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?
I had to scroll to the bottom to see this. This is what happens every time the wage increases. No point in increasing the wage when everyone else increases the price. Can’t agree with your statement more.
We gonna let passage of broader more difficult to pass reform be a prerequisite for increasing the minimum wage?
Sounds like making the perfect the enemy of the good to me.
except democrats dont care either
start building a new system now.
We don’t have a minimum wage in Sweden. Wages are mostly dictated by negotiations between employers and unions.
Unions are important.
thats also the reason the ones in power hate them so much!
unions are definetly part of the solution.
Yeah. We have an ongoing thing between Tesla and IF Metall, with a bunch of other unions backing them up. Tesla refuses to sign collective labour agreements, and they’re penalising strikers by taking away stocks they’ve earned. It’s hardly surprising that Tesla doesn’t want to adhere to the Swedish model.
if they dont want to attend to the workers demands in sweden they can get fucked.
you’re gonna wanna skip the polls and start buying arms now if that’s your plan
Imagine my surprise when the election comes and goes, one way or another, and these online revolutionaries continue to do… nothing of substance. Just like 4 years ago, and the 4 years before that, and…
i’m all for forcibly restructuring society, but yeah… we know these people will do nothing.
see the university protests and unionization if you want an example in the us. we are organizing protests and actions, but doing systemic change is a collective endeavour.
we actually need much more people to recognize its broken and be willing to help. that wont happen if all you do is begrudingly accept the progressively worsening lesser evils.
Or don’t skip the polls. Both sides will shoot at you, but one side will shoot much sooner because it wouldn’t necessarily be political suicide for them.
i cant do that by myself. the rest of the people has to recognize the system is broken too.
You also can’t do it if the backslide into full totalitarian fascism reaches the “first they came for the socialists” line in the poem.
totalitarian fascism is already there, the crackdowns on the university protests are looking a lot like it. violence towards the protesters, a pat on the head on the fascist counterprotesters.
and honestly its looking a lot like trump will win anyway, at least that is what the polls are looking like.
we should be bracing for impact.
edit: how could i forget the treatment the us gives to the third world.
totalitarian fascism is already there
Fucking lmao
Don’t worry - after
HitlerTrump, their turn!
I would argue you need unions more. There’s no minimum wage in Iceland because we have people who negotiate it for us.
There are a lot of US states that have skirted union protections by not banning unions themselves, but just banning workplaces from requiring union membership for employees. It’s called a “right to work” law that is implemented many different ways in many different states that makes unions a hard thing to nail down for the federal government.
As far as a federal ban on these laws, I think we are more in a position of fighting against a federal version of them, which is more likely to have support, than we are in a position to fight for a federal ban against those laws, though there are efforts.
Repugs want nothing less than slavery
Always have. And yet morons who didn’t pay attention in class talk about the party of Lincoln
They proclaim “party of Lincoln” while waving a Confederate flag without a shred of irony or self awareness.
Biden was the Dem that passed many of the Republican bills including making it impossible for students to declare Bankruptcy on their student loans.
Current Dems are more right than old Republicans. Republicans just went even more to the right.
Cherry picking a bit, there.
Who Made Student Loans Nondischargeable?
Allen Ertel, a Congressman from Pennsylvania, pushed to make student loans hard to discharge. Ertel was in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1983. Despite stats showing less than 1% of federal student loans were ever wiped clean in bankruptcy, Ertel argued student loan defaults were jumping up. His convincing talk changed the rules, making student loans stick around after bankruptcy unless the borrower faced severe hardship.
Joe Biden’s Dual Role in the Student Loan Crisis
Joe Biden has affected the dynamics of student loan debt and its dischargeability, playing two distinct roles:
As a senator, Biden backed multiple pieces of legislation that unintentionally exacerbated the student loan crisis. These laws facilitated the growth of student loan borrowing, often increasing borrowers’ monthly payments and making these loans tougher to discharge in bankruptcy.
As President, Biden’s policy changes have further altered the landscape of student loan dischargeability, albeit in a different direction. While his administration has sought to alleviate the student loan crisis and lighten the burden on borrowers, the reforms implemented may have indirectly made it more difficult for some student loan borrowers to discharge federal loans in bankruptcy.
Here’s how:
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The administration created the most affordable repayment plan to date, shielding even more of a borrower’s discretionary income from student loan payments. While this new student loan repayment plan provides immediate relief, it might inadvertently discourage some borrowers from seeking bankruptcy discharges.
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Biden implemented an interest waiver, effectively reducing the debt burden. While beneficial for most, it could indirectly create an environment where discharging student loans through bankruptcy becomes harder.
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All federal student loan borrowers, including those with a consolidation loan, are eligible to get retroactive credit toward income-based repayment forgiveness. This move alone has already erased $39 billion in federal student loans. Experts expect that this will ultimately lead to a $400+ billion bailout by the federal government, again potentially reducing the instances of borrowers resorting to bankruptcy.
https://www.tateesq.com/learn/student-loan-bankruptcy-law-history
As a senator, Biden backed multiple pieces of legislation that unintentionally exacerbated the student loan crisis. These laws facilitated the growth of student loan borrowing, often increasing borrowers’ monthly payments and making these loans tougher to discharge in bankruptcy.
Yes literally what I said. Cherrypicking lmao. If you want to learn something:
How Biden helped create the student debt problem he now promises to fix:
“Biden was one of the most powerful people who could have said no, who could have changed this. Instead he used his leadership role to limit the ability of other Democrats who had concerns and who wanted the bill softened,” said Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill specialising in bankruptcy
(please stop using this formatting btw)
Oh, I’m afraid you misunderstood. I was doing you the respect of including what you were talking about along with the context for it, because you aren’t wrong that Biden contributed to the problem. But you are very wrong that he’s exacerbating it now.
But hey, the difference between then and now, true and false, right and wrong - why should any of that bother you? You’ve got an agenda to push! 🤡
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If there’s no corresponding regulation on rent prices, minimum wage is irrelevant.
Raise the minimum wage to a bazillion dollars? Great! Rent is now three hundred bajillion!
I’m glad someone made this point. Raising the federal minimum wage too fast is a great way to cause inflation. Control rent and interest rates and creep minimum wage up in steps, going to $15 federal would be great for a while but isn’t a stable solve. We can start establishing a living wage economy slowly, especially where many states still tax food and health essentials. $7.25 is embarrassing, but funnily enough, it is still the 17th highest across all countries.
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.
It’s pretty funny to me to see Americans claiming that a full-time job should be sufficient to have your basic needs met - as if the unemployed should live in dire poverty.
One step at a time, alright? 😅
I would fully support some kind of UBI or someway to ensure that those who can’t work can live semi-independent lives. But in order for there to be money to support that system, a majority of people do have to work.
The alternative is some kind of utopian society that has yet to exist. If we make it to Star Trek and not Blade Runner I will fully embrace the idea that everyone can have all of their needs covered without the requirement for others to indirectly support that through labor and taxes. But until then, improving workers ability to support themselves also improves the ability to support those who cannot.
Where I’m from there has been a minimum income guarantee since 1965. In fact, the constitution says the government should ensure every resident has sufficient income to live. A single-person household with someone who is permanently unemployed receives about $1500 per month (you receive additional money per child). This is the lowest income a legal resident is allowed to have. Every rich European country has a similar system, though most opt to cover rent for the poorest, and give a smaller amount for the remaining expenses.
It turns out that willingness to work isn’t an issue, because most people don’t actually like to do nothing. The employment rate is far higher than in the US.
We’re saying that working a full time job SHOULD give you a living wage.
Instead, even if you’re working, you’re still living in dire poverty.
I agree that people sbould be able to live comfortably with their job, even a low skill one. But the idea that raising wages will mean increase prices does check out though. That, or people with higher skill jobs will be paid less and then they will be the ones to suffer the most.
Imo, we should aim to make things more efficient, thus cheaper because they actually became cheaper. E.g. solving the housing crisis => cheaper rent. Public healthcare => cheaper healthcare. Better schools => better citizens that leave less trash around => less expensive trash management. More public transport, less need to buy or do maintenance to a car etc. And so on and so forth.
Minimum wages can’t fix this problem (they can fix others), they’re just a bandaid on a severed limb.
This is how brainwashed capitalism has made us. In a society that is purely driven by money the thought that giving people their fair share means my prices might increase. Instead, we should fix every societal problem first before doing the one thing that would actually work.
We have record inflation now, is it because major cities have passed $15+ minimum wage? Not at all, not even a little. Further proof that a pandemic has a thousand times more influence than simply paying people more.
Oh and the horrible thought a “high” skilled laborer might be paid less shudder. Like a doctor might only get paid $90k instead of $150k. How could they survive!?
What other convenient tropes should we trot out to disfranchise the only real solution of just paying people what they deserve. Oh that’s right they don’t deserve it because they are lazy or low-skilled or any of the other bullshit excuses we have been force fed our entire lives.
Eh I think you missed my point entirely. And, by the way, being a doctor is simply put very hard, that’s why they’re paid more than people who flip burgers who just flip burgers, and doctors are also rarer and I believe you want to have a good doctor don’t you? Because he’s simply going to get up and leave to another place where he is paid properly if you don’t pay him a good wage. Also, you don’t make any actual good points in your long answer.
Pleaso go study economics. Thank you.
I didn’t miss your point because it was sophomoric in nature and therefore underdeveloped. Your belief in the meritocracy just shows how ridiculously brainwashed you are. It is okay, most of us are one way or another I suppose.
Society might not be meritocratic, but at the end of the day life is… You’re just bitter you don’t deserve better.
You are really reaching there Mr. I buy the rhetoric hook line and sinker. It is clear who is bitter here and it is not the accomplished father of four who owns a million dollar house. Good talking with you.
It is not what you own that makes you an accomplished person
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.
When applied to multinationals, it would result in companies exporting high skill jobs overseas to bring pay down. Would need to legislate behavior as well to stop companies trying to get around it
Oh, I never said it was perfect and I have actually thought through all of those issues, just didn’t want to bog down the comment in details and math.
I like the idea of rent prices being tied directly to pay, maybe a straight %. It would be complicated, but pitting greedy landlords up against greedy businesses sound much more fair than getting fucked from both sides.
Landlords want to make the most money, but if what they can charge was directly tied to minimum wage, they will actually fight to raise pay. Not for altruism or any positive reason, but because they want to increase their own revenue.
It’s not a great idea, but it’s something I’ve thought about for a decade or so. Especially when that “Fight for $15” took so long to that even if $15 was the minimum wage, it would still be way behind to cost of living.
Landleeches can get fucked as far as I am concerned. Implement a chit system like NYC taxies so only a fixed number of single family homes can be rentals in a town, make strict livability (not habitability) standards for those rentals with steep fines and inspections every 2 years, and cap rent at a % of the real value of the property. You let a house languish so it is only worth $40k, you don’t get to charge $2k/month to live there.
It’s not like I’m pro landlord. But, being realistic about a capitalist society, pitting those with opposing interests to fight one another is so much better than both of those things existing uncheck and us being the victim.
Yeah, I agree that it would be popcorn worthy, but I also have a strong suspicion that doing that would end up getting gamed by both and consumers would have compounding losses.
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.
Lot of dems voted against it too
Do you consider 7 out of 48 Dems to be a lot? Versus every single republican?
What percentage of Sanders supporters do you imagine voted for Trump?
Do you suppose it’s higher than the percentage of Democrats in the Senate who were willing to go on record as hating workers by voting to kill the minimum wage increase?
Because Sanders supporters are still catching shit for the loss Clinton earned, regardless of who they actually voted for in 2016.
If we’re expected to vote like the party wants, why aren’t legislators?
Nice whataboutism.
I suppose it makes little sense to you that I was comparing centrists not getting what they want (Clinton’s coronation) to centrists getting exactly what they all want (no increase to the minimum wage.).
Hello from California! Democrat majority everywhere but it’s “still too hard” to do it. Things that make you go hmmmm
Some of the strongest worker protections in the country and the CCPA. Really makes you wonder how much more you could get if young adults actually voted in elections.
Wouldn’t raising minimal wage just raise prices higher without dealing with the underlying problems?
Prices are already getting higher, and we don’t have other solutions.
In Australia, minimum wage is quite high and so are the costs of many goods, but things like Amazon and flight tickets are much cheaper comparatively
That doesn’t answer my question. Prices might be high, but when you just give people more money, they will grow higher. Why wouldn’t they?
Not a real solution, we must get laws to really regulate renting. I can’t deny the dream for me would be to outlaw renting entirely if not for particular reasons, and pushing for more reasonable mortgages + government help to buy a first home
single family houses are inefficient as hell though.
I love that all the Usual Suspects showed up on this thread to push “BOTH SIDES”.
So, honest question that comes of my own ignorance. Is a minimum wage supposed to be livable? I always figured minimum wage jobs were for people like teens who didn’t need to afford housing.
Yea so that’s the argument that people who don’t agree with making a liveable wage give. In reality there is just a great group of people who are only eligible for minimum wage or close to minimum wage jobs. So a fair bit of adults that are even trying to support their children.
So I think we can all agree that especially if 2 parents are working 40 hours a week should be able to at least live a decent life in a Western country. And that’s mainly in to question here. For teens you could always have a lower minimum wage until they’re older. As they have in plenty countries.
Does this address your question properly?
Yes, I agree with everything you’ve put here.
I just didn’t know what the response to that argument was.
All good, unsure why people down voted you when you asked so politely. If there is anything else let me know.
People are fragile, thank you for taking the question in the spirit it was intended.
I always figured minimum wage jobs were for people like teens who didn’t need to afford housing.
Nothing in min wage law adjusts your wages based on whether or not you’re someone else’s dependent.
How do you know teens don’t need to afford housing? Many do.
It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, making his intentions pretty clear.
Why don’t states with Dem majorities raise the local wage to match housing costs?
Washington State, New York, Minnesota… none of these states have escaped this problem.
Because the problem is the capitalist class is holding the government hostage with their lobbying. Shit’s class war, not culture war.
[Sic]“Don’t tell me there’s no class war, of course there’s class war. My class, the rich, started it and we’re winning.”
- Warren Buffet
the problem is the capitalist class
I hope there aren’t any capitalists outside the Republican party.
California does. We have a state minimum wage of $15/hr, city minimum wages, (varies by the city, but here in San Diego it’s currebtly $16.85 an hour) and now food service minimum wage of $20 an hour at the state level.
You can’t pay for rent in San Diego on a $40k/year salary.
Even slums are going for $2k/mo. And food plus utilities easily puts you over the line.
$20/hr only really works if you’ve got some kind of subsidy or second job.
Oh yeah. I never said that they are keeping up with COL, but they are doing something at least. I personally think that corporations should be banned from owning residential property, but I don’t believe the political will is there to actually manage to do that.
I never said that they are keeping up with COL, but they are doing something at least.
If the cost of living outpaced the wage rate, effective wages are falling.
