USA: The Minimum Wage Should Be $24 per Hour Not $7.25
USA: The Minimum Wage Should Be $24 per Hour Not $7.25
The Minimum Wage Travesty: How Greedy Corporations and Spineless Politicians Robbed Workers of a Livable Wage
Mininimum wage should be 7.26.
A 3 bed 2 bath home should be 80k.
A week of groceries should be 60 dollars.
A semester of university should be 2500 dollars.
Most jobs should not be minimum wage.
Employers should be giving profit share bonuses.
Millionaires and billionaires should be paying a higher percentage of taxes.
A massive percentage of our public trust should not be going to Israel.
Secondary education is for the wealthy now. All you see at universities is kids whose parents gave them a leg up so they could get in. Nobody makes it on their own anymore, no kid that age should go into debt into the $100k+ just to get an education, and most won't be eligible unless their parents are wealthy.
Agreed.
I started out at community College and got an internship at the state. The people I worked for at the state pressured me to transfer to university.
I lived on my own and survived off the 13 bucks an hour 20 hours a week and student loans.
Preparing for my third university semester, my student loans got rejected. They cited "you went from a Junior to a Sophomore" as the reason, didn't accept "I went from a 2 year program to a 4 year program" as an answer, and wouldn't tell me why it took them 2 semesters to come up with this rejection reason.
Never qualified for Pell or FAFSA. My parents were broke, but the house they foreclosed on a couple years later was too much equity for me to qualify for student aid.
Then the state fired me because of budget slashes (I interned for the Department of Education in the late 00s).
So I dropped out and carried the debt with no degree for a little over a decade, the principle actually rising, before I converted the debt to a consolidation loan and paid it off in 3 years.
So ya, I agree. Modern US university is a scam.
Local state college tuition is around 10k a year for someone living with their parents at home.
Only big name colleges are 100k a year. A good tech college degree can be had for around 25k and plumbers make bank.
Hey, if you want to be me in 1995, just say it, although the home was 100k.
Shit, does it make me conservative for me to want to go back to no Citizens United and reinstated Glass–Steagall? Throw Roe v Wade back in there for good measure?
All liberal accomplishments, but it would really just be regaining all we have lost in the past 25 years.
Minimum wage shouldn't be a dollar amount, it should be a living amount defined in a reasonable and realistic way. (Probably should be region dependent, too?)
States do have their own minimums. Washington State for example, is tied to the federal Consumer Price Index and it's at $16.28..
It's not clear whether you're suggesting that tipped workers aren't guaranteed the normal minimum wage.
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips
EDIT: The above comment was completely different at the time I wrote this.
Look at the federal poverty level calculation. That is not really a liveable level
The fact that this number $7.25 exists anywhere regarding wages (local, state, federal) is mind boggling.
I wish I knew the answer to this, but I don't think a dollar amount floor on labor in fiat currency is it. That'll just find a new equilibrium in a devalued currency.
I don't write this because I disagree with the sentiment. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.
But wealth isn't about dollars. It's about assets. For day to day living, it's about real estate.
I just wrote out a whole bunch of thoughts but I don't think they're applicable to the topic.
Maybe do things like:
Unoccupied residential real estate is taxed at some obscene percentage of assessed value.
No individual may own more than ten living spaces (apartments are a need, and somebody's got to own them)
Entities (looking at you black rock) may not own residential real estate.
REITS are absolutely off the table.
Water is a public good and Nestle can get fucked
Student debt and medical debt are capped at some percentage of income formula.
And to get really crazy, instead of minimum wage, employers must demonstrate that employees can afford two bedrooms with no more than twenty five percent of gross wages.
I'm drinking beer and watching rich people ride horses. These are casual thoughts without citation and are not intended for academic review or criticism.
new equilibrium in a devalued currency
No this has been thoroughly disproven. the total amount of dollars doesn't change, it just moves from the wealthy back to the workers. Raising wages doesn't cause inflation, corporations raising prices does, so raising the minimum wage is just one piece of it. The myth that raising wages causes inflation is argued that more money for workers creates more demand for commodities which raises the prices, but again, the total amount of currency doesn't change. You're not going to buy 7 cartons of eggs just because you make more money, and spending it doesn't make it more scarce. You'll buy as much as you need for the week just like last week, except now you don't have to choose between food and going to the Dr.
Real economic inflation or deflation is caused when the amount of currency doesn't match the amount of production. Or to simplify, money is representative of something that was produced, and can be exchanged for commodities; and the whole money supply is representative of the whole productive capacity of a nation (or issuing body). Paying people more doesn't lower production, it would theoretically stay the same though experiments have proven that productivity increases. Raising wages raises the amount of money that businesses make because there is more money in circulation, it isn't just sitting in accounts collecting interest. Increase in demand actually drives hiring more workers.
Lots of nice ideas in your post but none of it are demands that bring workers together to organize and fight for what they deserve, we have to hope that some politician will give it to us. Fighting for wage increases does mobilize workers, and it has only ever been organized mobilizations of workers that have driven economic changes under capitalism.
I'd vote for you
I think you forgot that corporations are people too, thanks to the utterly inestimable contribution to your society of your "supreme court"
And to get really crazy, instead of minimum wage, employers must demonstrate that employees can afford two bedrooms with no more than twenty five percent of gross wages.
Stuff like that always backfires. You lose the businesses altogether, now nobodies got nothing.
Tying the minimum wage to inflation is a good strategy. Combined with a method to keep the executive class from exponentially lapping the labourers, you'd have the makings of a nice first world nation.
The road to getting there isn't enjoyable though. Just go with the flow, and one day these problems will be irrelevant.
The government already intentionally understates inflation through changes to the CPI, this would just further incentivize them to understate it even further.
You're right of course. I suppose in an idealistic world, elections would be publicly funded, with no methods of outside money to take influence over candidates and therefore policy. A utopian dream perhaps.
Nope. They said no to $15... so it doubles to $30 an hour now. Say no again shitters
Imagine what the world would be like if it were managed by people who didn't regard their role implicitly as mismanagement
My manager: Tough shit
Your manager is in the same situation as you. They are not the adversary here.
if only they thought that way...
Who fires u tho?
Minimum wage in 1938: 25¢/hour.
Minimum wage in 2024: $7.25/hour.
In 86 years the US federal minimum wage has gone up seven dollars.
Inflation adjusted, that's $5.54 vs $7.25. That's a 30% increase, on top of triple or quadruple digit increases in every expense...
What is even crazier is that while the minimum is not tied to inflation the amount one may donate to political parties is tied to inflation.
Huh.
The federal government really did just give up on any actual changing of minimum wages and it’s very insane that that is the case.
I think it's wild that the increase has to be legislated each time, why not just give the responsibility of increasing it each year to a government agency which needs to follow legislation to set it (based on XYZ metrics)? This is how it's done in many other countries.
Too practical and goal oriented.
You say "should" like we don't keep electing all the politicians who don't give a crap about wages.
Correct
You do realize that if that were done, there would be a mass layoff, right? Because minimum wage is a price control. And so if most companies don't think that workers are worth $24 per hour, they will just lay them off instead and give them zero dollars per hour. If you'd like an example, look at California fast food workers right about now.
Edit: I think it should be raised, but that would be far too much.
Yeah if you don't give everyone a small bump every few years you have to do something drastic eventually.
This is the exact same thing that has happened with climate change. We should have been changing incrementally and now we're fucked.
Right now I'm making a bit more than $24/hour and live in a low cost of living, rural area. I'm fortunate enough to have been blessed with inherited money after my father's passing and now have a paid off house and vehicle. My living expenses are low to say the least. I have ZERO debt, I invest 15% of my income and put 10% into savings, 25% goes towards "wants" and the rest goes to bills.
All of that said, there is absolutely NO WAY I would be able to save/invest/spend the percentages I do if I had to pay rent, or a mortgage, and a car payment on top of that. If I had kids it would be even worse. I literally cannot even imagine if I had to pay for a kid right now and I'm in a good spot financially speaking. I would be BARELY scraping by at my pay rate (reminder: I'm in a low cost of living rural area).
How can you POSSIBLY think $24/hr is too much money???
Because tons of workers are losing their jobs in California because of a twenty-hour minimum wage. If it was twenty-four, it would be even worse. That is a three-and-a-half times increase from what it is currently. As I said, it should go up, but it should not go up that much. Double it to $15.5 maybe. Most places i am aware of pay around that so it shouldnt spark a mass layoff.