I wanted to bring up. What happens to folks like me who are on a fixed income. We can't afford for prices to go up as our incomes don't/won't. So we get screwed once again.

Your letting your hatred cloud your judgement. But that's for another thread.

I assume fixed incomes would also be increased (they are at least indexed to inflation, right?)... I don't know which type of fixed income.

I believe it would be much more 'Real Life' is you assumed that fixed income doesn't go up.

It will cost jobs and raise prices. It will also hurt those on fixed incomes.

It won't be bad for a while.

The negatives are it lowers morale. The person now making $16 an hour isn't going to get a boost.

In fairly short order inflation will suck it up.

A question, President-elect Biden said for people working 40 hours. What happens if people don't work 40 hours? Is the kid working part-time while in HS going to make $15 per hour as their starting pay on their first job?

It's just a band-aid. Give it a few years and people will be clamoring for $20 per hour.

Again, not trying to be argumentative here. I agree, people do need to make more money. I have no beef with that. I just don't see minimum wage as the vehicle to achieve that.

It hasn't worked in the past.

I had the same thought... what jobs are paying $7.50 right now??

My company last year actually decided to raise their own minimum wage to $15 so any employee earning under that got an automatic raise and then I think anyone slightly over got a raise...

Not sure what kind of impact this would have nationally... it's past time to raise it... not sure if it should jump to doubled but I also don't know how many people are currently working at minimum wage other than teens

My daughter, when she worked, wasn't even making minimum wage. She was making more.

All these jacks saying 'you can't raise a family making minimum wage' need to realize any body with any sort of work ethic is NOT making minimum wage. It's all politics.


And, as a friend say just 2 days ago "If $15 an hour gets passed, I will also expect a $7 an hour raise." (he makes decent money as a farm equipment mechanic).

The idiots that are for this have no clue what it will do. But, it sounds good, for their party. I've noticed those in favor of it have nev..........eh, I need to quit.

Raise the damn minimum wage to $15 an hour, then see what follows with prices for consumer goods. People bitch about jobs going overseas? Just wait The damn people in this country won't currently work for $12-17 an hour, with benefits.

The new burger chef makes $3 an hour and never goes home. (It’s a robot)

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-27/flippy-fast-food-restaurant-robot-arm

They sure as hell won't increase with inflation. Social Security increased 1.3 percent for 2021. For the average person that means about a $19 per month increase, but medicare went up about 4 bucks a month. That leaves a whopping $15.00 per month.

Current inflation rate for 2020 was 1.2 percent, so I assume that is about what it was...

$19 is a sadly small extra though...

That is "core" inflation. Things like food, energy, and health care aren't included in those numbers.

I understand why those aren't included, but when the rubber hits the road, seniors and low income folks have to pay for it.

j/c

The message I'm seeing from reading the latest posts in this thread are, "Since it might hurt me, let's punish working people that are working 40 hours a week and can't make a living".

We can make excuses why there are people working that shouldn't be able to make a living wage and we can continue to promote poverty among our workers. We can keep allowing companies and corporations to pay wages so low that our tax dollars pay their employees healthcare, subsidize their housing and food costs. It seems that nobody seems to be bothered by the fact your tax dollars go to pay their workers benefits. Unless of course you don't believe they deserve that either.

To pretend that "well I know a place", or "well my kid" is an accurate description of what's going on in this country is trying to present what you see in a microscope represents what's going on in the universe. It's not. So if someone makes above minimum wage, what is that wage? $9 an hour? That's still not what minimum wage should be.

One thing I'll never do is begrudge the next generation from making a living just because the government isn't fair to my generation.

Not trying to cherry pick quotes out of context, apologies if that's how this perceived. For background I am probably right leaning on the topic of minimum wage however I do tend to agree that the wealth distribution is out of balance from an economic health perspective.

If the goal of the minimum wage hike is to redistribute income from the top to the bottom my reaction is that it will fail. Nominal incomes may rise but as you pointed out in another post, prices and costs will too. As consumers, the upper and upper middle class are fairly inelastic when it comes to the price of necessities because they have disposable income and wealth. You could double the cost of toilet paper without changing their behavior.

On the other hand, the lower income households are much more sensitive to price increases - doubling the price of toilet paper would likely produce a change in behavior for them. The upper and upper middle class won't keep prices for their goods and services static, they will pass it onto the consumer, which in turn will ultimately hurt the people this wage hike was designed to help.

From a demand perspective, increasing wages should increase consumer demand and spending since we're all competing against each other for the same resources. As demand goes up, so will prices. And this will apply to more than just TP. Rent, food, transportation. The necessities.

The people who were making $16/hour who don't get their wages increase are now worse off. The upper and upper middle class (who I am not trying to vilify, to be clear) really have no change in their day to day or even long term existence, income, or wealth.

I support a minimum wage hike but I do not believe it should be $15 for the entire nation at this point in time. There's a number that reduces the risk of worker exploitation (using that word loosely here) without the danger of drastic changes to employment and pricing practices. It's just very hard to put a price on it for the entire country.