Just a reminder...

- It should also be said that just because I already paid my student loans off doesn’t mean I don’t want other people to be in debt. Student loan forgiveness needs to be up there with the livable wage.
  
  does your student debt accrue interest?
  
  There's some double negation confusion at work here, but I think you wrote that you do want other people to be in debt ;)
  
  Student loan forgiveness is regressive by definition (those lucky enough to go to college are a minority that earns on average $0.5 to $1 million more over their lifetimes, than those who don't), aren't you against wealth transfers from poorer to richer?
- This fight is about us taking from the rich, not from each other.
  Beautiful stated, cutting right to the heart of the matter.
- They want us fighting eachother, strong move to realize that and put the blame where it belongs.
- Tech here!
  /hug!!
- It isn't about taking from the rich either. It's about letting THEM take less, so there's more for everyone else. Slight distinction, but they are the ones taking, not the workers.

If you want the meat robot to work for you, you need to pay the upkeep for the meat robot.
That includes power (food), repairs (health insurance) and upgrades (education).
If you can’t afford that, you can’t afford to have a meat robot on your staff.
- I wonder what will happen when steel robots take our jobs
  
  More time for revolution
  
  Those things still apply to robots too.
  
  Robots able to do physical labor are complex. In the incredibly immense supply chain required to built them it will be possible to sabotage multiple sections.
  Alse electronics can be hurt in ways that biology is immune. Mostly electromagnetic warfare, like signal jammers etc.
  I prefer not using violence. However, if the owner class is unable to care for the rest of us, we will have to take matters into our own hands.

I remember growing up in the 90's and being acutely aware of the growing minimum wage. I knew no matter what that when I was able to get a job I would be guaranteed "this" amount and always thought about prices and how long I had to work to get something I wanted when I was an adult. Every small bump made it a little mini-celebration like I was getting a future raise that would allow me to have a better life.
Now? Shake and bake costs over 5$, I have to literally work over an hour to buy half a cup of "convenient" seasoned bread crumbs. I could buy the flour, make the bread, and process it to make my own... but now I'm out of time in the day to work enough to actually afford the meat or any other side item. Oh yeah, and at some point I should pay my bills and save for retirement -_-
- Buy bread chop it up season and put in the oven at a low temp till it's as dry as you want
  
  Way to miss the fucking point.. 🙄
  
  So now I'm out the cost of materials AND the time to make it AND the cost of running the oven. That's probably a net loss compared to just buying the breadcrumbs. And the breadcrumbs are still overpriced.
  
  You know, it's comments like this that make me laugh and realize how much of a privileged life someone has. Anyone saying, "Oh, it only takes 10 mins to make bread crumbs!", has never actually been required to make all of their food homemade. Let's take a journey and use a generic recipe.
  bake at 275 degrees until dry, about 10-to-15 minutes
  ok so maybe 15 mins, preheat oven, getting it all ready, maybe like 30 mins but very relaxed. Lowest priced loaf of bread is $1.39 at a local grocer (it's a horrible brand that's more airpockets and made from the cheapest ingredients possible but it's still counts as bread).
  Add them to the food processor, and process them until coarsely crumbed.
  Oh shit, now I need a food processor (cheapest is 40 on amazon and walmart), or I could stand at a blender for 2 hours doing one handfull at a time (if I have a blender). Wait, wasn't this only suppose to take 10 mins?
  Ok let's just chop the bread by hand, now we're about an hour into the process after it cools and is chopped. But I wanted shake n' bake, so let's head over to this recipe.
  Mix all ingredients in a large bowl until evenly mixed and the bread crumbs are no longer 'clumpy' from the oil.
  Let's see here, Vegetable oil ($2.99), Salt ($0.79), Dried onion flakes ($2.19), Paprika ($1.29), Sugar ($3.19), Garlic powder ($1.29), Ground black Pepper ($2.29), Cayenne ($2.49), Parsley ($2.19), Basil ($2.59), Oregano ($2.49). (all cheapest prices listed from local grocer, nothing premium)
  So now we're at over 25$ for the homemade shake and bake ingredients. 65$ if I want a food processor to keep this under an hour. Oh yeah, I hope I have foil, baking sheets, sanitary plastic bags to "shake" it, a long term storage container for the amount I'm making. I'm over $100 as a fresh person starting life to make bread crumbs. 2 hours between prep and time spent getting ingredients.... and I have bread crumbs, guess I'll start actually cooking the meal!
  You can make excuses for people that already have some of the required items, but generically you can't make that statement unless they're privileged and have hand me downs or time to bargain shop for cheaper appliances. It all costs in the long run and with homemade you're paying with your time that no one has. The whole point of the shake and bake was a convenience for overworked families trying to continue to participate in society in a "healthy" way. If you can't afford "convenience" as a worker, then you're not getting paid enough.
  edit: formatting

And yet a local Domino's Pizza around here is still offering the same $12 an hour rate and advertising a manager salary of $25k a year! Corporations never learn and people wonder why customer service is so crappy.
- Huh, according to Indeed, the range for Domino's delivery drivers around me is $18-$25 an hour. How far over minimum wage is your $12?
  
  I can't speak for domino's, but when I worked at pizza hut as a driver they advertised a similar pay. The reality is I got $4 and change an hour on the road and my states minimum wage in store plus tips. The listed pay range was what they guess you'll make with tips.
  
  It's NC, so it's bottom of the barrel what is legally required minimum wage. 7.25
  
  They are likely including tips in that range.
  
  Drivers heavily rely on tips. That is the estimated price range with tips. The base pay for Domino's drivers in my area is $10/hr.

There should be no profits, no bonuses, and no dividends until every worker (not employee, it doesn't matter what your relationship with the company is if they benefit from your labour) is making at least a living wage with full benefits. Executive pay should be capped at a multiple of the pay of the lowest paid worker or of the average pay paid to all workers. whichever is lower.
- There should be no profits, no bonuses, and no dividends until every worker (not employee, it doesn’t matter what your relationship with the company is if they benefit from your labour) is making at least a living wage with full benefits.
  To get anywhere, you must define "living wage" concretely. You can use variables of course, but without at least a 'formula', "living wage" is just a meaningless, unachievable talking point. You at least have to know what you're aiming at, to have any hope of achieving it--you'll never get anywhere just saying "living wage", because 'enough to live on' does not nearly have the same definition for everyone. So, what's the baseline, in your view?
  Example: 'the living wage should be enough money to afford [list of things] with $X leftover for discretionary spending/saving.'
  
  the definition of living wage is already defined by MIT
  They actually have a pretty decent website that calculates it for you here
  
  The classic definition is the wage needed to cover the basic needs of the family including things like rent, childcare, transportation, etc. I would go one further and say that the family needs to not be living paycheque to paycheque. They should be able to save for the future, go out once in a while, educate their children, save and pay for university, and advance themselves. They should be able to live.
- Profit is theft, labor that is not compensated in accordance with its value.
  
  The owners/investors deserve to origin but so do the workers. All of the profit going to the owner/investors is theft. That's why I say that there should be no profit, bunnies or dividends until everyone is fairly compensated and the profit should be shared with the workers in proportion to their contribution which is huge. No workers, no company, no profit.

The cost of living will just keep going up because inflation is necessary in our current, debt based monetary system. The Fed tries to keep this under control by not allowing the rate of inflation to go much beyond about 2% a year. The recent inflation issue we've been having wasn't about inflation suddenly happening where it hadn't been happening before, it was about the rate of inflation increasing beyond the Fed's 2% target. When they talk about inflation getting back under control, they're talking about the rate of inflation getting back to near 2%. But make no mistake: prices are still going up - they have to, that's how the system works - and they will keep going up every year, seemingly indefinitely. For this reason, a cost of living raise equal to at least the rate of inflation is absolutely essential, otherwise workers are getting a pay cut.
But this is further complicated by the fact that the core inflation numbers are very broad. Housing costs are exploding. Core inflation would be much lower if not for rising housing costs. But the way housing costs increases are measured is by averaging housing costs across all markets, meaning the cost of housing in low demand areas is averaged with the cost of housing in high demand areas. This means that if you live in a high demand area, the core inflation rate doesn't necessarily capture the true cost of living in your area, and that the cost of living in your area is going up much faster than the national average. Therefore, many workers need an annual cost of living increase that is much greater than the national inflation rate.
As far as I know, there is no national law requiring companies to give cost of living raises every year. Many companies do, but many don't. A mandatory, annual cost of living raise is something that unions can negotiate, once again showing the value of unions.
- The cost of living will just keep going up because inflation is necessary in our current, debt based monetary system.
  You're making this sound like it's something that was arbitrarily decided by powers that be, but the fact is that if there was deflation instead, the economy would come to a screeching halt, because it becomes more 'optimal' to hold onto cash under a mattress (since in deflation, it grows in value over time) instead of spending it on goods and services.
  A tiny amount of inflation is best long-term, for the whole.
  
  Yeah the gold standard is disastrous for wage laborers, we had a huge fight over this for basically the entire time between reconstruction and the world wars
  
  I don't think the decisions that led to our current monetary system were made arbitrarily, not at all.

I still have people telling me that 15/hr is too generous.
People gotta start getting angry enough to organize with other angry people.

Minimum wage should have been $15/hr at least 10 years ago.

All by design

So it has been with all political carrots in the United States my entire adult life, regardless of who is in charge, which is why I don't believe in nations or electoralism anymore

Meanwhile CEO pay rose 1460% since 1978 https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2021/
The execs use those untaxed resources to lobby and keep things in their favor, and so the cycle continues

Here it’s north of $40/hr

For any EU citizen I can recommend to sign the official petition to the European Commission — so that billionaires can finally contribute their fair share to society: https://www.tax-the-rich.eu

Math is objective use math

This is the primary reason that inflation exists—so that business/corporations (the owner class) can steal more of your hard-earned money.
- Uh, no, the primary reason inflation exists is so that there is an economy, lol.
  If there was deflation, the 'optimal' thing to do with your extra cash would literally be to stuff it under a mattress.
  Too much inflation is obviously bad, but deflation is also really bad. A tiny amount of inflation is optimal long-term.
  
  I might need an ELIF on this, but why any type of -flation? Why not have a dollar today be equal in purchasing power to a dollar 40 years ago, or 40 years in the future?