OK the problem I always see with this. Let’s say I make $35 an hour. Shouldnt my salary now go up to like $70 since I was a higher value worker from that time? That won’t happen.
I agree people deserve to live in moderate comfort ( a 1 bedroom apartment and a small car is fine for many). But I’m sorry, the dummy on tik Tok all day that barely can do their job at a pizza joint should not make almost the same money that I do providing industrial service knowledge that makes products you use every day. Some jobs are far more valuable than others, in real life.
Thats why musicians get paid nothing and construction workers get bank. Because their service is much more valuable in the real world.
I am always the bad guy in these convos. But admit it. You know the shitheads I’m talking about. They do not deserve that amount of pay. Not every poor person is secretly rain man if they just had money. A lot of people are just dumb.
Again, yes, give them enough to live on, but a lazy and unskilled person doesn’t deserve land and a house and fancy things that other people worked their asses off for.
The hardest working people I know make shitall, and the lazy ones who don’t do anything useful make bank. I’d rather pizza place workers make a living wage for the thankless work they do then overpayed middle manager ghouls get to feel like bigshots.
People like you are so obsessed with making sure nobody gets a single penny more than they “deserve” disgust me. If people like you had their way, we’d all still be working 16 hours a day in the mines for subsistence wage, because obviously we don’t deserve better.
I simply do not have the energy to list all the ways I find you utterly vile and contemptible after having read this comment.
No problem. This is not even a real conversation, and you are the reason people dont vote. All emotion and zero logic.
You didn’t apply any logic though, you just made a lot of unfounded assertions needed on your feelings about things. You really are a vile little slug.
Nobody deserves anything more than someone else
As someone in the real world I’m sorry, I don’t agree.
To the extent we have it now? Hell no, I do agree with you. No one should have billions while there are people working 3 jobs to pay rent.
But, to the point that the person building houses deserves the same as a clothing store employee ? Fuck no. If you think they do, your not being real at all. There are levels of value people bring to society. Its always been that way.
Its not black and white. Nuance on Lemmy is often disregarded.
As someone in the real world
Everyone lives in the real world, dipshit. Are you a literal child who hasn’t learnt that other people are real yet?
But, to the point that the person building houses deserves the same as a clothing store employee ? Fuck no.
Why the fuck not? They both perform demanded labour. I can only assume this bizarre statement is motivated by sexism.
There are levels of value people bring to society. Its always been that way.
For example, people like you bring no value to society, and we would be better off if you died.
Nuance on Lemmy is often disregarded.
The nuance of “some people are just inferior and deserve to live a subsistence existence”
How do you consistently have the worst possible takes on fucking everything. And then feel compelled to spew that disgusting shit that festers in your ugly brain out into the world. God you’re such a small, vile person.
Oh boy.
I never even stated i was against this. I’m taking a realist standpoint from conversations ive had with real life people on this very topic and the arguments I encounter. Your reply is reactionary and quite frankly immature.
k
Wow, you surely are a great conversationalist. Hopefully no more people like you come to Lemmy who can’t have a discussion without losing it. Take some emotional intelligence classes anon.
Blocked.
Dipshit, you fucking lost it at the suggestion that people you think you’re superior to deserve fair pay.
Your pay wouldn’t go up immediately unless you have a decent boss. But the economy would mostly catch up in a year or two.
I also feel like in scummy america world, all the prices of everything will just shoot up like rent and food. So then me, with the previously higher paying job, would be making less overall
That’s going to happen anyway champ.
But his status might be diminished if people he considers beneath him have enough money to buy food.
at this point it should be $45/hr
it wont past and this more performative for the Dems, they have been having unfavorable polling as of late in regards to israel/gaza, inaction against trump,etc.
How about we start throwing CEOs in prison when they break the law
Both?
Both is good
Or just, yknow, anyway. I mean they definitely did something bad to be a CEO.
Good luck.
This does nothing to fix the problem of the “gilded” part. The rich are obscenely so, and they control the State. That must be dealt wirh before anything will actually get better.
I suppose it’s nice to hear that there are a handful of legit progressives out there, but if we ever manage to get a living wage passed in this country, I hope it’s tied to inflation so the capitalists can’t so easily abuse it and gouge prices.
Inflation is measured disproportionally by commodity prices. That’s why you can see consumer prices nearly double, and inflation is only mentioned as 5-10%.
The corporations can triple the prices on the shelves, and if the commodities they buy to produce those consumer products are more or less the same price, inflation numbers won’t really budge much.
Minimum wage should be tied to cost-of-living, which also varies by region. If San Fransisco and backwoods Oklahoma are averaged together, that’s not going to be a very useful metric.
Minimum wage in a given district should be a proportion of the cost of living for that district, such that, for example, a person working four 40 hour weeks (160 hours) should be able to meet the cost of all their basic necessities with a defined percentage of their income, say maybe 30% (although since it’s a minimum, that percentage could reasonably be higher, but definitely no higher than 60%).
Of course, what necessities are included, and how to measure their cost needs to be clearly defined. I’d say as a baseline, that would include food, housing, utilities (including water, electric, heat, and honestly even internet and cell service because let’s be honest, those are necessities these days), healthcare, and reasonable transportation based on what’s available in the area (i.e. viable public transit or car-centric infrastructure). Arguments can be made to include other recurring expenses, such as clothes, but that would be harder to quantify. (Things like savings and discretionary expenses belong in the leftover percentage of income).
So if, for example, someone lives in a place where the cost of living is measured as $2000 per month, and say the minimum wage is tethered to the cost of living by a factor of 50%. That means the person should make at least $4000 for a month’s worth of work. $4000 ÷ 160 hours = $25/hour, so that tracks with what they’re pushing for.
Of course, some places (many places, these days), $2000 isn’t enough to make ends meet. So cost-of-living should be calculated by district. And the specific percentage is negotiable. States with good legislators might deem 30% of minimum wage income should be enough to meet necessities. States with shitty representatives might say 60% of minimum wage income should be enough to meet necessities. And that can change the calculation drastically, so there’s a lot of wiggle room. But the overall structure of the formula should be mandated nationwide, as well as a standard definition of necessities and how to measure them.
Lastly, this leaves room in the future for a particularly progressive Congress to change the definition of a work week to 30 hours or so. All that needs to change then is the number you divide the monthly income by (in this case, 120, so 4000/120 = $33/hour in our enlightened future).
It’s not going to pass; and they’re future faking (again!) to get people to vote for genocide.
There’re soft power advantages even for a Bill with an expected 1% chance of passing (GovTrack):
- It widens the Overton Window, challenging the neoliberal status quo.
- It organizes the 100+ organizations supporting it into a coalition.
- It forces Republicans to vote against a bill popular with Democrats, young people, and minority voters.
I’d rather have Democrats doing this type of strategy over sitting on their hands while they have no power. When it fails loudly in a hostile Congress it may accomplish more than a watered-down bill that quietly passes.
The right wing in America kept trying to pass anti-abortion laws for decades even though they were obviously unconstitutional, and here we are…
Obama promised to codify Roe into law and didn’t do so even though he had a supermajority.
Dems may not say it, but they love that abortion’s an issue that they can fundraise off of, and they have no intention of making it explicitly legal nationwide.
Why is that? How many times could Dems have codified RvW, since SCOTUS ruled on it? Why didn’t they?
Yup.
To ensure wages don’t lag again in the following years, the bill also requires the minimum wage to automatically grow each year to reach the equivalent of two-thirds the national median hourly wage. It also eliminates the subminimum wage, which is paid to tipped workers, youth workers, and workers with disabilities.
I’m in favor of both of these. It means we don’t have to relitigate the minimum wage battle every few years, and paves the way for moving away from tipping, which I can’t be alone in wanting.
Tethering minimum wage to median hourly wage is a good start, but might have some unintended yet foreseeable consequences, since it would incentivize employers to suppress wages to keep the median wage down, and thus lower minimum wage.
Far better would be to tether minimum wage to the cost-of-living. I explained in more detail in a different comment, but basically the formula has three variables: the monthly cost of necessities (area-dependent), the percentage of monthly income (at minimum wage) that should be expected to meet the cost of necessities (defined by legislation), and the number of hours that constitutes a month’s work (also defined by legislation, for now it would be four 40-hour weeks, i.e. 160 hours).
So for example, if a state legislature chooses 50% as the proportion of monthly minimum-wage income that should be enough to meet necessities, and someone lives/works in a district where necessities cost $2000 per month, and we’re using the standard workweek, the formula would look like this:
($2000 ÷ 50%) ÷ 160 = $4000 ÷ 160 = $25/hour
Which tracks with the legislation in the OP, but it’s also a flexible formula which can be adapted as needed, leaves room for negotiation (e.g. states can choose what percentage to use, and whether COLA should be measured state-wide or by district) which should make it palatable to the widest audience, and it should also adjust over time as cost-of-living should be recalculated every year.
it would incentivize employers to suppress wages to keep the median wage down, and thus lower minimum wage
That’s a weak incentive because the first employer to suppress wages below their optimal level would face a disadvantage versus the other businesses.
So like, the national bureau of economic research has price indeces at ridiculously granular levels. One time I was trying to find an estimate for a client who lived near Stockton, CA and I didn’t just have to choose the right type of price index, I had like seven different locations in Stockton they were tracking too. It was just one exercise after another of follow this table to that table to that table which eventually led to actual data, and it could all have been beautifully simplified into a real database instead of the excel spreadsheet we all had to work with, but times are tough in the ledger mines.
Sounds like they could create jobs by migrating their data to a real database…
They probably have it all in one but only let us plebes have access to excel sheets
What we need is a maximum income including capital gains
The issue though is that the problematic wealthy don’t have an income, they own assets that they borrow against instead of selling them so no capital gains taxes get paid.
Those are all loopholes we could patch if there would be political will to do so. Unfortunately they’re all rich fucks themselves and beholden to the donor class
Is that above the poverty line?
it wouldn’t be… once the rich crooks that own everything jack all the prices and rents and rates up to ‘compensate’.
Yes, by a lot.
The 2026 Federal Poverty Guidelines (FPL), released by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), set the poverty threshold at $15,960 annually for a one-person household in the contiguous U.S.
$25/hr x 40 hours a week x 52 weeks in a year comes out to $52,000 a year, which is more than triple the poverty level.
For most of the country yes
Can we hang the pedo first?
Which? All of them.
It won’t end the new gilded age, but it can maybe help ease things. Chances are that companies will raise prices far beyond increased labor costs and blame the minimum wage increase. They can do this because there’s too little competition in too many industries.
Ok we’re not gonna sit here and be like people don’t deserve it like minimum wage definitely needs to be raised, however this will diminish the currency and companies will raise prices in retaliation: further enforcing the currency’s diminishing value. Yes-raise minimum wage but also tack on max wage like you can’t make more than 5x than the lowest paid person in your company, a wealth tax and actually regulate the market to keep companies needlessly raising prices or undercutting other businesses and allowing monopolies. Thats its way more effective than only raising minimum wage.
Yay! Public masturbation instead of actually fucking doing something. What happened to impeaching the shit stain that keeps desecrating the constitution?
Teflon Don isn’t gonna get impeached anytime soon. Can’t even get enough people in the house to introduce the articles.
I’m already forced to do the work of 3 people and it took months to find this job at all. The system behind this job market disaster obviously urgently needs drastic changes but I feel like this would only put even more people out of work or doing the work of their newly fired coworkers
Weirdly, giving people money to spend props up the businesses that depend on people spending money. Who knew? (Besides Keynes, FDR’s entire cabinet, and anyone who’s read a macro textbook since 1945.
That would si a hell of a lot to ease the burden most people are feeling. Hell, my wife and I could back off to 1 FTE each
