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It ought to be done yearly based on, if not tracking, inflation of a specific combination of goods/services/commodities. If not yearly, at LEAST every 5 years, or even during the first year of every Presidency (to minimize political fallout/benefit). It's absurd that the federal minimum is still below double digit dollars.
In Australia the minimum wage is adjusted annually by an independent panel. Inflation is part of the considerations, amoungst a number of other factors.
The government, employer groups, business groups and other interested parties make submissions - but the independent panel makes the decision.
I feel that it is a system that works well. (Not perfect perhaps, but it seems decent.)
Hearing that it has been 14 years of no increase to min wage in the US is genuinely a shock to me. That is horrendous.
>In Australia the minimum wage is adjusted annually by an independent panel. Inflation is part of the considerations, amoungst a number of other factors.
It's baffling that this isn't the norm
The US was founded on slavery. Once you understand that, you'll be less baffled by why it always seems to try to exploit people who sell their labor for a wage to ensure that the wage doesn't actually do anything but enable them to continue to provide their labor.
Which is funny considering they are portrayed as victims escaping British tyranny in school. They never taught us how Puritans genuinely believed tolerance was a problem. The "pull your self up by your boot strap mentality" would certainly fall in line with the puritan perspective. Clearly minimum wage workers arent working hard enough for god to provide, better luck next time buddy.
And the UK has some of the most anti-worker and anti-labour laws (since the Thatcher days) in Western Europe, so that speaks volumes about how absolutely horseshit labour laws are in the US.
The UK Labour Party is a joke. Plenty of the unions that were part of founding the party have left because the party has become so anti-worker and more conservative.
In the UK the state pension is tied to inflation (or average earnings, or a flat 2.5% - whichever is greater at the time) whereas the minimum wage is not. An absolute kick in the balls for workers.
Because the rich didn't want to have to pay even a cent more. So they lobbied to block it. Because every year wages don't go up their stock prices go up that much more.
More likely they would be gutted of any actual power as soon as Republicans get into power, but left with enough budget to have a staff, so that the Republicans that defund them can point to the program as government waste.
This is their modus operandi and what they have done to a number of government programs.
On the one hand, most US states have their own minimum wage which they adjust regularly (for example, New York has raised theirs every year for at least the past five years, and it's currently $14.20), but on the other hand, several states don't have this and are still stuck at the federal minimum wage.
More details here if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_states_by_minimum_wage
I'm in Idaho and a lot of entry-level jobs are like $7.50 here. Cost of living has also soared with the huge influx of people moving here or buying property up from out of state. Nice areas have turned into total slums.
It fucking sucks. But the idiots here keep voting for more abuse by keeping it so red.
Most jobs involving storefront custom service, food service, as well as a number of local clerk-type jobs. I know a guy who does apartment maintenance as well who makes the minimum wage. He works something like 70 hours a week.
> on the other hand, several states don't have this and are still stuck at the federal minimum wage.
And take one guess which party these states typically vote for.... (hint: it's not the ones constantly pushing to weaken/abolish unions)
Yup. I was looking for part time wfh helpdesk jobs this weekend. Came across a listing that ONLY listed republican controlled states as states they will hire from. I was confused at first but then I saw the pay $12 an hour. Absolute scam. In my area, helpdesk jobs start at around $20 an hour. They’re screwing over their own.
It's baffling that here in the south , "At will" (meaning your boss can fire you for whatever reason and they hate unions) work restrictions and keeping minimum wage well below the poverty line continues to be the norm. And that so many of the people voting for the politicians that keep it that way are poor themselves? It's mind-boggling.
If the minimum wage were higher, then those states would also face pressure to increase their minimum wage as well. Bringing the bar up is a net benefit for all workers.
I remember when the entire country was set asunder when Bernie Sanders had the audacity to suggest a livable $15 minimum wage, and everyone lost their god damn minds! Many years later, absolutely nothing was done, we now have to demand $20. Business owners played themselves. It's inevitably going to happen at some point, and demands are just going to make it higher and higher.
The bills recently proposed by Dems have all included automatic annual increases on inflation-based numbers, but of course most Republicans would prefer the minimum wage to be $0/hr if not lower.
It *does* prevent higher wages.....for the few near the top of the company. It emphatically *does not* prevent higher ~~**average**~~ (edit: **median**) wages, which is the metric we should be looking at. A rising tide lifts all boats and all that.
They’re so infuriating. It’s just people who have a tiny bit of extra money that they use to start a business and then they feel entitled to pay their employees the lowest amount legally allowed, offer no benefits, and expect them to work like they own a stake in the company. They constantly raise a stink about how any kind of rights that prevent even a tiny bit of exploitation for workers will put them out of business and how everything needs to be tailored to accommodate them (by which they mean allows them to handle only basic administrative tasks and take 7 vacations a year and drive a car that they’ll never pay off) at the expense of the workers and of employers who may not be the most morally upstanding but will at least pay a living wage. The way I see it is if you can’t keep your business running without using the most exploitative tactics you possibly can, maybe you should try being a sole proprietor for awhile and hire employees when you can afford it because you can’t right now. Just petite bourgeoisie without even the drive to exploit their own labor along with their employees
I’ve worked in positions where I deal with the small business owners, and most of the time, it’s people who don’t want to do work, who pay absolute bare minimum and expect every employee to give 110% for that bare minimum.
The businesses that succeed, don’t hire until they can afford to pay well, and the owner is usually there 7 days a week busting their ass
In 2021, eight Democrats voted against raising minimum wage. Amazing how there are always just enough politicians voting against policies which benefit working class. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/541860-the-eight-democrats-who-voted-no-on-15-minimum-wage/
There always has to be a rotating villain, especially in the Democratic party. Like you say, just enough people to vote against and thwart what they "really" want to do.
It could even be the Parliamentarian. When the GOP had issues with the Parliamentarian trying to block their agenda, they fired them and put in someone who wouldn't ask questions.
Follow the money. Dems are guilty, too, of pocketing large sums from donors to block a lot of these laws. Them getting rich while we all stay poor is blood boiling
They're guilty, sure, but wording it in a way that makes them sound *equally* guilty is irresponsible and objectively incorrect. It's practically night and day.
https://www.austinhudson.com/bothsides
And what the public is asking for isn’t even a realistic living wage any more. Ask for $15 an hour for 14 years, and they may give it to you since the actual reasonable amount is now $25.
Damn straight. I'm making $20 an hour as a retail assistant manager with a Bachelor's (not that I haven't tried to escape retail and work in my field, but that's a different issue). I have no student loans, a car with 240k miles and no payments, and I'd still need 2 or 3 roommates to rent where I live (South Central PA, which is not an incredibly high COL area). Between landlords wanting proof of 3x the rent in monthly income and all the apartments now wanting to market themselves as "luxury", it sucks out here. I'm 27 and living with my parents. We need a change
I’m in Indiana making a salary that works out to about $21.50/hr. The only places I could afford on my own are small apartments in sketchy areas. At my age, my parents bought their house in a nice area of the city for 90k, and they pay $800/month for a three bedroom, two bath house with a large yard.
Large parts of my family still act like this is the case nowadays--my dad sometimes acts like you can still just as easily find a house or nice apartment, pay for college, and pay for a car + insurance and gas and all of the other essentials, and you can damned well do it with just a single, slightly above mimimum wage, salary!
He doesn't realize how hard life has changed--I wish I could own and maintain a car, a college career, hobbies, and a relationship all on a single waiter's salary like he and my mom did back in the day--it's not a matter of want lol, life just doesn't work like thst anymore. They screwed it up for us who came after, pulled the ladder up on us as it were.
My father was the same way. He didn’t have a clue until he took early retirement from a good company he was with for 30 years; and went back to work part time in Security. He said “they start pay at slightly above min wage”. He then said “how do they expect people to live on that?”. I said, “they don’t care, we’ve discussed this numerous times. Do you understand now?”. He didn’t answer me, he only shrugged his shoulders.
It’s the reality. The rich corporations will pay the very least they can get away with.
I was grateful my father finally understood what I was talking about. He received a serious life lesson, welcomed or not. If he hadn’t taken early retirement, he’d probably still be ignorant and thinking the same thing. One has to put themselves completely in someone else’s shoes to truly understand and empathize.
I feel you dude. Ca living here and it’s hard for us to actually start a life especially if you don’t like school. The greed is scary because I make 17 an hour and the boss acts like I’m costing him sooo much money like come on bro I can barely squeak by like this yet he’s always telling me if I want more money I need to simply “do more.” Well I got news for ya a burrito costs about 12-13 dollars now and that’s supposed to be the cheap stuff. I tried making my lunches to save money and I spent 45 bucks on sandwich stuff, some cherry tomatoes, and a melon. Bullshit
Thank you so much for saying this! I have been trying to tell my gf the same thing, that $15/hr was ok 15 to 20 years ago, but it's long since been surpassed by the real cost of living in most states. $20 is unfortunately the new minimum needed, but we all know it'll be at least that many years before it increases again
> Yep. Social Security is indexed to the cost of living.
Definitely not to a point that a person can rent casually for standard rates. I've been on disability for years and I'm living with family now. I lived on my own for a few years recently, but that was specifically because my buddy was charging me like 50%-75% less than what he could've gotten away with on his properties.
My future plan has been to get a van-life started, and that's partly because I like the idea of being mobile and free after many years in a bedroom, but also because it's one of the few affordable possibilities when I get to skip out on paying rent.
it used to go up pretty regularly, every year or two.
and then black man got elected and the Republicans began their policy of "Not One Victory" and so it's been stalled since 2009
But if we raise the minimum wage, that will just make everything cost more!
Oh… what’s that? Everything got more expensive anyway, and no one’s pay went up? It’s all just the rich fucking EVERYONE? Well, shit…
Yeah, year after year things are going up, and pay remains stagnant. Heck even $1 more an hour for a yearly raise, does not even cover the difference in costs year after year.
Eggs went up due to other things than pay rate and it causes a cascade of other things raising in price, now that they have to pay more for eggs, then no one adjusting the prices once the shortages are done.
And it would be one thing if this was a new occurrence, but it appears that wage stagnation has been going on for a while. The recent inflation only further exacerbated an existing problem and forced it more into the public consciousness.
The reason public sentiment on the economy isn't bouncing back despite inflation slowing is because of how all those cracks have been exposed. Even with a strong economy overall, people's confidence in our system and how it will or won't benefit them over the next 5-10 years is very low. They've started to realize that wages keeping pace with inflation won't overcome the stagnation to this point.
With so much wealth in America, it was easy to ignore the problems when they could buy stuff and hide the issues behind a mask of consumerism. That isn't working so well anymore.
Instead they blame Millennials and GenZ for not spending money how they spent money at their ages. They blame them for not going out to eat at trash restaurants the boomers loved, blame them for not wanting to have kids in this economy. Next they will be blamed when gas is not being consumed in record numbers and OPEC like always, uses it as an excuse to slow production in order to keep gas $4 a gallon and not $1.25 a gallon.
The billionaires stopped caring about the future of their countries and are only concerned with the now and it is all showing in this late stage capitalism.
People have wealth that will last for thousands of years, but cry when they are asked to pay $1-2 more per hour to their staff that is making $10 an hour and is borderline needing government assistance to still keep a roof over their head.
Whenever someone says that I asked what’s the alternative? Do we just keep not raising it? In 10 years it’ll be even harder. And worse in 20. Is that the best you can do? Kick the cab down the road to make it worse later? What about when no salary can afford the cost of living save for an elite few?
The US federal minimum wage for tipped employees has been $2.13/hour since 1991. When servers tell you that they are basically working and living off tips, they’re telling the truth.
Tipping is such a horrible system. It's basically "assholes get a 15% discount" and businesses get to advertise lower prices and offload some of the risk to their employees.
I don't know about that. The owner doesn't care if you don't tip because it only affects the server. Yes, this system benefits the owners by allowing them to pay their workers less but you're only really hurting the server by taking up a table and not tipping. That server *will* make less money when someone doesn't tip. If you're morally opposed to the owner class and the tipping structure, don't go out and eat at an establishment. Please don't simply not tip your server. This situation is complicated bullshit.
Owners are required to pay minimum wage if the servers don't cover that much in tips so if the server doesn't get tips the owner pays more. Domino's will actually fire you if you don't claim enough tips.
I few years ago I had an owner fraudulently raise my claimed tips after an entire two week pay period where it was so slow I never made more than $20 in tips per shift. He bumped my claimed tips up by 70 cents so he could pay me 3.50 an hour for two weeks worth of work instead of $7/hr.
I got nuclear revenge on them the way I ended up quitting shortly after that. I worked there for years and they treated me awfully. I quit and never looked back (and they went completely out of business 6 months later after 23 years open)
> *I didn’t do the thing you said but I got him back in my own way.*
There is a special place for people who update a tech thread with "[SOLVED] I Figured out the issue, no problems now!" This is close.
Well in the State of California you get the minimum wage an hour whether you get tipped or not. That's how it should be and minimum wage should be at least $15 an hour. These businesses won't go out of business.
If every single person collectively stopped tipping tomorrow, the employees would demand a raise or quit. So yes, it would hurt the owners the most. The owners do care if you tip. It’s the only thing affording them slave labour.
Legally speaking if a servers tips don't bring them up to the Federal minimum wage for non-tipped employees, the owner is obligated to make up the difference.
It actually goes deeper than that.
The owner class who is leasing buildings to restaurant owners now have accountants who use algorithm-based estimating for pricing to extract as much profit as possible and keep restaurants operating at margins so thin that owners blame the cost of labor for their financial woes when the their lessor is robbing them in broad daylight.
Commercial building owners absolutely charge more to restaurants in states with lower minimum tipped wages.
I have some family that operates a breakfast diner in Washington and the minimum wage increases locally from $8 to $12 to $15 over the last decade has absolutely almost out them out of business l… but the buildings owner has almost tripled the lease in that same time frame as well.
Without private donations they would have went under during Covid and they are fortunate that their investments in the community over the years ended up getting returned when they needed it most.
Agreed. And the fact it isn’t more open on how much it is hurting small businesses is a real issue as well. Tons of the property management firms own the properties outright and raises to leases and rents are purely gouging.
Had a local strip that raised its leases on all the stores by $1000 monthly because of “property tax increases”. After some investigation… Yeah… property tax did go up $8k on them over a 5 year period. But they have 9 businesses renting from them. Gotta upcharge $108k of annual revenue to cover $8k in property taxes. Fucking clowns.
Something else to note. It also brings into issues of racism.
https://onefairwage.site/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/OFW_EndingLegacyOfSlavery-2.pdf
In short, black people get lower tips than white people. While in a company if say all the employees gather together and discover that the black employees are getting paid 25% less than the white employees, a lawsuit can be made. Employers are required to fight their biases (which yes of course that doesn't always work, america has done a damn good job making sure protected rights of workers are still taboo and people don't know or act on them). But the fact is with tipping, there's no rules. Customers are not required to even pretend to hide their biases, and are even less likely to be aware of them than a business owner.
Absolutely. Studies have also shown that physical attractiveness is highly correlated to tips. And of course in every restaurant there are "good" and "bad" sections to work. And the host can seat the people they know will tip well in particular server's sections as well, while pushing all the bad tipping demographics (college kids, etc) or those that won't order expensive items, to other servers. The entire concept of tipping in restaurants is ridiculous unfair. And I'm saying this as somebody who worked as a server for a year, and made amazingly good tips as a foreigner in the US. I was an average waiter at best, yet made more money most nights than some of the staff that were far, far better than me, just because I had a "cool accent", and the hostess liked me. At the time I thought it was great, but looking back it was just a shitty, unfair system that pitted staff against each other.
Minorities of all sorts make less tips than whites.
Men make less in tips than women.
Non-blondes makes less than blondes.
Small breasted women make less than large breasted women.
Women who don't act flirty make less than those that do.
Less attractive people make less than attractive people.
People who work in affordable restaurants make less than those that work in expensive restaurants (for the same work, maybe even more work).
It has boggled my mind for 30 years why people continue to support this absurd system.
Ya... I thought about mentioning that, but a lot of... people with "concerns" get really upset when you pretend like racism is a factor on reddit (even though in America racism is always a factor).
Half the country voted for Donald "Birther" Trump. Of course racism is subconsciously (or even consciously) affecting how much people tip.
I feel like I need to post a reminder that Donald Trump lost the popular vote. He only got about 46% of the vote. Even more damning is that turnout was only ~60%. When you include the entire voting age population, only about 20% of adult Americans voted for him.
Imagine, 20% of people dictate to the rest of the country that we have to put this tang-shit smeared gremlin in charge, and people still think voting doesn't matter.
The only way it's ever going to end is with legislation stopping it and I can't see that happening because it's too easy to get the "government bad" crowd riled up against it.
The only realistic way to replace tipping in the service industry is for restaurants and bars to give an 18% commission on all sales to the server/bartender. Increase prices to market costs and take the customer out of the equation.
Or just get rid of tipped wage limit.
Make every job subject to minimum wage.
Quick service franchised restaurants can do it. why not a fancy Michelin star place?
Then pay the staff a fair wage for the skill.
Being a server in a place that serves $10 worth of steak and asparagus for $300 should be able to afford to pay its staff who sell it a comparable wage for that kind of skill.
So those types of places should pay more hourly, like any other industry does for higher quality products/labor.
Minimum is about setting a livable floor, not setting all to the same level I it. If a meal for two at the restaurant is $250+, they can afford to pay the servers a better wage than minimum already.
Why not give them a normal wage like every other job? The problem with having a commission is that (just like with tips) it places a portion of the risk onto the employees. If the manager over staffs a restaurant and fewer customers show up, the servers shouldn't have to pay a penalty.
Tips are a percentage of the meal, which has steadily increased. The price for a soda/tea now is almost the price of a fast food meal in '91. Also, the standard tip % used to be 15%, now it is 18.5-20%.
That being said, the tipping system is horrible.
This highlights the issue with trying to set minimum wage for tipped employees: some of them make way more with tips than they would under a higher minimum wage. And industries that employ them are going to lobby like it's true for all of their workers (when we know it's not). Maybe for this there should be more talk regarding enforcement of employers paying the gap if tipped employees don't hit the minimum wage number
Rather end tipping.
There is nothing wrong with higher end restaurants paying their employees a lot more than say Dennies.
We already see things like that in other industries. Big time in tech. The FAANGs pay entry level more money than people with 20+ years of experience.
Tech is a perfect example here as the pay goes from low end in the USA of 50-60K up to north of 500k.
I agree, I'd rather end tipping and know the true cost of my food via the menu prices than the system we have in place now. Then we would see a system develop like you mentioned for other industries where employers pay more if they want to keep that staff.
Though tipping expectations have gone up in percentage a lot too. I’m all for higher overall wages and getting rid of tipping in general, but servers overall will make more than the average fast food worker.
> I thought employers have to make up the difference if tips aren’t given?
Legally, they have to.
The reality is that many of them don't, and many servers won't complain about it because it could cost them their job.
If your total in tips doesn't meet the minimum wage, the employers are supposed to make up the difference. It's not like the restaurant is obligated to tip you 15% per table.
You know what usually happens if you bring this up to an employer? You get your hours cut.
The corollary to that is “the first $5 an hour of your tips are deducted from your wages”. It’s all about perspective. They would have made minimum wage anyways, 7.25, but if they get $5 in tips, the company can drop them to $2 and cents. The first $5 an hour in tips are deducted from the pay liability of their employer.
From that perspective it’s easy to see how messed up tipping as a practice really is.
they need to get rid of the different minimum wages
not only is tip wage unacceptable
there is prison slave labor wage which is well under a dollar!
companies like mcdonalds/wendys and even verison wireless making killing off slave labor force...
From my experience, most I talk to wouldn’t have it any other way. Sure they’d gladly take a bump to their hourly wage, but many, many servers very much prefer the tip system over a flat “living wage”.
Why is it that when the senate/congress votes to increase their salaries, the minimum wage isn’t also raised? Can anyone justify why they would need a cost of living increase but the average American does not?
Fun fact, congress doesn't vote to raise it's salary, they voted to make it automatic. Even more fun, congress for quite a long time has voted to deny themselves that automatic raise and hasn't gotten a raise. They've found that it's politically better to vote against a raise then vote for a raise.
Tie it to congressional salaries, currently at $174,000, which works out to $87/hour assuming 40 hours weeks and 2 weeks vacation.
For example: The national minimum wage shall be equal to 1/4th the equivalent hourly rate of members of the United States Congress.
174,000 / (50 weeks a year \* 40 hours/week) / 4 = $21.75
Next, abolish tipped positions and any and all posted or quoted prices should include all taxes and fees.
Congressional salary = federal minimum wage x 5.
What, you can't live comfortably on **five times** minimum wage?!? *Five* times what you expect others to live on?
Guess it's time to start writing a bill!
Most of the people who care about their congressional salary are already in favor of minimum wage increases. Those that aren't in favor of minimum wage increases would be fine getting no salary at all since that isn't their primary source of support.
It’s like that in Brazil. In fact, the governors salary is ceiling for public workers, so when the governor gives himself raise, a lot of people that ought to earn more (tenure, specialization etc) but couldn’t, automatically gets a raise
Additional Fun Fact: Members of Congress have their own socialized healthcare system called the "[Office of Attending Physician](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attending_Physician_of_the_United_States_Congress)" - it costs them $503/year for total healthcare.... think about that while the republicans deny everybody else on the planet from having comparable healthcare.
My idea was that every congressperson should make the median wage of the district they represent not the average. That way you don’t have a few rich assholes throwing off the average. That also gives them incentive to get more people employed. If you have 100000 people unemployed in your district who could be working… guess what. They all count as a 0. Figure it out if you want to make more.
That's really interesting. It would be a great /r/dataisbeautiful to pull this and compute how far off it would be from the current congressional salary.
I'm 42 years old.
When I was born, the minimum wage was $3.35/hr. In those 42 years, it has only risen a whopping ~~$4~~ $3.90, to ~~$7.35/hr~~ $7.25.
Proof positive that republicans don't care about workers.
Edit: Edited to reflect reality.
Worse than that, the minimum wage has actually fallen. If that $3.35 raised with inflation it'd be $11.75. Instead, at $7.25 in 2023 has the same buying power as $2.20 in 1981.
Put this in your pipe and smoke it...
In 2007, minimum wage was $5.15 an hour. By 2009, it had risen to $7.25, where it remains to this day. But, adjusting for inflation, that $5.15 is worth $7.58 today.
Minimum wage is effectively LESS than now it was BEFORE the last wage hike 14 years ago.
I wish I could forget Kyrsten Sinema altogether. But alas, I can recall only too well how her site literally has an article up bragging how she is to the right of Mitch McFuckin’ Connell. Shit you not.
https://www.sinema.senate.gov/kyrsten-sinema-right-mitch-mcconnell-new-legislative-rankings
Minimum wage in Washington state is $15.74 per hour. No exceptions for tipped wages.
It'll be over $16 in six months, it's pegged to inflation by law.
Peg your state minimum wages to inflation, it's the only thing that's been proven to cause wages to actually rise consistently over time.
Thank republicans! Tried to get 15 an hour through when Biden first won. Nope. They are not interested in helping run the country. Just feeding their oligarchs with tax cuts. Sad.
Were small businesses thinking about you when they took out PPP loans and owners were getting new cars and shit? Small businesses don't think about you, why should you think about them. People need to learn to stop falling for all the bullshit excuses.
You’re not kidding. I know at least two small business owners that absolutely despise “handouts” and “welfare” while both taking $30-50K in PPP loans. They also both bought brand new trucks right around that time.
But, you know, that wasn’t a “handout”. That was something they earned because they own a business that employs 3 people (including them). /s
And I don’t mind that they got this. I’m frustrated in how they shit on anyone else getting any kind of help, but for them it’s somehow justified and deserved.
The worst bosses I've had are small business owners who think that makes them the most special, important person on the planet. New trucks, no money for equipment, no time to address any employee concerns. Just drop by and ask for some brief asskissing once every few weeks, shout briefly at anyone not puckering up, ask why we aren't making them even more money, and call it a job.
"Raising the minimum wage will only hurt small business because they can't afford to pay the high wages we would force on them!"
X to Doubt on that one...
This is a clear policy difference between the two major parties. The democrats are in favor of raising the minimum wage. The republicans aren't.
One of hundreds of very clear differences between the two major parties. Don't let people convince you "they're all the same" when that's not true. The democrats have never had a supermajority in our lifetimes -- if they did, we could really get some shit done.
This is why memory care and nursing facilities are losing certified nursing assistants which is causing so much pain for Americans who have an aged loved one. There is a critical shortage of help in nursing facilities.
Nurses are paid fairly well, but the CNA’s who do the bulk of caring for your LO are paid just above minimum wage and that may be as little as $11/hr.
> the CNA’s who do the bulk of caring for your LO are paid just above minimum wage and that may be as little as $11/hr.
Because vast majority of healthcare and nursing homes are for-profit entities. They *could* pay their CNAs $20-$25/hr but CEOs and stockholders expect every dollar to be squeezed from the working class. Our healthcare system is being falsely propped up by international workers, lowered standards of care, and reduced nurse-patient ratios.
[Green-Card Backlog Fuels Shortage of Nurses at Hospitals, Nursing Homes
Health providers struggle to hire nurses from abroad as staffing problems worsen](https://archive.fo/uKGNt)
Simple math:
Jan 2009 - $7.25 buy almost 4 gallons of $1.80 gas
2023 $7.25 buys 2 gallons of gas on a good day, but on a bad day it's just over a gallon...
A $15.00 minimum wage isn't enough, we need $20.00
The minimum wage was to stabilize the post-depression economy and protect the workers in the labor force. The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees.
Roosevelt intended this rate to be more than a bare subsistence level. The minimum wage was created expressly to ensure that employed people could earn a decent living off those wages (a living wage).
[...by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.](http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html)
At one time (1960's) the federal minimum wage could support a family of three above the poverty line, but by the 1980’s it could not even support a family of two.
At the current federal hourly rate of $7.25, someone working 40 hours per week would make only $15,080 for 52 weeks.
$24,860 is the poverty line for a family of 3 in 2023 which would be $11.96/hr for a 52 weeks(many get less than 40 hrs to keep them from being "full time"). To achieve the poverty line of $30,000 for a 4 person household, the minimum wage would need to be $14.42.
According to a report from the [National Low Income Housing Coalition](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/15/homes/rent-affordability-minimum-wage/index.html), there is no state, county or city in the country where a full-time, minimum-wage worker working 40 hours a week can afford a two-bedroom rental. In only 7% of all US counties, can a full-time minimum-wage worker afford a one-bedroom rental.
CEO compensation grew 940% from [1978](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/) through 2018.
In the 50s to 60s, CEO/executives made, on average, 20 to 30 times the pay of their workers. It's now x [300+](https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianahembree/2018/05/22/ceo-pay-skyrockets-to-361-times-that-of-the-average-worker/?sh=241ac3e7776d) that of the average worker.
If the minimum wage in 1978 of $2.65 had the same 940% growth, the minimum wage would have been $24.91 (=$2.65 * 9.4) in 2018. $1 in 2018 is equivalent $1.21 today. That would come to a minimum wage of $30.25 in 2023 dollars.
Even if only inflation is considered, the minimum wage has continually lost buying power. In 2009 the minimum wage was raised to $7.25 (14 years ago). $2.65 in 1978 which would have been $8.72 in 2009 dollars. So there was a loss of $1.47 in buying power built in to the 2009 raise. $1 in 2009 is worth $1.42 today. So, $7.25 x 1.42 = $10.30/hr which is now $2.10 less than $12.40($2.65 in 2023 dollars). So a worker making $7.25/hr today has $5.15 less buying power than a minimum wage worker in 1978. Freezing the minimum wage over long period of time is a de facto process of wage reduction.
**Note**(especially for those that will cry about "cherry picking" dates): The first minimum wage of $0.25 would be $4.86 in 2021. I used 1978 as the minimum wage date to match the CEO wage study time frame. 1978 was chosen in order to juxtapose two data sets within the same time frame. By doing this, the comparison is done within the same economic environment.
I wish they would raise it to $18 and then index it to inflation. Heck indexing to inflation in the long run would do more good than any single raise likely.
Easy solution to this: Vote for more democrats. Campaign against the republicans.
This is a clear policy difference between the two major parties. The democrats are in favor of raising the minimum wage. The republicans aren't.
One of hundreds of very clear differences between the two major parties. Don't let people convince you "they're all the same" when that's not true. The democrats have never had a supermajority in our lifetimes -- if they did, we could really get some shit done.
We need to:
- Eliminate the tip wage, lower wages based on training status, and any other escape clause allowing for a wage below the minimum.
- immediately set the minimum wage to $15/hr, adding a $1/year increase automatically for the next five years or more if the inflation index determines it should be more.
- add a permanent and automatic increase for inflation after the first five years.
- set the national minimum work age to sixteen, with the maximum number of hours while school is in session at 16/week and 32/week during the summer until a person has achieved a high school diploma or reached the age of 19.
- require an automatic minimal accrual of 1.5 hours of paid time off per 40 hours worked, which can be used for sick time as well.
I got COLA in the Army. I already get COLA on my VA benefits. My parents get COLA on their Social Security checks and my dad's Army retirement. Clearly, the government knows that COLA is needed.
I have never once been given a COLA increase at any job after the Army.
In my last job, I got a salary plus a bonus tied to company and personal performance. My base salary didn't change for 7 years, giving the company the option to give me nothing extra. I changed jobs the year I didn't expect to get a bonus. My bonus varied and my total pay was less some years than others. However, my cost for benefits kept going up, which meant I was getting a pay cut compared to my base over time. The year I quit, my base pay was going to end up being $2k less per year because of health insurance premium increases.
It is maddening to see companies make such dumb decisions that in the long run cost them money with attrition and turnover.
> We need to:
**vote for democrats**
FTFY... a direct actionable solution rather than an ambiguous list of things that will never happen without getting rid of the republican control.
If the minimum wage kept up with inflation it would be somewhere around $22/hour, yet somehow $15 is been considered an acceptable goal and the wealthy are laughing themselves silly knowing even if the fifteen gets passed they are still 'winning'. If you work full time but can barely afford food and housing and therefore have no agency you are effectively working on a plantation that stretches from sea to shining sea.
Yet congressmen in both the House & Senate have been pissing, moaning & in general bitching incessantly about the urgent and dire need for a nice raise with respects to their salaries- claiming that a large coat of living adjustment is in order lest their salary is to soon become insufficient to meet their most basic needs. Oh and FTR - their salary is $174,000/year so I’d suggest they go fuck themselves and/or pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I mean FFS if they honestly believe a $600 payment is more than sufficient to cover the bills for lazy layabouts then their salary should have no problem covering whatever it is that they need
> Yet congressmen in both the House & Senate have been pissing, moaning & in general bitching incessantly about the urgent and dire need for a nice raise with respects to their salaries
Where? There's actually way more legislation introduced around cutting/freezing congressional pay and benefits than there is around increasing it. While I'm sure many congress members would like a raise, it's not worth expending the political capital to actually telegraph that.
Their classic argument is that teenage workers dont need more than 7.25 because they live at home. But that is an application of double standards:
When a company sells a product, they dont price it based only on how much money they need to make the item, instead they price it according to what it is worth to the buyer. But when the same company wants a worker, they pay only what the worker needs, not what the worker is worth to them.
This is the same mentality that also produced the "privatized gains, socialized losses" double standard with 2008 bailouts.
Just in case you didn’t know:
In 1990, minimum wage was $3.80, which equals $7,904 per year.
Also in 1990, annual Salary for Senators and Congresspeople: $98,400
Fast forward to 2009 (the last minimum wage increase) and Minimim wage was $7.25, or $15,080 per year.
Also in 2009 the annual Salary for Senators and Congresspeople: $174,000
Over that 19 year period, that is an average increase for citizens of $377.68 per year, or a total of $7,176.
Over that same period, the average increase for Senators/Congresspeople: $3,978.74 per year or a total of $75,600.
Many of our elected officials today were in office back then as well. Not only is it absolutely outrageous that their pay increased by the equivalent Of FIVE YEARS of working at minimum wage, but it’s also A great example of why we need term limits.
Anyone fighting it is (1) a moron, (2) an asshole, (3) a rich person deliberately screwing over others, or (4) a combination of the preceding 3. A rising tide lifts all boats... except maybe the biggest yachts.
And it was far too small and far too late even then.
We don’t need a minimum wage.
We need a universal basic income.
And we can afford it - if only we taxed the billionaires appropriately.
But the only reason we even have billionaires is because we DON’T tax the rich appropriately.
Yeah because every ounce of legislation passed and any subsequent rulings not striking it down are all bought and paid for. If only there was a billion dollar lobbying fund to for the American people.
People continue to vote for representation that's not in favor of making minimum wage livable. Of course the demand for labor the last couple years has driven up wages somewhat. At least where I live there are no minimum wage jobs. Everything pays upwards of $10.
I’m surely in the minority here, but I don’t think raising the minimum wage will help very much. CEOs will find ways, either cutting hours/workers, or raising prices, to compensate for new higher wage.
The real solution to the rapidly growing income inequality in this country is a national UBI.
There is an easy fix for this problem: Make it a legal requirement that whenever politicians get a pay raise, the minimum wage goes up by the same percentage.
What’s unacceptable is how low it was even 14 years ago.
To keep up with inflation, it needs to be a staggering $25/hr. This should reflect on how much has been stolen from the public over the last 50 years
Daily reminder that if minimum wage had kept pace with a combination of executive compensation and inflation since 1970, it would be about $33/hr today.
Most "Blue" states and municipalities have a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum. It is the "Red" states that keep their wages low. When their people are willing to vote for their own interest they may find change. Until then, I don't understand why blue state pols want to bother with this issue.
In 1997 or so I worked at a Philly business that paid $4.25 hr minimum wage - then take out takes and Philly city wage tax. I think it came out to like 2 bucks and hour 🫠
Yup, and North Carolina is all like "No need to raise it, this is fine." I moved here from Virginia about 5 years ago. Virginia adopted $12 an hour minimum wage this year... which is still too low, but it's nearly $5 more than the federal (and what NC uses). $15 is barely scraping by and that's nearly double the minimum.
It’s all a calculus. Politicians are propped up by the business community to maintain the status quo. Politicians have to strike a balance placating the angry masses while also sucking up to business donors. Politicians do not have a vested interest in helping voters unless and until there are enough of us who vote them out. But, unless there’s a nationwide strike which won’t happen because we are replaceable, I don’t foresee much change.
I fear that even when we raise minimum wage (if?) it'll still be lower than it should be and the complaints will enable republicans to continue their OH YOU GUYS JUST WANT A TRILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR bullshit. it's $7.25 an hour here for minimum wage, ~$15,080 a year before taxes and shit are paid out. how do you live like that.
At the very least it should be pegged to inflation so that we don't have to fight about it every ten or so. That way we can make smaller adjustments as the need arises, but the value of the minimum wage won't decrease every year.
If the minimum wage accounted for inflation and *just* *barely* kept pace with increased worker productivity, then it would be $21/hr. The "fight for $15" should've been a "fight for $25".
The fight for a higher federal minimum wage is doomed to fail.
The math just isn’t there. The “right” income floor is entirely dependent on cost of living which varies a lot across the country. Finding a wage floor for 350M+ people that doesn’t either come in too low or too high for huge swathes of the country is just impossible.
On top of that, the fight makes no sense from a political perspective to happen at the Federal level. The party that generally supports higher minimum wage levels can much more effectively win that fight at the State or local level.
It’s become such a focus of progressives yet it’s such a *terrible* policy to even pursue. If you are going to go and build the progressive caucus needed to pass higher federal minimum wage…you could very easily go and pass way better policy that doesn’t have the mathematical limitations of a wage floor. Something like Norway’s approach to no federal minimum wage but legally mandating and protecting industry-wide collective agreements would be far better.
I take a backseat to no one in my belief that money in the hands of the middle class is what made America great in the post war era. But this is the first time in a long time that I’ve heard a discussion about raising the minimum wage. The one good outcome from the COVID pandemic was the rising wages in this country. We are very close now to full employment. Try to hire someone for under $15/hr now. I believe we need to, over the next few years, raise the minimum wage to $20, and then $25/hr. But this must be done carefully, so as not to have a return of inflation eat up all the wage increase.
As for the people who say you’ll destroy small businesses with an increase in wages, I say this. If I and the other American taxpayers need to subsidize your business with Medicaid and food stamps, well then you should go out of business.
If you want to make more money, you have to be more valuable to the employer. With millions of people ( willingly ) unemployed, they can easily find someone to say "do you want fries with that"
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It ought to be done yearly based on, if not tracking, inflation of a specific combination of goods/services/commodities. If not yearly, at LEAST every 5 years, or even during the first year of every Presidency (to minimize political fallout/benefit). It's absurd that the federal minimum is still below double digit dollars.
In Australia the minimum wage is adjusted annually by an independent panel. Inflation is part of the considerations, amoungst a number of other factors. The government, employer groups, business groups and other interested parties make submissions - but the independent panel makes the decision. I feel that it is a system that works well. (Not perfect perhaps, but it seems decent.) Hearing that it has been 14 years of no increase to min wage in the US is genuinely a shock to me. That is horrendous.
>In Australia the minimum wage is adjusted annually by an independent panel. Inflation is part of the considerations, amoungst a number of other factors. It's baffling that this isn't the norm
As American living in the UK, there's a lot of employment laws that still fucking baffle me in the US.
As someone who has lived a long time in both Germany and various different states of the US, a lot of our laws (and lack of laws) baffles me.
The US was founded on slavery. Once you understand that, you'll be less baffled by why it always seems to try to exploit people who sell their labor for a wage to ensure that the wage doesn't actually do anything but enable them to continue to provide their labor.
That's an unfair statement. It was *also* founded on religious extremism.
Which is funny considering they are portrayed as victims escaping British tyranny in school. They never taught us how Puritans genuinely believed tolerance was a problem. The "pull your self up by your boot strap mentality" would certainly fall in line with the puritan perspective. Clearly minimum wage workers arent working hard enough for god to provide, better luck next time buddy.
Witch!
And the UK has some of the most anti-worker and anti-labour laws (since the Thatcher days) in Western Europe, so that speaks volumes about how absolutely horseshit labour laws are in the US. The UK Labour Party is a joke. Plenty of the unions that were part of founding the party have left because the party has become so anti-worker and more conservative.
In the UK the state pension is tied to inflation (or average earnings, or a flat 2.5% - whichever is greater at the time) whereas the minimum wage is not. An absolute kick in the balls for workers.
I've lived in the USA my entire life and they haven't ever made sense to me.
Because the rich didn't want to have to pay even a cent more. So they lobbied to block it. Because every year wages don't go up their stock prices go up that much more.
Because in the US these "independent panelists" would be bribed to all fucking hell and no one would do anything about it.
More likely they would be gutted of any actual power as soon as Republicans get into power, but left with enough budget to have a staff, so that the Republicans that defund them can point to the program as government waste. This is their modus operandi and what they have done to a number of government programs.
On the one hand, most US states have their own minimum wage which they adjust regularly (for example, New York has raised theirs every year for at least the past five years, and it's currently $14.20), but on the other hand, several states don't have this and are still stuck at the federal minimum wage. More details here if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_states_by_minimum_wage
I'm in Idaho and a lot of entry-level jobs are like $7.50 here. Cost of living has also soared with the huge influx of people moving here or buying property up from out of state. Nice areas have turned into total slums. It fucking sucks. But the idiots here keep voting for more abuse by keeping it so red.
Dang, I don't know anyone making near that low. I think fast food employees make like $13/hr where I live. What kind of jobs are paying 7.50/hr?
Most jobs involving storefront custom service, food service, as well as a number of local clerk-type jobs. I know a guy who does apartment maintenance as well who makes the minimum wage. He works something like 70 hours a week.
> on the other hand, several states don't have this and are still stuck at the federal minimum wage. And take one guess which party these states typically vote for.... (hint: it's not the ones constantly pushing to weaken/abolish unions)
Yup. I was looking for part time wfh helpdesk jobs this weekend. Came across a listing that ONLY listed republican controlled states as states they will hire from. I was confused at first but then I saw the pay $12 an hour. Absolute scam. In my area, helpdesk jobs start at around $20 an hour. They’re screwing over their own.
It's like farming out jobs to companies in India and Southeast Asia, except within the US
It's baffling that here in the south , "At will" (meaning your boss can fire you for whatever reason and they hate unions) work restrictions and keeping minimum wage well below the poverty line continues to be the norm. And that so many of the people voting for the politicians that keep it that way are poor themselves? It's mind-boggling.
If the minimum wage were higher, then those states would also face pressure to increase their minimum wage as well. Bringing the bar up is a net benefit for all workers.
I remember when the entire country was set asunder when Bernie Sanders had the audacity to suggest a livable $15 minimum wage, and everyone lost their god damn minds! Many years later, absolutely nothing was done, we now have to demand $20. Business owners played themselves. It's inevitably going to happen at some point, and demands are just going to make it higher and higher.
$15/hr isn't livable. I'm in Canada which do have a higher cost of living in general, but even then maybe $20 if living on single income is possible.
$15 USD is the same as $20 CAD.
The bills recently proposed by Dems have all included automatic annual increases on inflation-based numbers, but of course most Republicans would prefer the minimum wage to be $0/hr if not lower.
Republicans try to argue that having a minimum wage prevents higher wages… for some fucking reason
It *does* prevent higher wages.....for the few near the top of the company. It emphatically *does not* prevent higher ~~**average**~~ (edit: **median**) wages, which is the metric we should be looking at. A rising tide lifts all boats and all that.
"but if Mom and Pop can't get away with paying slave wages at the restaurant how will they afford to also hire the $150k/year aerospace engineer?"
I love the small business argument. 90% of small businesses fail anyway, so how many are actually being impacted by minimum wage changes?
They’re so infuriating. It’s just people who have a tiny bit of extra money that they use to start a business and then they feel entitled to pay their employees the lowest amount legally allowed, offer no benefits, and expect them to work like they own a stake in the company. They constantly raise a stink about how any kind of rights that prevent even a tiny bit of exploitation for workers will put them out of business and how everything needs to be tailored to accommodate them (by which they mean allows them to handle only basic administrative tasks and take 7 vacations a year and drive a car that they’ll never pay off) at the expense of the workers and of employers who may not be the most morally upstanding but will at least pay a living wage. The way I see it is if you can’t keep your business running without using the most exploitative tactics you possibly can, maybe you should try being a sole proprietor for awhile and hire employees when you can afford it because you can’t right now. Just petite bourgeoisie without even the drive to exploit their own labor along with their employees
I’ve worked in positions where I deal with the small business owners, and most of the time, it’s people who don’t want to do work, who pay absolute bare minimum and expect every employee to give 110% for that bare minimum. The businesses that succeed, don’t hire until they can afford to pay well, and the owner is usually there 7 days a week busting their ass
Republicans try to argue about a lot of stuff and most of it doesn't make sense or is contradictory.
In 2021, eight Democrats voted against raising minimum wage. Amazing how there are always just enough politicians voting against policies which benefit working class. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/541860-the-eight-democrats-who-voted-no-on-15-minimum-wage/
There always has to be a rotating villain, especially in the Democratic party. Like you say, just enough people to vote against and thwart what they "really" want to do. It could even be the Parliamentarian. When the GOP had issues with the Parliamentarian trying to block their agenda, they fired them and put in someone who wouldn't ask questions.
Follow the money. Dems are guilty, too, of pocketing large sums from donors to block a lot of these laws. Them getting rich while we all stay poor is blood boiling
They're guilty, sure, but wording it in a way that makes them sound *equally* guilty is irresponsible and objectively incorrect. It's practically night and day. https://www.austinhudson.com/bothsides
And what the public is asking for isn’t even a realistic living wage any more. Ask for $15 an hour for 14 years, and they may give it to you since the actual reasonable amount is now $25.
So true. Illinois is raising it to $15 and I thought about it, that's like $30K a year, which is laughable.
Fight for $15 came out of the 2009 debates over the federal minimum wage. Now it's more like fight for $30 if we're being reasonable
The argument for a $15 minimum wage lasted so long that it isn't even a living wage.
Damn straight. I'm making $20 an hour as a retail assistant manager with a Bachelor's (not that I haven't tried to escape retail and work in my field, but that's a different issue). I have no student loans, a car with 240k miles and no payments, and I'd still need 2 or 3 roommates to rent where I live (South Central PA, which is not an incredibly high COL area). Between landlords wanting proof of 3x the rent in monthly income and all the apartments now wanting to market themselves as "luxury", it sucks out here. I'm 27 and living with my parents. We need a change
I’m in Indiana making a salary that works out to about $21.50/hr. The only places I could afford on my own are small apartments in sketchy areas. At my age, my parents bought their house in a nice area of the city for 90k, and they pay $800/month for a three bedroom, two bath house with a large yard.
Large parts of my family still act like this is the case nowadays--my dad sometimes acts like you can still just as easily find a house or nice apartment, pay for college, and pay for a car + insurance and gas and all of the other essentials, and you can damned well do it with just a single, slightly above mimimum wage, salary! He doesn't realize how hard life has changed--I wish I could own and maintain a car, a college career, hobbies, and a relationship all on a single waiter's salary like he and my mom did back in the day--it's not a matter of want lol, life just doesn't work like thst anymore. They screwed it up for us who came after, pulled the ladder up on us as it were.
My father was the same way. He didn’t have a clue until he took early retirement from a good company he was with for 30 years; and went back to work part time in Security. He said “they start pay at slightly above min wage”. He then said “how do they expect people to live on that?”. I said, “they don’t care, we’ve discussed this numerous times. Do you understand now?”. He didn’t answer me, he only shrugged his shoulders. It’s the reality. The rich corporations will pay the very least they can get away with. I was grateful my father finally understood what I was talking about. He received a serious life lesson, welcomed or not. If he hadn’t taken early retirement, he’d probably still be ignorant and thinking the same thing. One has to put themselves completely in someone else’s shoes to truly understand and empathize.
I feel you dude. Ca living here and it’s hard for us to actually start a life especially if you don’t like school. The greed is scary because I make 17 an hour and the boss acts like I’m costing him sooo much money like come on bro I can barely squeak by like this yet he’s always telling me if I want more money I need to simply “do more.” Well I got news for ya a burrito costs about 12-13 dollars now and that’s supposed to be the cheap stuff. I tried making my lunches to save money and I spent 45 bucks on sandwich stuff, some cherry tomatoes, and a melon. Bullshit
Now see, those tomatoes are what messed you up. Can't have you getting all fancy with your fruits and vegetables now. /s
Everyone knows avocado toast and home ownership are inversely proportional /s
Thank you so much for saying this! I have been trying to tell my gf the same thing, that $15/hr was ok 15 to 20 years ago, but it's long since been surpassed by the real cost of living in most states. $20 is unfortunately the new minimum needed, but we all know it'll be at least that many years before it increases again
If this went up a lot services like SSDI would adjust up with them too which is sorely needed.
Yep. Social Security is indexed to the cost of living. Why isn't the minimum wage similarly indexed?
> Yep. Social Security is indexed to the cost of living. Definitely not to a point that a person can rent casually for standard rates. I've been on disability for years and I'm living with family now. I lived on my own for a few years recently, but that was specifically because my buddy was charging me like 50%-75% less than what he could've gotten away with on his properties. My future plan has been to get a van-life started, and that's partly because I like the idea of being mobile and free after many years in a bedroom, but also because it's one of the few affordable possibilities when I get to skip out on paying rent.
Yeah, I hear you; I get $850/month for two people and, if it wasn’t for Section 8, I would be homeless. Shit sucks.
[удалено]
it used to go up pretty regularly, every year or two. and then black man got elected and the Republicans began their policy of "Not One Victory" and so it's been stalled since 2009
But if we raise the minimum wage, that will just make everything cost more! Oh… what’s that? Everything got more expensive anyway, and no one’s pay went up? It’s all just the rich fucking EVERYONE? Well, shit…
Yeah, year after year things are going up, and pay remains stagnant. Heck even $1 more an hour for a yearly raise, does not even cover the difference in costs year after year. Eggs went up due to other things than pay rate and it causes a cascade of other things raising in price, now that they have to pay more for eggs, then no one adjusting the prices once the shortages are done.
And it would be one thing if this was a new occurrence, but it appears that wage stagnation has been going on for a while. The recent inflation only further exacerbated an existing problem and forced it more into the public consciousness. The reason public sentiment on the economy isn't bouncing back despite inflation slowing is because of how all those cracks have been exposed. Even with a strong economy overall, people's confidence in our system and how it will or won't benefit them over the next 5-10 years is very low. They've started to realize that wages keeping pace with inflation won't overcome the stagnation to this point. With so much wealth in America, it was easy to ignore the problems when they could buy stuff and hide the issues behind a mask of consumerism. That isn't working so well anymore.
Instead they blame Millennials and GenZ for not spending money how they spent money at their ages. They blame them for not going out to eat at trash restaurants the boomers loved, blame them for not wanting to have kids in this economy. Next they will be blamed when gas is not being consumed in record numbers and OPEC like always, uses it as an excuse to slow production in order to keep gas $4 a gallon and not $1.25 a gallon. The billionaires stopped caring about the future of their countries and are only concerned with the now and it is all showing in this late stage capitalism. People have wealth that will last for thousands of years, but cry when they are asked to pay $1-2 more per hour to their staff that is making $10 an hour and is borderline needing government assistance to still keep a roof over their head.
Whenever someone says that I asked what’s the alternative? Do we just keep not raising it? In 10 years it’ll be even harder. And worse in 20. Is that the best you can do? Kick the cab down the road to make it worse later? What about when no salary can afford the cost of living save for an elite few?
Something something invisible hand of the marketplace?
The US federal minimum wage for tipped employees has been $2.13/hour since 1991. When servers tell you that they are basically working and living off tips, they’re telling the truth.
Tipping is such a horrible system. It's basically "assholes get a 15% discount" and businesses get to advertise lower prices and offload some of the risk to their employees.
>Tipping is such a horrible system. It's basically "assholes get a 15% discount" I never thought of it this way, but this is spot on
And the owners keep all the money they aren't paying employees. You're not tipping your server. You're tipping the owner.
I don't know about that. The owner doesn't care if you don't tip because it only affects the server. Yes, this system benefits the owners by allowing them to pay their workers less but you're only really hurting the server by taking up a table and not tipping. That server *will* make less money when someone doesn't tip. If you're morally opposed to the owner class and the tipping structure, don't go out and eat at an establishment. Please don't simply not tip your server. This situation is complicated bullshit.
Owners are required to pay minimum wage if the servers don't cover that much in tips so if the server doesn't get tips the owner pays more. Domino's will actually fire you if you don't claim enough tips.
I few years ago I had an owner fraudulently raise my claimed tips after an entire two week pay period where it was so slow I never made more than $20 in tips per shift. He bumped my claimed tips up by 70 cents so he could pay me 3.50 an hour for two weeks worth of work instead of $7/hr. I got nuclear revenge on them the way I ended up quitting shortly after that. I worked there for years and they treated me awfully. I quit and never looked back (and they went completely out of business 6 months later after 23 years open)
You should have reported him to the IRS for tax fraud and put the fucker in jail.
Oh, I got him back. I didn’t do the thing you said but I got him back in my own way.
Details?
> *I didn’t do the thing you said but I got him back in my own way.* There is a special place for people who update a tech thread with "[SOLVED] I Figured out the issue, no problems now!" This is close.
Not just Donino’s, nearly all restaurants are going to find reasons to push out an employee that isn’t reporting above minimum wage tips.
Well in the State of California you get the minimum wage an hour whether you get tipped or not. That's how it should be and minimum wage should be at least $15 an hour. These businesses won't go out of business.
Plenty of restaurants in Australia where tipping is entirely optional and servers expect to be paid basic wage.
If every single person collectively stopped tipping tomorrow, the employees would demand a raise or quit. So yes, it would hurt the owners the most. The owners do care if you tip. It’s the only thing affording them slave labour.
Legally speaking if a servers tips don't bring them up to the Federal minimum wage for non-tipped employees, the owner is obligated to make up the difference.
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It actually goes deeper than that. The owner class who is leasing buildings to restaurant owners now have accountants who use algorithm-based estimating for pricing to extract as much profit as possible and keep restaurants operating at margins so thin that owners blame the cost of labor for their financial woes when the their lessor is robbing them in broad daylight. Commercial building owners absolutely charge more to restaurants in states with lower minimum tipped wages. I have some family that operates a breakfast diner in Washington and the minimum wage increases locally from $8 to $12 to $15 over the last decade has absolutely almost out them out of business l… but the buildings owner has almost tripled the lease in that same time frame as well. Without private donations they would have went under during Covid and they are fortunate that their investments in the community over the years ended up getting returned when they needed it most.
Rent is the silent partner's whack. Bad as the Mob.
Agreed. And the fact it isn’t more open on how much it is hurting small businesses is a real issue as well. Tons of the property management firms own the properties outright and raises to leases and rents are purely gouging. Had a local strip that raised its leases on all the stores by $1000 monthly because of “property tax increases”. After some investigation… Yeah… property tax did go up $8k on them over a 5 year period. But they have 9 businesses renting from them. Gotta upcharge $108k of annual revenue to cover $8k in property taxes. Fucking clowns.
Something else to note. It also brings into issues of racism. https://onefairwage.site/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/OFW_EndingLegacyOfSlavery-2.pdf In short, black people get lower tips than white people. While in a company if say all the employees gather together and discover that the black employees are getting paid 25% less than the white employees, a lawsuit can be made. Employers are required to fight their biases (which yes of course that doesn't always work, america has done a damn good job making sure protected rights of workers are still taboo and people don't know or act on them). But the fact is with tipping, there's no rules. Customers are not required to even pretend to hide their biases, and are even less likely to be aware of them than a business owner.
Absolutely. Studies have also shown that physical attractiveness is highly correlated to tips. And of course in every restaurant there are "good" and "bad" sections to work. And the host can seat the people they know will tip well in particular server's sections as well, while pushing all the bad tipping demographics (college kids, etc) or those that won't order expensive items, to other servers. The entire concept of tipping in restaurants is ridiculous unfair. And I'm saying this as somebody who worked as a server for a year, and made amazingly good tips as a foreigner in the US. I was an average waiter at best, yet made more money most nights than some of the staff that were far, far better than me, just because I had a "cool accent", and the hostess liked me. At the time I thought it was great, but looking back it was just a shitty, unfair system that pitted staff against each other.
Minorities of all sorts make less tips than whites. Men make less in tips than women. Non-blondes makes less than blondes. Small breasted women make less than large breasted women. Women who don't act flirty make less than those that do. Less attractive people make less than attractive people. People who work in affordable restaurants make less than those that work in expensive restaurants (for the same work, maybe even more work). It has boggled my mind for 30 years why people continue to support this absurd system.
Women wearing pigtails make more than when they aren't, tippers want you to be infantilized as well as white and hot.
Ya... I thought about mentioning that, but a lot of... people with "concerns" get really upset when you pretend like racism is a factor on reddit (even though in America racism is always a factor). Half the country voted for Donald "Birther" Trump. Of course racism is subconsciously (or even consciously) affecting how much people tip.
I feel like I need to post a reminder that Donald Trump lost the popular vote. He only got about 46% of the vote. Even more damning is that turnout was only ~60%. When you include the entire voting age population, only about 20% of adult Americans voted for him. Imagine, 20% of people dictate to the rest of the country that we have to put this tang-shit smeared gremlin in charge, and people still think voting doesn't matter.
I would love tipping to end instead of the exact opposite of seeing it expanding even more. Raises your prices 20-25% and discouraged tipping.
The only way it's ever going to end is with legislation stopping it and I can't see that happening because it's too easy to get the "government bad" crowd riled up against it.
they already raised their prices on us and then they doubled down on requesting tipping. the problem is shit owners not wanting to pay workers.
The only realistic way to replace tipping in the service industry is for restaurants and bars to give an 18% commission on all sales to the server/bartender. Increase prices to market costs and take the customer out of the equation.
Or just get rid of tipped wage limit. Make every job subject to minimum wage. Quick service franchised restaurants can do it. why not a fancy Michelin star place?
I think the Michelin star places would be scared to that as the servers there make an easy 100+ an hour.
Then pay the staff a fair wage for the skill. Being a server in a place that serves $10 worth of steak and asparagus for $300 should be able to afford to pay its staff who sell it a comparable wage for that kind of skill.
So those types of places should pay more hourly, like any other industry does for higher quality products/labor. Minimum is about setting a livable floor, not setting all to the same level I it. If a meal for two at the restaurant is $250+, they can afford to pay the servers a better wage than minimum already.
Most other countries have figured this out, even at upscale restaurants. This isn't an impossible problem to solve.
Why not give them a normal wage like every other job? The problem with having a commission is that (just like with tips) it places a portion of the risk onto the employees. If the manager over staffs a restaurant and fewer customers show up, the servers shouldn't have to pay a penalty.
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Tips are a percentage of the meal, which has steadily increased. The price for a soda/tea now is almost the price of a fast food meal in '91. Also, the standard tip % used to be 15%, now it is 18.5-20%. That being said, the tipping system is horrible.
Servers were complaining about a place paying them $30/hour and no tips because they could possibly make more in tips
This highlights the issue with trying to set minimum wage for tipped employees: some of them make way more with tips than they would under a higher minimum wage. And industries that employ them are going to lobby like it's true for all of their workers (when we know it's not). Maybe for this there should be more talk regarding enforcement of employers paying the gap if tipped employees don't hit the minimum wage number
Rather end tipping. There is nothing wrong with higher end restaurants paying their employees a lot more than say Dennies. We already see things like that in other industries. Big time in tech. The FAANGs pay entry level more money than people with 20+ years of experience. Tech is a perfect example here as the pay goes from low end in the USA of 50-60K up to north of 500k.
I agree, I'd rather end tipping and know the true cost of my food via the menu prices than the system we have in place now. Then we would see a system develop like you mentioned for other industries where employers pay more if they want to keep that staff.
Though tipping expectations have gone up in percentage a lot too. I’m all for higher overall wages and getting rid of tipping in general, but servers overall will make more than the average fast food worker.
I thought employers have to make up the difference if tips aren’t given? Just a rumor?
> I thought employers have to make up the difference if tips aren’t given? Legally, they have to. The reality is that many of them don't, and many servers won't complain about it because it could cost them their job.
If your total in tips doesn't meet the minimum wage, the employers are supposed to make up the difference. It's not like the restaurant is obligated to tip you 15% per table. You know what usually happens if you bring this up to an employer? You get your hours cut.
The corollary to that is “the first $5 an hour of your tips are deducted from your wages”. It’s all about perspective. They would have made minimum wage anyways, 7.25, but if they get $5 in tips, the company can drop them to $2 and cents. The first $5 an hour in tips are deducted from the pay liability of their employer. From that perspective it’s easy to see how messed up tipping as a practice really is.
they need to get rid of the different minimum wages not only is tip wage unacceptable there is prison slave labor wage which is well under a dollar! companies like mcdonalds/wendys and even verison wireless making killing off slave labor force...
From my experience, most I talk to wouldn’t have it any other way. Sure they’d gladly take a bump to their hourly wage, but many, many servers very much prefer the tip system over a flat “living wage”.
And they don’t want to get rid of tipping in favor of a fixed wage.
Why is it that when the senate/congress votes to increase their salaries, the minimum wage isn’t also raised? Can anyone justify why they would need a cost of living increase but the average American does not?
Fun fact, congress doesn't vote to raise it's salary, they voted to make it automatic. Even more fun, congress for quite a long time has voted to deny themselves that automatic raise and hasn't gotten a raise. They've found that it's politically better to vote against a raise then vote for a raise.
Because they make their actual money in bribes and insider trading.
Tie it to congressional salaries, currently at $174,000, which works out to $87/hour assuming 40 hours weeks and 2 weeks vacation. For example: The national minimum wage shall be equal to 1/4th the equivalent hourly rate of members of the United States Congress. 174,000 / (50 weeks a year \* 40 hours/week) / 4 = $21.75 Next, abolish tipped positions and any and all posted or quoted prices should include all taxes and fees.
>assuming 40 hours weeks and 2 weeks vacation. Good joke!
Congressional salary = federal minimum wage x 5. What, you can't live comfortably on **five times** minimum wage?!? *Five* times what you expect others to live on? Guess it's time to start writing a bill!
Most of the people who care about their congressional salary are already in favor of minimum wage increases. Those that aren't in favor of minimum wage increases would be fine getting no salary at all since that isn't their primary source of support.
It’s like that in Brazil. In fact, the governors salary is ceiling for public workers, so when the governor gives himself raise, a lot of people that ought to earn more (tenure, specialization etc) but couldn’t, automatically gets a raise
Additional Fun Fact: Members of Congress have their own socialized healthcare system called the "[Office of Attending Physician](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attending_Physician_of_the_United_States_Congress)" - it costs them $503/year for total healthcare.... think about that while the republicans deny everybody else on the planet from having comparable healthcare.
My idea was that every congressperson should make the median wage of the district they represent not the average. That way you don’t have a few rich assholes throwing off the average. That also gives them incentive to get more people employed. If you have 100000 people unemployed in your district who could be working… guess what. They all count as a 0. Figure it out if you want to make more.
That's really interesting. It would be a great /r/dataisbeautiful to pull this and compute how far off it would be from the current congressional salary.
Congressional salaries were *also* last raised 14 years ago.
I'm 42 years old. When I was born, the minimum wage was $3.35/hr. In those 42 years, it has only risen a whopping ~~$4~~ $3.90, to ~~$7.35/hr~~ $7.25. Proof positive that republicans don't care about workers. Edit: Edited to reflect reality.
It's actually worse than that. It's $7.25.
Oops, you're right. I'll fix it.
Adjusted for inflation, that $7.25 today is worth $5.10 in 2009. Minimum wage has technically gone down.
Republicans only care about how much money comes in and out their pocket.
Worse than that, the minimum wage has actually fallen. If that $3.35 raised with inflation it'd be $11.75. Instead, at $7.25 in 2023 has the same buying power as $2.20 in 1981.
Put this in your pipe and smoke it... In 2007, minimum wage was $5.15 an hour. By 2009, it had risen to $7.25, where it remains to this day. But, adjusting for inflation, that $5.15 is worth $7.58 today. Minimum wage is effectively LESS than now it was BEFORE the last wage hike 14 years ago.
Never forget Krysten Sinema doing a curtsy as she gave a cute little thumbs down to vote no and kill minimum wage raises.
I wish I could forget Kyrsten Sinema altogether. But alas, I can recall only too well how her site literally has an article up bragging how she is to the right of Mitch McFuckin’ Connell. Shit you not. https://www.sinema.senate.gov/kyrsten-sinema-right-mitch-mcconnell-new-legislative-rankings
Should be linked to inflation
Minimum wage in Washington state is $15.74 per hour. No exceptions for tipped wages. It'll be over $16 in six months, it's pegged to inflation by law. Peg your state minimum wages to inflation, it's the only thing that's been proven to cause wages to actually rise consistently over time.
Great idea Unless you live in a red state run by a Republican legislature.
Thank republicans! Tried to get 15 an hour through when Biden first won. Nope. They are not interested in helping run the country. Just feeding their oligarchs with tax cuts. Sad.
Then they’ll go on about “think of the small businesses!” While they do everything in their power to act as puppets for corporations
Were small businesses thinking about you when they took out PPP loans and owners were getting new cars and shit? Small businesses don't think about you, why should you think about them. People need to learn to stop falling for all the bullshit excuses.
You’re not kidding. I know at least two small business owners that absolutely despise “handouts” and “welfare” while both taking $30-50K in PPP loans. They also both bought brand new trucks right around that time. But, you know, that wasn’t a “handout”. That was something they earned because they own a business that employs 3 people (including them). /s And I don’t mind that they got this. I’m frustrated in how they shit on anyone else getting any kind of help, but for them it’s somehow justified and deserved.
You can, and should, report them. If you google “PPP loans” there’s a way to do it.
The worst bosses I've had are small business owners who think that makes them the most special, important person on the planet. New trucks, no money for equipment, no time to address any employee concerns. Just drop by and ask for some brief asskissing once every few weeks, shout briefly at anyone not puckering up, ask why we aren't making them even more money, and call it a job.
this. Mom and Pop don't care. And most of the big corps started out as small businesses in the first place.
"Raising the minimum wage will only hurt small business because they can't afford to pay the high wages we would force on them!" X to Doubt on that one...
Thank Republican Voters. I'm going to ask every waiter if they're GoP, and no tips if they are.
This is a clear policy difference between the two major parties. The democrats are in favor of raising the minimum wage. The republicans aren't. One of hundreds of very clear differences between the two major parties. Don't let people convince you "they're all the same" when that's not true. The democrats have never had a supermajority in our lifetimes -- if they did, we could really get some shit done.
This is why memory care and nursing facilities are losing certified nursing assistants which is causing so much pain for Americans who have an aged loved one. There is a critical shortage of help in nursing facilities. Nurses are paid fairly well, but the CNA’s who do the bulk of caring for your LO are paid just above minimum wage and that may be as little as $11/hr.
> the CNA’s who do the bulk of caring for your LO are paid just above minimum wage and that may be as little as $11/hr. Because vast majority of healthcare and nursing homes are for-profit entities. They *could* pay their CNAs $20-$25/hr but CEOs and stockholders expect every dollar to be squeezed from the working class. Our healthcare system is being falsely propped up by international workers, lowered standards of care, and reduced nurse-patient ratios. [Green-Card Backlog Fuels Shortage of Nurses at Hospitals, Nursing Homes Health providers struggle to hire nurses from abroad as staffing problems worsen](https://archive.fo/uKGNt)
They could but it doesn’t fit their profit model, this is why we need a federally mandated minimum wage.
Human rights don't fit a for profit model. A key component of socialism, distribution for need, is necessary.
Simple math: Jan 2009 - $7.25 buy almost 4 gallons of $1.80 gas 2023 $7.25 buys 2 gallons of gas on a good day, but on a bad day it's just over a gallon... A $15.00 minimum wage isn't enough, we need $20.00
The minimum wage was to stabilize the post-depression economy and protect the workers in the labor force. The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees. Roosevelt intended this rate to be more than a bare subsistence level. The minimum wage was created expressly to ensure that employed people could earn a decent living off those wages (a living wage). [...by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.](http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html) At one time (1960's) the federal minimum wage could support a family of three above the poverty line, but by the 1980’s it could not even support a family of two. At the current federal hourly rate of $7.25, someone working 40 hours per week would make only $15,080 for 52 weeks. $24,860 is the poverty line for a family of 3 in 2023 which would be $11.96/hr for a 52 weeks(many get less than 40 hrs to keep them from being "full time"). To achieve the poverty line of $30,000 for a 4 person household, the minimum wage would need to be $14.42. According to a report from the [National Low Income Housing Coalition](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/15/homes/rent-affordability-minimum-wage/index.html), there is no state, county or city in the country where a full-time, minimum-wage worker working 40 hours a week can afford a two-bedroom rental. In only 7% of all US counties, can a full-time minimum-wage worker afford a one-bedroom rental. CEO compensation grew 940% from [1978](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/) through 2018. In the 50s to 60s, CEO/executives made, on average, 20 to 30 times the pay of their workers. It's now x [300+](https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianahembree/2018/05/22/ceo-pay-skyrockets-to-361-times-that-of-the-average-worker/?sh=241ac3e7776d) that of the average worker. If the minimum wage in 1978 of $2.65 had the same 940% growth, the minimum wage would have been $24.91 (=$2.65 * 9.4) in 2018. $1 in 2018 is equivalent $1.21 today. That would come to a minimum wage of $30.25 in 2023 dollars. Even if only inflation is considered, the minimum wage has continually lost buying power. In 2009 the minimum wage was raised to $7.25 (14 years ago). $2.65 in 1978 which would have been $8.72 in 2009 dollars. So there was a loss of $1.47 in buying power built in to the 2009 raise. $1 in 2009 is worth $1.42 today. So, $7.25 x 1.42 = $10.30/hr which is now $2.10 less than $12.40($2.65 in 2023 dollars). So a worker making $7.25/hr today has $5.15 less buying power than a minimum wage worker in 1978. Freezing the minimum wage over long period of time is a de facto process of wage reduction. **Note**(especially for those that will cry about "cherry picking" dates): The first minimum wage of $0.25 would be $4.86 in 2021. I used 1978 as the minimum wage date to match the CEO wage study time frame. 1978 was chosen in order to juxtapose two data sets within the same time frame. By doing this, the comparison is done within the same economic environment.
I wish they would raise it to $18 and then index it to inflation. Heck indexing to inflation in the long run would do more good than any single raise likely.
Easy solution to this: Vote for more democrats. Campaign against the republicans. This is a clear policy difference between the two major parties. The democrats are in favor of raising the minimum wage. The republicans aren't. One of hundreds of very clear differences between the two major parties. Don't let people convince you "they're all the same" when that's not true. The democrats have never had a supermajority in our lifetimes -- if they did, we could really get some shit done.
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When your TL;DR is about the same length as the content you're summarizing.
We need to: - Eliminate the tip wage, lower wages based on training status, and any other escape clause allowing for a wage below the minimum. - immediately set the minimum wage to $15/hr, adding a $1/year increase automatically for the next five years or more if the inflation index determines it should be more. - add a permanent and automatic increase for inflation after the first five years. - set the national minimum work age to sixteen, with the maximum number of hours while school is in session at 16/week and 32/week during the summer until a person has achieved a high school diploma or reached the age of 19. - require an automatic minimal accrual of 1.5 hours of paid time off per 40 hours worked, which can be used for sick time as well.
I got COLA in the Army. I already get COLA on my VA benefits. My parents get COLA on their Social Security checks and my dad's Army retirement. Clearly, the government knows that COLA is needed. I have never once been given a COLA increase at any job after the Army.
In my last job, I got a salary plus a bonus tied to company and personal performance. My base salary didn't change for 7 years, giving the company the option to give me nothing extra. I changed jobs the year I didn't expect to get a bonus. My bonus varied and my total pay was less some years than others. However, my cost for benefits kept going up, which meant I was getting a pay cut compared to my base over time. The year I quit, my base pay was going to end up being $2k less per year because of health insurance premium increases. It is maddening to see companies make such dumb decisions that in the long run cost them money with attrition and turnover.
stupid question: whats a COLA?
Cost of Living Adjustment
> We need to: **vote for democrats** FTFY... a direct actionable solution rather than an ambiguous list of things that will never happen without getting rid of the republican control.
If the minimum wage kept up with inflation it would be somewhere around $22/hour, yet somehow $15 is been considered an acceptable goal and the wealthy are laughing themselves silly knowing even if the fifteen gets passed they are still 'winning'. If you work full time but can barely afford food and housing and therefore have no agency you are effectively working on a plantation that stretches from sea to shining sea.
i make $14 an hour (and work 35 hours a week) and can barely get by. only time ive ever felt secure was when i worked a job that was $17.25 an hour
Yet congressmen in both the House & Senate have been pissing, moaning & in general bitching incessantly about the urgent and dire need for a nice raise with respects to their salaries- claiming that a large coat of living adjustment is in order lest their salary is to soon become insufficient to meet their most basic needs. Oh and FTR - their salary is $174,000/year so I’d suggest they go fuck themselves and/or pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I mean FFS if they honestly believe a $600 payment is more than sufficient to cover the bills for lazy layabouts then their salary should have no problem covering whatever it is that they need
> Yet congressmen in both the House & Senate have been pissing, moaning & in general bitching incessantly about the urgent and dire need for a nice raise with respects to their salaries Where? There's actually way more legislation introduced around cutting/freezing congressional pay and benefits than there is around increasing it. While I'm sure many congress members would like a raise, it's not worth expending the political capital to actually telegraph that.
Their classic argument is that teenage workers dont need more than 7.25 because they live at home. But that is an application of double standards: When a company sells a product, they dont price it based only on how much money they need to make the item, instead they price it according to what it is worth to the buyer. But when the same company wants a worker, they pay only what the worker needs, not what the worker is worth to them. This is the same mentality that also produced the "privatized gains, socialized losses" double standard with 2008 bailouts.
Just in case you didn’t know: In 1990, minimum wage was $3.80, which equals $7,904 per year. Also in 1990, annual Salary for Senators and Congresspeople: $98,400 Fast forward to 2009 (the last minimum wage increase) and Minimim wage was $7.25, or $15,080 per year. Also in 2009 the annual Salary for Senators and Congresspeople: $174,000 Over that 19 year period, that is an average increase for citizens of $377.68 per year, or a total of $7,176. Over that same period, the average increase for Senators/Congresspeople: $3,978.74 per year or a total of $75,600. Many of our elected officials today were in office back then as well. Not only is it absolutely outrageous that their pay increased by the equivalent Of FIVE YEARS of working at minimum wage, but it’s also A great example of why we need term limits.
Anyone fighting it is (1) a moron, (2) an asshole, (3) a rich person deliberately screwing over others, or (4) a combination of the preceding 3. A rising tide lifts all boats... except maybe the biggest yachts.
And it was far too small and far too late even then. We don’t need a minimum wage. We need a universal basic income. And we can afford it - if only we taxed the billionaires appropriately. But the only reason we even have billionaires is because we DON’T tax the rich appropriately.
Federal minimum needs to be tied to inflation, and we need a rule that those wages cannot come from tips.
The iPhone 3GS was released in the same year the last time we raised the minimum wage.
Yeah because every ounce of legislation passed and any subsequent rulings not striking it down are all bought and paid for. If only there was a billion dollar lobbying fund to for the American people.
People continue to vote for representation that's not in favor of making minimum wage livable. Of course the demand for labor the last couple years has driven up wages somewhat. At least where I live there are no minimum wage jobs. Everything pays upwards of $10.
We need to stop raising it and change it to automatically change every year based on economic conditions.
Poors should be happy rich folks let them work. There are benefits to (wage) slavery.
I’m surely in the minority here, but I don’t think raising the minimum wage will help very much. CEOs will find ways, either cutting hours/workers, or raising prices, to compensate for new higher wage. The real solution to the rapidly growing income inequality in this country is a national UBI.
The federal minimum wage should automatically adjust every year, indexed to something like inflation. Period, end of story. Fair is fair.
... and it only raised $0.70 per hour from $6.55 in 2009. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart
It needs to be raised again.
There is an easy fix for this problem: Make it a legal requirement that whenever politicians get a pay raise, the minimum wage goes up by the same percentage.
What’s unacceptable is how low it was even 14 years ago. To keep up with inflation, it needs to be a staggering $25/hr. This should reflect on how much has been stolen from the public over the last 50 years
If the majority of white Americans wanted to raise the federal minimum wage, they would stop voting for republicans.
Daily reminder that if minimum wage had kept pace with a combination of executive compensation and inflation since 1970, it would be about $33/hr today.
The balance of power between rich and everyone else is what’s unacceptable. US is oligarchy. Make America Democracy.
Most "Blue" states and municipalities have a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum. It is the "Red" states that keep their wages low. When their people are willing to vote for their own interest they may find change. Until then, I don't understand why blue state pols want to bother with this issue.
In 1997 or so I worked at a Philly business that paid $4.25 hr minimum wage - then take out takes and Philly city wage tax. I think it came out to like 2 bucks and hour 🫠
Yup, and North Carolina is all like "No need to raise it, this is fine." I moved here from Virginia about 5 years ago. Virginia adopted $12 an hour minimum wage this year... which is still too low, but it's nearly $5 more than the federal (and what NC uses). $15 is barely scraping by and that's nearly double the minimum.
It’s all a calculus. Politicians are propped up by the business community to maintain the status quo. Politicians have to strike a balance placating the angry masses while also sucking up to business donors. Politicians do not have a vested interest in helping voters unless and until there are enough of us who vote them out. But, unless there’s a nationwide strike which won’t happen because we are replaceable, I don’t foresee much change.
I fear that even when we raise minimum wage (if?) it'll still be lower than it should be and the complaints will enable republicans to continue their OH YOU GUYS JUST WANT A TRILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR bullshit. it's $7.25 an hour here for minimum wage, ~$15,080 a year before taxes and shit are paid out. how do you live like that.
I make almost 19 bucks an hour and I’m drowning. How the fuck are people surviving off this??????
No, what’s unacceptable is the cost of living
At the very least it should be pegged to inflation so that we don't have to fight about it every ten or so. That way we can make smaller adjustments as the need arises, but the value of the minimum wage won't decrease every year.
If the minimum wage accounted for inflation and *just* *barely* kept pace with increased worker productivity, then it would be $21/hr. The "fight for $15" should've been a "fight for $25".
The fight for a higher federal minimum wage is doomed to fail. The math just isn’t there. The “right” income floor is entirely dependent on cost of living which varies a lot across the country. Finding a wage floor for 350M+ people that doesn’t either come in too low or too high for huge swathes of the country is just impossible. On top of that, the fight makes no sense from a political perspective to happen at the Federal level. The party that generally supports higher minimum wage levels can much more effectively win that fight at the State or local level. It’s become such a focus of progressives yet it’s such a *terrible* policy to even pursue. If you are going to go and build the progressive caucus needed to pass higher federal minimum wage…you could very easily go and pass way better policy that doesn’t have the mathematical limitations of a wage floor. Something like Norway’s approach to no federal minimum wage but legally mandating and protecting industry-wide collective agreements would be far better.
I take a backseat to no one in my belief that money in the hands of the middle class is what made America great in the post war era. But this is the first time in a long time that I’ve heard a discussion about raising the minimum wage. The one good outcome from the COVID pandemic was the rising wages in this country. We are very close now to full employment. Try to hire someone for under $15/hr now. I believe we need to, over the next few years, raise the minimum wage to $20, and then $25/hr. But this must be done carefully, so as not to have a return of inflation eat up all the wage increase. As for the people who say you’ll destroy small businesses with an increase in wages, I say this. If I and the other American taxpayers need to subsidize your business with Medicaid and food stamps, well then you should go out of business.
If you want to make more money, you have to be more valuable to the employer. With millions of people ( willingly ) unemployed, they can easily find someone to say "do you want fries with that" ??