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Minimum Wage: Fight For Fifteen


Martell Spy

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As requested by a certain gun-toting chimp. 

I think I get some of the frustration on this topic. You have libertarians like Senator Rand Paul demanding that Walmart workers be paid 1$ an hour and be kept in kennels outside the stores. Then you have people that have all sorts of relatives and friends that work low wage jobs, and the various negative life experiences that go along with that.

It can seem that anyone that if someone does not completely agree with the latter, is one of the former. 

And what does being a "small" business person entail? It's what, 100,000$ to own a franchise? 100 K does not seem very small to some people. 

Also, the U.S. congress has pretty much completely failed the cause of insuring a livable wage in America. Anyone that wants to see a livable wage, needs to pursue initiatives and the like, at least until the conservative madness with a lock on the U.S. Congress holds. 

 

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The blatant disregard for the wellbeing of business owners who are not at all in the same universe as millionaires and billionaires is the type of thing that would alienate vast swathes of the population.

As it should. 

Once again I'll restate that what you are advocating is a political impossibility and the way to achieve a wage increase is to help everyone who isn't obscenely wealthy. That's how you get middle class ( and the folks who still believe they're middle class or can get back to it) to actually do something.

It's called compromise, and it's part of this thing called liberal democracy that a shocking number of folks want to abandon in favor of... I have no fucking clue.

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My point is that a comprehensive bill that benefited multiple segments of the population at once could receive broader support and achieve liberal goals.

I.E. it's smarter.

@Jace, Basilissa

ah, gotcha. i actually kinda agree, i think they work best in tandem, and i think that they should both be pushed as a larger platform of equity and justice that would benefit a huge majority of people. but until that mass movement is built up, we take what wins we can (or could, in this hypothetical where either could be passed) 

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Dope, common ground.

Regarding the initial spark that lit the fire, it's important to remember that no bill that Democrats will want can pass the Senate. So what Pelosi was doing is putting a political impetus on McConnell to turn down an increasingly popular idea that is already watered down. 

In a functioning society the rich would see the 6 year cushion as a great deal and pass this thing immediately. We don't have a functioning society so they'll spike it and we liberals have to paint all Republicans as being anti-worker because they've managed to swindle the correct folks into believing they're the populist party.

And further, i think the real way to do this is a massive bill that ties multiple broadly supported positions into one comprehensive package. One that has to be designed to get support across the width of the Democratic party by addressing disparate problems and speaks to independents. That's the only way this gets done. Liberals have massive built in disadvantages in this country, folks like Fragile Bird may be absolutely correct in her assessment of the need to increase minimum wage immediately. But it doesn't matter. Facts are irrelevant, it's all about what you can sell. And not enough people are gonna get behind just raising the minimum wage without protections for small business owners. It doesnt matter how you feel about it, it doesn't matter how you feel about the economy, or what's true.

What matters is what can be achieved. And as I have mentioned in the politics thread I'll take some progress and dissatisfaction over passing nothing and really getting off on how righteous I am.

I mean, shit. Cost of living regulations need to be in that hypothetical bill too if you really wanna make the lives of regular citizens more bearable. Put more money into play for small business owners too.

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We don't currently have much of a social safety net in this country. Our benefits are meager and insufficient and the Republicans are trying to take an axe to what little we do offer every day. Independent of the minimum wage, I think we need a much more generous social safety net so that being unemployed doesn't put you out on the street or unable to feed yourself or your family. That's an entirely separate discussion.

Right now we don't have any of that and most people are dependent on work to support themselves. I hope we all agree that a minimum wage is required, although I know that's not the looney tunes libertarian position. A second position that I think is basically inarguable is that a minimum wage needs to be livable. You don't have to make great money, but if you're working you shouldn't be unable to afford the basic necessities of life. (I don't think survival should be contingent on working -- see above -- and I'm disturbed if you do, but this is about minimum wage.)

The big argument against raising the minimum wage is generally that businesses, particularly small businesses, can't afford it. This is a curious position that requires some assumptions that, when interrogated, don't hold up. If you agree that working a full-time job -- call it 30+? 25+? hours a week to minimize the amount of fuckery that businesses use to maintain the fiction that somebody isn't "full-time" so they don't have to provide them benefits, my first job set the bar for full-time at 40 hours and then gave people 39 hours, but we can argue about where the statutory line needs to fall -- should provide the funding for an acceptable life, and that businesses should be required to pay accordingly, there is really no room for argument.

As far as $15 is concerned, I don't know if that constitutes a living wage. Out of college, about 15 years ago, I was making $10/hour and got benefits in a very cheap area with a stupid cheap apartment and still couldn't really swing it, and I don't imagine living has gotten cheaper. But you do have to set the target somewhere, and $15 is better than the $7.25 that, incredibly, is still the federal minimum wage and was actually lower before 2009, although more than half of US states have a higher one. If I couldn't swing it in a cheap city, people in the expensive ones are fucked.

If you agree with my basic premises, and in my view it would be monstrous not to, there's really no room for argument. The minimum wage must be raised, and it must be raised to a point where it's possible to support yourself. While I hear the arguments that some businesses can't afford the higher wage, to accept that argument as valid you must believe, a priori, that businesses are entitled to operate, which is nonsense, regardless of the prevailing wage. Even in a capitalist system a business that can't make enough money to offset its costs has failed and must shut down. The business owners in this thread will no doubt scream bloody murder about having costs imposed on them, but you are not entitled to labor at the price you would like to pay. You don't have a god-given right to pay starvation wages, and if you can't pay people a living wage, your business model is not adequate. That does mean that some businesses are going to fail. I am sorry if yours is one of them. But there are a lot of shitty businesses that shouldn't exist. Look at Karen Pence's fucking Towel Charms, for chrissakes.

Another common argument against raising the minimum wage is that the minimum wage is meant for teenagers' summer jobs and not to be full-time employment for adults. This is bullshit. First of all, the minimum wage was designed at its inception to be adequate for a family. It used to be enough to support a small family of 3-4. The minimum wage has barely moved since then despite the fact that the buying power of the dollar is nowhere near what it once was. Currently it is inadequate to support a family of one. Additionally, whatever you may "think" the minimum wage "should" be for, adults are working full-time and more in these jobs. This was a predictable outcome regardless of what your inane beliefs that are based on exactly nothing.

It might seem crazy to double the minimum wage in one swoop, but the reason we find ourselves in this position is because of our pathetic failure to maintain the minimum wage at a livable rate all this time. Sooner or later you have to pay the piper, and we are now in the position of having to pay for literally decades of neglect. And businesses would cry like little babies if you raised it by even $1. If we're going to have an all-out war to pay people more no matter the amount, you might as well try to raise it by an amount that will actually matter.

Let me also remind you that we do not require businesses to provide health insurance, and we also do not supply healthcare nationally. We also do not require paid family leave; FMLA was a huge step forward, but many people can't afford to use it. We also do not require any paid vacation time whatsoever. All of this is insane. People who think otherwise have not reckoned with the abject misery that it is to be poor in this country, and wishing to heap additional misery and indignity upon the poor, as much of the right does, is horrifying.

Regardless of what we raise the minimum wage to, having this fight on the regular is for the birds. If and when we ever manage to pay people properly in this country, we need to peg it to inflation so that we don't end up in the same position again down the road.

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The Economic Policy institute has a summary of the CBO analysis that I linked in the previous thread, if people aren't inclined to read the full CBO report. Personally, I don't know enough about the subject besides the stuff I've read now and again, so I'm curious to see how the thread plays out.

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Minimum wage is a band aid fix that doesn't address the real problems of inequality and power in our work places.  But i guess a band aid is better than letting the patient bleed to death.

I still see employer provided health care as the real cancer thats killing us.  It incentives employers to have part time employees, it incentivies employees staying at jobs they hate rather than trying to improve their situation, and it enriches an entire industry of parasites while getting in the way of good health care.

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18 minutes ago, argonak said:

Minimum wage is a band aid fix that doesn't address the real problems of inequality and power in our work places.  But i guess a band aid is better than letting the patient bleed to death.

I still see employer provided health care as the real cancer thats killing us.  It incentives employers to have part time employees, it incentivies employees staying at jobs they hate rather than trying to improve their situation, and it enriches an entire industry of parasites while getting in the way of good health care.

It is part and parcel of redressing unequal bargaining power though. If you are and have been earning a wage on which you can comfortably live, you are more likely to be able to, for example, miss a day or two of work on strike etc. As you say it isnt fixing the whole issue but its an important part of the process.

 

eta: i’ll also add that a minimum wage must be accompanied by an accessible, effective enforcement mechanism. All well and good having the law, but workers need to be able to enforce this riht quickly and without personal costs incurred to be effective

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So I have a personal experience that could speak to this. My mom co-owns (around 20%) a small to medium size business that has roughly 75 employees. There are four principle owners, the other three being a guy and his two sons. After that, there's around half a dozen office workers. They make around 40k per year. There are about 10 drivers. They make around 35k per year. After that, every one else works in the factory making dental supplies like dentures and crowns and bridges. A few get paid fairly well, probably around $15, because they have artistic skills that are badly in need. The senior floor workers get around $12 per hour and everyone else gets $10. The benefits are otherwise as minimal as can be. You may say that sounds awful, and in a sense it is. Trust, my mom wishes she could pay them more, but that's not her decision and the other three owners are greedy f***ers who would never consider shrinking their substantial cut, so the company's pay role disproportionately comes out of my mom's cut. 

However, life has been good for most, but not all, of the low wage workers. 90% of them are immigrants or the children of immigrants who worked in the factory. 20 or so were initially hired decades ago and they all came from three or four families. One wage alone is hard to get by on, but if four to six people decided to live together, they can make that money go along way, and it only took these families each respectively to save up enough money to buy a house. As time went by their children, once they turned 18, would join them in the factory because my mom was always happy to have more help. These increases in family net worth continued to allow them to buy more properties so as to further increase their net worth. I was at a wedding for one of the families a few years ago. It was for Sowe, who allowed me to interview him for a college paper I had to write. And when he saw me he was so exited to tell me that one of his nephews had just been excepted into the University of Minnesota, my alma mater. If that's not the American dream, IDK what is. Slowly gaining wealth, then property, and then what's most important, and education for your children so they can live a better life than you.

Perhaps they could have achieved all of this without my mother's company. They probably would have because they are incredibly hard working. But still, having a reliable job site that is always happy to have another family member work for them makes it more convenient. And none of that would have been possible with a minimum wage that is set too high. My mom has done the math and a $15 minimum wage would be devastating to her business. She believes she'd be left with three options, (i) sell her share, which in turn would lead to the owners stripping it down and and selling the place (she's been preventing that for years), (ii) dramatically cut back of staff and focus on specialization or (iii) straight up go out of business. So when I look at these minimum wage fights I see it through that lens, that these people who came here with nothing might not of had the chance they had if the company couldn't exist in it's current form. Do I badly wish for the minimum to be higher? Of course. $15 is too low in most places, especially when rent is sky rocketing. But I fear this push for $15 might ultimately hurt the people you most want to help. Let individual cities and states go that high, or even higher. But don't do it across the board. start at $10, which has no net negative impact, or even $12, because the impact there is so small, but $15, even if done gradually, will disproportionately hurt the people most in need.

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19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So I have a personal experience that could speak to this. My mom co-owns (around 20%) a small to medium size business that has roughly 75 employees. There are four principle owners, the other three being a guy and his two sons. After that, there's around half a dozen office workers. They make around 40k per year. There are about 10 drivers. They make around 35k per year. After that, every one else works in the factory making dental supplies like dentures and crowns and bridges. A few get paid fairly well, probably around $15, because they have artistic skills that are badly in need. The senior floor workers get around $12 per hour and everyone else gets $10. The benefits are otherwise as minimal as can be. You may say that sounds awful, and in a sense it is. Trust, my mom wishes she could pay them more, but that's not her decision and the other three owners are greedy f***ers who would never consider shrinking their substantial cut, so the company's pay role disproportionately comes out of my mom's cut. 

However, life has been good for most, but not all, of the low wage workers. 90% of them are immigrants or the children of immigrants who worked in the factory. 20 or so were initially hired decades ago and they all came from three or four families. One wage alone is hard to get by on, but if four to six people decided to live together, they can make that money go along way, and it only took these families each respectively to save up enough money to buy a house. As time went by their children, once they turned 18, would join them in the factory because my mom was always happy to have more help. These increases in family net worth continued to allow them to buy more properties so as to further increase their net worth. I was at a wedding for one of the families a few years ago. It was for Sowe, who allowed me to interview him for a college paper I had to write. And when he saw me he was so exited to tell me that one of his nephews had just been excepted into the University of Minnesota, my alma mater. If that's not the American dream, IDK what is. Slowly gaining wealth, then property, and then what's most important, and education for your children so they can live a better life than you.

Perhaps they could have achieved all of this without my mother's company. They probably would have because they are incredibly hard working. But still, having a reliable job site that is always happy to have another family member work for them makes it more convenient. And none of that would have been possible with a minimum wage that is set too high. My mom has done the math and a $15 minimum wage would be devastating to her business. She believes she'd be left with three options, (i) sell her share, which in turn would lead to the owners stripping it down and and selling the place (she's been preventing that for years), (ii) dramatically cut back of staff and focus on specialization or (iii) straight up go out of business. So when I look at these minimum wage fights I see it through that lens, that these people who came here with nothing might not of had the chance they had if the company couldn't exist in it's current form. Do I badly wish for the minimum to be higher? Of course. $15 is too low in most places, especially when rent is sky rocketing. But I fear this push for $15 might ultimately hurt the people you most want to help. Let individual cities and states go that high, or even higher. But don't do it across the board. start at $10, which has no net negative impact, or even $12, because the impact there is so small, but $15, even if done gradually, will disproportionately hurt the people most in need.

This was probably meant as a positive story but i’m going to be honest, while its great it worked out well for your mother’s company and the families working for her, being trapped in and reliant on a single business for a whole family is...troubling. Like i said, great that your own family was nice and respected the workers but just think how this plays out if its not your mom but one of the other assholes. Think how this scenario changes. The families likely still stay out of necessity, but its not going to be a good life for them. At all. So i dont think this is an argument against minimum wage, for me at least

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I have a story too. My brother bought a business using his house as collateral, this was the first business he ever owned. The first thing he did was make sure that everyone was earning at least the living wage (which is higher than the minimum wage). One employee who had been on minimum wage for over 10 years with the previous owner actually cried with gratitude. Not long after he instituted a profit sharing system with all employees. 5 years later, he's developed so much trust in his employees that he's looking to make one of them the manager of the business and he's casting his eye around to buy another business.

One thing he won't do is go into business with arseholes.

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2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

So I have a personal experience that could speak to this. My mom co-owns (around 20%) a small to medium size business that has roughly 75 employees. There are four principle owners, the other three being a guy and his two sons. After that, there's around half a dozen office workers. They make around 40k per year. There are about 10 drivers. They make around 35k per year. After that, every one else works in the factory making dental supplies like dentures and crowns and bridges. A few get paid fairly well, probably around $15, because they have artistic skills that are badly in need. The senior floor workers get around $12 per hour and everyone else gets $10. The benefits are otherwise as minimal as can be. You may say that sounds awful, and in a sense it is. Trust, my mom wishes she could pay them more, but that's not her decision and the other three owners are greedy f***ers who would never consider shrinking their substantial cut, so the company's pay role disproportionately comes out of my mom's cut. 

This is what jumps out at me about your story. So the business could in fact afford to pay them more, but three of the four owners don't feel like it? That doesn't seem like much of an argument. 

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4 minutes ago, Inigima said:

This is what jumps out at me about your story. So the business could in fact afford to pay them more, but three of the four owners don't feel like it? That doesn't seem like much of an argument. 

yeah, just illustrates that workers will always lose out to the greed of owners and endless drive for maximum profits. makes a minimum wage closer in line to living wages even more necessary 

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A horrible devil's advocate counterpoint that echoes something @Tywin et al. said -

Multigenerational family units cohabitating and sharing resources is significantly more environmentally friendly and has hugely beneficial impacts on childraising and social stability. Encouraging a living wage for everyone to have their own home and own car and own appliances and own electrical bill and own utilities is an excellent way to harm the planet.

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not horrible, kal.  those are the horns of the dilemma.  fascists think they can split them by externalizing ecological problems to the other side of their cute wall while continually running an astronomical balance of payments deficit.  but rising tides flood all homes, as do global economic crises.  

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23 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

A horrible devil's advocate counterpoint that echoes something @Tywin et al. said -

Multigenerational family units cohabitating and sharing resources is significantly more environmentally friendly and has hugely beneficial impacts on childraising and social stability. Encouraging a living wage for everyone to have their own home and own car and own appliances and own electrical bill and own utilities is an excellent way to harm the planet.

Fair enough, but doesn't have to be one way or the other.  I also think that the environmental aspect is a hearts and minds issue - where as the living minimum wage isn't.  We can have cohabitating multigen families without shafting the working class.

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25 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Fair enough, but doesn't have to be one way or the other.  I also think that the environmental aspect is a hearts and minds issue - where as the living minimum wage isn't.  We can have cohabitating multigen families without shafting the working class.

I think you're wrong, and this is where everyone gets it wrong. The minimum wage was and is a hearts and minds issue, just like all the others. It ALL is. Remember, we didn't get a minimum wage until what, 1938? And that was due to a MASSIVE social upheaval that started with...wait for it...hearts and minds. 

And one effect that this had was that previously everyone in a family was expected to work or contribute and largely be together or nearby in order to contribute, and then...that changed. That was a cultural shift that prior to the 1940s didn't exist. People didn't need the same kinds of safety nets of their community, nor were they expected to stay with their families and help out (and they didn't need to). These are all good things - but they also allowed for a major diaspora across the US, and changed cultural values so that everyone had the American Dream of owning their home, having their own place, their own family, etc. 

My personal take is that having a living wage is not the panacea that giving everyone medical benefits is. Medical benefits largely being tied to employment means corporations have a massive power to keep people in their place, force people to work full time (because benefits), force people to prioritize single family households (because I can't give benefits to my two brothers who are unemployed and my uncle and their cousins), force people to stay in jobs they hate, etc. I'm in favor of raising the wage across the land - though incrementally and indexed on cost of living in that area, not on just a flat value - but I think it will have incremental social value and doesn't address the real issues. 

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Also, looking at the almost perfect model for everything political, New Zealand - they have a really good idea for minimum wage.

$15 an hour for everyone above 18.

$11/hour for 16-17. 

No minimum wage for anyone under than 16 who is eligible to work. 

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3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I have a story too. My brother bought a business using his house as collateral, this was the first business he ever owned. The first thing he did was make sure that everyone was earning at least the living wage (which is higher than the minimum wage). One employee who had been on minimum wage for over 10 years with the previous owner actually cried with gratitude. Not long after he instituted a profit sharing system with all employees. 5 years later, he's developed so much trust in his employees that he's looking to make one of them the manager of the business and he's casting his eye around to buy another business.

One thing he won't do is go into business with arseholes.

Hey, you can't do that here. You have to take that shit to the socialist thread.

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34 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, looking at the almost perfect model for everything political, New Zealand - they have a really good idea for minimum wage.

$15 an hour for everyone above 18.

$11/hour for 16-17. 

No minimum wage for anyone under than 16 who is eligible to work. 

I assume they don't have laws like, you can pay farm workers way below minimum wage because they are foreigners and we hate them.

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5 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

I assume they don't have laws like, you can pay farm workers way below minimum wage because they are foreigners and we hate them.

I don't think they have seasonal workers, no. They do have a points-based immigration system that is transparent and pretty awesome, and not a day goes by that I don't wonder if I should have taken that job there. 

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