Alright, fuck Republicans, I'm onboard with that.
Living wage, I'm onboard with that too.
Fuck landlords as well, I'm waay onboard with that.
How about we raise minimum wage, but also regulate the hell out of several sectors so that the wealthy don't just consume whatever we raise it to with obscene inflation, otherwise what's the point?
if you want affordable housing we need to de-commodify it and get the investors out. no more airbnb, no more one investor group owning 10s of thousands of single family homes. Dumping regular people's money into this system, even if we give them a bunch extra, is only gonna drive prices even further up. The necessities of living are not speculation opportunities for the ultra rich.
You forget that dems vote against it as well: Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Jon Tester, Tom Carper, Chris Coons, Angus King...
You also forget that a $15/hour minimum wage isn't even a living wage in current year and that's what they voted against. Both sides fight for billionaires, stop deluding yourself.
There's also an argument to be made for building better cities and more affordable housing (both more affordable and more of it), as well as building a society where you don't have to buy a car to participate. Life could be a lot more affordable if we didn't arrange our policies to make it so expensive.
There is a mentality from Boomers and passed along to Gen X that full-time work does not entitle you to anything. That there are just millions of jobs in America that shouldn’t be required to pay people enough to live in the community they work, or anywhere for that matter. As long as that mentality aligns with the goals of capitalism, nothing will change.
You will hear all the excuses in the world justifying low-paying jobs. “Just get a better job if you don’t like the pay” “Those jobs are only for high school kids” “If they raise the pay they will raise the prices” The list goes on. None of them make a ton of sense if you explore the idea any further.
The idea of working hard and being, eventually, rewarded with good pay has been dead for decades. It is widely accepted that the easiest way to increase your pay is moving to a different company, which speaks a lot about longevity in this late-stage capitalism era most of us are living in today.
My answer is more radical. Tie their tax breaks to the linearly interpolated value of the median wage in the company between minimum wage and whatever is actually a living wage. At halfway between the two they get an equilibrium point, below it is a harsh penalty, above is an increasing percentage of their tax break. Wonder how long it would take of McDonalds owing an obscene penalty on their taxes before they started actually paying employees.
I would also be in favor of levying MASSIVE corporate tax penalties for every employee on government assistance. At this point, government programs are less socialism for the people and more socialism for the likes of WalMart.
You are right both sides aren't the same. But by absolute standards, both sides are really really bad and I think that's a fair assessment all things considered. One has to be better than the other, but both are bad.
This thread is chock full of idiots who would vote to lower their own wages because of a spectacular misunderstanding of how inflation works.
Either that or trolls looking to encourage others to fight against raising their own wages.
Either way, it's sickening.
Yes. Good meme. More like this.
I love that all the Usual Suspects showed up on this thread to push "BOTH SIDES".
Economics shenaniganery means that just raising the minimum wage will likely just raise prices.
The state apparatus should probably regulate the prices too, and improve the public housing projects.
Just raising the minimum wage won't do anything other than intensify class warfare for anyone who isn't rich or mildly rich (making more than 200k per year) and work further in the Republicans favor. What needs to happen is this:
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Cut social security entirely (all this shit does is support the old rich fucks) and instead initiate a universal basic income which yields a yearly income equivalent to working a full time job at 18.50 an hour. Why 18.50? Because that's the amount needed to cover the cost between the 7.50 minimum wage and 26 an hour which is where the minimum wage would be if wages hadn't stagnated. Furthermore this increases everyone's wealth by the same amount so the people at the top effectively get nothing while the middle class is also helped in addition to those near the poverty line (effectively mitigating potential class warfare). Also the homeless would be helped, whereas a minimum wage increase would only help those with jobs.
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Pay for the UBI with taxes that massive tax anyone effectively making over 1million a year. This means corporations and billionaires. In order to do this we have to break the slimy garbage they pull to leverage their non-liquid wealth to avoid paying any taxes while further increasing their billions.
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Impose strict regulations on corporations so that they cannot arbitrarily raise their costs in response to the newly raised tax rates.
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8 members of the Democratic caucus in the senate hate workers so much that they voted against increasing the minimum wage.
Pretending that anyone who notices is "both sides"ing is insulting to the workers Democrats said they totally wanted to help and then betrayed.
The party expects perfect lockstep from the electorate, but doesn't care about voting with the party when it comes time for the elected to do what we voted them in for.
US has the cheapest houses in the world, the fuck are you taking about?
Except the Dems have controlled the house, Senate and Presidency since 2009...
I mean. 2021-2023 Biden had House and Senate majorities...
Did I miss something?
Was it that as soon as we had a majority just enough Dems said they wouldn't vote with the party? And then party leaders saying "welp, trying would be pointless"?
Is that what I missed?
Don't get me wrong, it should work the way your meme makes it sound. But unfortunately the rich bought out both parties awhile ago.
It's why Biden and the DNC have their PAC, the Biden Victory Fund, that coordinates directly with the candidate and party, and you can give up to a million!
Video evidence of a democrat voting down a minimum wage increase.