5 ms·

the min wage is long overdue, its should be somewhere near $25/hr this is how you 'tax' billionaires

agent_turtle 1y ago
I got my first job as a grocer in 2010 which paid a minimum wage of $7.25/hr. That was 15 years ago and the minimum wage is still $7.25/hr.
- xienze 1y ago
  But is anyone _actually_ getting paid the minimum wage these days? Might want to check what the grocery store you worked at in 2010 is really paying these days. I’d bet good money it’s significantly more than $7.25/hour.
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/ https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-... 869k workers. The size of a country larger than Luxembourg.
    - xienze 1y ago
      Doesn't the fact that 98.9% of all workers earn more than the minimum wage kinda highlight that it's really not necessary for the federal government to increase it? Clearly it's nearly impossible except in limited circumstance to actually _find_ workers who'll accept the minimum wage, hence the fact that hardly anyone is paying it.
      - TimorousBestie 1y ago
        > But is anyone _actually_ getting paid the minimum wage these days? Yes. > Clearly it's nearly impossible except in limited circumstance No, you exaggerate. It’s a large number of people. I wouldn’t say it’s nearly impossible to find someone from Indianapolis (pop. 879k, 2024 est.), and the number of Americans is much larger than the number of working Americans.
        xienze 1y ago
        > No, you exaggerate. It’s a large number of people. It's 1.1%, an incredibly small portion of the entire working population. There's never any follow up like "where in the country does this occur?" which may reveal that it's actually a livable wage. Or other follow up questions like, "does this number include illegal aliens who are happy with being paid $7.25/hour tax free?" You're also ignoring _how_ it came to be that 98.9% of all workers manage to get paid higher than the minimum wage without it being mandated. Are the companies doing this out of the goodness of their hearts or have market forces instead found what the _actual_ viable minimum wage for various localities truly is?
        TimorousBestie 1y ago
        > There's never any follow up like "where in the country does this occur?" Are you serious? https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2023/ https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2023/ Table 3. Their methodology is addressed in the technical notes. > You're also ignoring _how_ it came to be. . . No. You asked a specific question and I was bored enough to help you look up a result. I’m not here to engage with whatever ideological problems you have going on in the subtext.
      - agent_turtle 1y ago
        7.26 is technically more than 7.25. Further, a low floor acts as a weight, depressing wages generally. "Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift wages for over 33 million workers": https://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-15-by-2025/ https://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-15-by-2025/ (For the record, 33 million is ~6 million more than the population of Australia)
        xienze 1y ago
        A federal-level minimum wage doesn't make sense, precisely because what is considered minimum wage in LA isn't the same as what's considered minimum wage in rural Louisiana, and vice-versa. The fact that 98.9% of workers manage to receive more than the minimum wage strongly suggests the market forces have done a pretty good job of determining what a viable minimum wage for various parts of the US is (including apparently parts where $7.25/hour works).
kortilla 1y ago
This is how you tax small business owners. The vast majority of businesses are not owned by billionaires
- monster_truck 1y ago
  Perhaps if we taxed the billionaires more we could subsidize increased wages for small business owners or even do something actually good like provide universal basic income so that they cannot be so easily exploited for wildly undervalued labor
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    The value of labor is what people are willing to pay for it.
    - anigbrowl 1y ago
      Deliberately underpaying people and then telling them their work has low value is one of the most disgusting aspects of capitalists. There's lots of CEOs who are not especially productive, they just have leverage.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        The government tries hard to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, but so far has failed 100% of the time. The government can implement wage and price controls, but those still do not set the actual value. For example, in the USSR, the price of bread was fixed by the state. But the real price of bread was how long you were willing to wait in line for it. BTW, in the US, you are free to set up a company and then pay your workers whatever you want to. Workers can choose to work for you, or not.
        tpxl 1y ago
        > but so far has failed 100% of the time Labor rights have been a raging success. 40 hour work weeks, minimum wage, sick leave, vacation leave (in non-shithole countries). >BTW, in the US, you are free to set up a company and then pay your workers whatever you want to. What happens when competition with deeper pockets price dumps you into oblivion? Free market is a free market only when there is competition based on the product, not how rich your investors are. There is evidence the workers are being exploited everywhere if you bother to spend a second looking. Like the parent said, your apologism of capitalists is disgusting.
murderfs 1y ago
That's a good way of turning the poorest US workers into the poorest US unemployed. If you raise the minimum wage above the actual value of an employee, then they're just going to get fired. Even if they still provide more value than their being paid, it makes automating away their job more competitive. California tried this with a $20/hr minimum wage in fast food restaurants: the next time you go into a McDonalds, count the number of empty cash registers and number of shiny new ordering kiosks: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34033 https://www.nber.org/papers/w34033
- XorNot 1y ago
  McDonalds were going to do that anyway. And what's the point of a minimum wage of it doesn't provide a living? That's just letting private enterprise piggyback off the welfare system.
  - ta20240528 1y ago
    Good question - it has a partial answer: minimum wage is to provide a living to a single young person for a shortish period. Not a family. Especially not families with - for other reasons- only one breadwinner. The problems of poverty (to the extent the US even experiences it) are broader than demanding someone make uneconomic decisions with their investors capital.
    - fzeroracer 1y ago
      > Good question - it has a partial answer: minimum wage is to provide a living to a single young person for a shortish period. This is false and not at all the reason why the minimum wage exists. It was created to bust sweatshops. You are making the same argument as the people that were defending sweatshops. It may be the argument proponents make now to argue against raising it, but it was not why it was created. Roosevelt literally said that the intent was that any business unable to provide a basic living wage for their workers was one that should not exist.
      - ta20240528 1y ago
WalterBright 1y ago
According to the WSJ, the California minimum wage increase for fast food workers reduced the number of those jobs by 20,000.
ipnon 1y ago
Why not $250/hr? Or $2,500/hr?
- ekianjo 1y ago
  the eternal question people avoid. there is no "fair wage" definition.
Auracle 1y ago
Why? Pretty sure the data of the past few years has shown we don’t really need a minimum wage apart from ensuring people aren’t absolutely taken advantage of. Nobody is paying just minimum wage anymore, apart from servers and the like that make most of their income from tips. The local McDonalds pays at least 50% more, for instance.

I got my first job as a grocer in 2010 which paid a minimum wage of $7.25/hr. That was 15 years ago and the minimum wage is still $7.25/hr.

xienze 1y ago
But is anyone _actually_ getting paid the minimum wage these days? Might want to check what the grocery store you worked at in 2010 is really paying these days. I’d bet good money it’s significantly more than $7.25/hour.
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/ https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-... 869k workers. The size of a country larger than Luxembourg.
  - xienze 1y ago
    Doesn't the fact that 98.9% of all workers earn more than the minimum wage kinda highlight that it's really not necessary for the federal government to increase it? Clearly it's nearly impossible except in limited circumstance to actually _find_ workers who'll accept the minimum wage, hence the fact that hardly anyone is paying it.
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
      > But is anyone _actually_ getting paid the minimum wage these days? Yes. > Clearly it's nearly impossible except in limited circumstance No, you exaggerate. It’s a large number of people. I wouldn’t say it’s nearly impossible to find someone from Indianapolis (pop. 879k, 2024 est.), and the number of Americans is much larger than the number of working Americans.
      - xienze 1y ago
        > No, you exaggerate. It’s a large number of people. It's 1.1%, an incredibly small portion of the entire working population. There's never any follow up like "where in the country does this occur?" which may reveal that it's actually a livable wage. Or other follow up questions like, "does this number include illegal aliens who are happy with being paid $7.25/hour tax free?" You're also ignoring _how_ it came to be that 98.9% of all workers manage to get paid higher than the minimum wage without it being mandated. Are the companies doing this out of the goodness of their hearts or have market forces instead found what the _actual_ viable minimum wage for various localities truly is?
        TimorousBestie 1y ago
        > There's never any follow up like "where in the country does this occur?" Are you serious? https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2023/ https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2023/ Table 3. Their methodology is addressed in the technical notes. > You're also ignoring _how_ it came to be. . . No. You asked a specific question and I was bored enough to help you look up a result. I’m not here to engage with whatever ideological problems you have going on in the subtext.
    - agent_turtle 1y ago
      7.26 is technically more than 7.25. Further, a low floor acts as a weight, depressing wages generally. "Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift wages for over 33 million workers": https://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-15-by-2025/ https://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-15-by-2025/ (For the record, 33 million is ~6 million more than the population of Australia)
      - xienze 1y ago
        A federal-level minimum wage doesn't make sense, precisely because what is considered minimum wage in LA isn't the same as what's considered minimum wage in rural Louisiana, and vice-versa. The fact that 98.9% of workers manage to receive more than the minimum wage strongly suggests the market forces have done a pretty good job of determining what a viable minimum wage for various parts of the US is (including apparently parts where $7.25/hour works).

kortilla 1y ago

This is how you tax small business owners. The vast majority of businesses are not owned by billionaires

monster_truck 1y ago
Perhaps if we taxed the billionaires more we could subsidize increased wages for small business owners or even do something actually good like provide universal basic income so that they cannot be so easily exploited for wildly undervalued labor
- WalterBright 1y ago
  The value of labor is what people are willing to pay for it.
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    Deliberately underpaying people and then telling them their work has low value is one of the most disgusting aspects of capitalists. There's lots of CEOs who are not especially productive, they just have leverage.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      The government tries hard to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, but so far has failed 100% of the time. The government can implement wage and price controls, but those still do not set the actual value. For example, in the USSR, the price of bread was fixed by the state. But the real price of bread was how long you were willing to wait in line for it. BTW, in the US, you are free to set up a company and then pay your workers whatever you want to. Workers can choose to work for you, or not.
      - tpxl 1y ago
        > but so far has failed 100% of the time Labor rights have been a raging success. 40 hour work weeks, minimum wage, sick leave, vacation leave (in non-shithole countries). >BTW, in the US, you are free to set up a company and then pay your workers whatever you want to. What happens when competition with deeper pockets price dumps you into oblivion? Free market is a free market only when there is competition based on the product, not how rich your investors are. There is evidence the workers are being exploited everywhere if you bother to spend a second looking. Like the parent said, your apologism of capitalists is disgusting.

murderfs 1y ago

That's a good way of turning the poorest US workers into the poorest US unemployed. If you raise the minimum wage above the actual value of an employee, then they're just going to get fired. Even if they still provide more value than their being paid, it makes automating away their job more competitive. California tried this with a $20/hr minimum wage in fast food restaurants: the next time you go into a McDonalds, count the number of empty cash registers and number of shiny new ordering kiosks: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34033 https://www.nber.org/papers/w34033

XorNot 1y ago
McDonalds were going to do that anyway. And what's the point of a minimum wage of it doesn't provide a living? That's just letting private enterprise piggyback off the welfare system.
- ta20240528 1y ago
  Good question - it has a partial answer: minimum wage is to provide a living to a single young person for a shortish period. Not a family. Especially not families with - for other reasons- only one breadwinner. The problems of poverty (to the extent the US even experiences it) are broader than demanding someone make uneconomic decisions with their investors capital.
  - fzeroracer 1y ago
    > Good question - it has a partial answer: minimum wage is to provide a living to a single young person for a shortish period. This is false and not at all the reason why the minimum wage exists. It was created to bust sweatshops. You are making the same argument as the people that were defending sweatshops. It may be the argument proponents make now to argue against raising it, but it was not why it was created. Roosevelt literally said that the intent was that any business unable to provide a basic living wage for their workers was one that should not exist.
    - ta20240528 1y ago

WalterBright 1y ago

According to the WSJ, the California minimum wage increase for fast food workers reduced the number of those jobs by 20,000.

ipnon 1y ago

Why not $250/hr? Or $2,500/hr?

ekianjo 1y ago
the eternal question people avoid. there is no "fair wage" definition.

Auracle 1y ago

Why? Pretty sure the data of the past few years has shown we don’t really need a minimum wage apart from ensuring people aren’t absolutely taken advantage of. Nobody is paying just minimum wage anymore, apart from servers and the like that make most of their income from tips. The local McDonalds pays at least 50% more, for instance.