Time For A $30 Per Hour Minimum Wage

Why raise the minimum wage to a timid $10.10 per hour, as the President proposed? That's only $404 for a 40 hour week, or $21K per year. That's hardly a living wage, especially for someone in a big city trying to support a family. So why don't Democrats follow their convictions and go for a $30 minimum? That would be $1200 for a 40 hour week, or $62.4K per year - a nice middle class income. Doesn't everyone have the right to a secure middle-class life? Why not put an end forever to the indignities and deprivations of low income?

Now those mean Tea Party types will make their typical objections: businesses would be forced to lay off workers or close their doors or raise their prices so high most people could no longer afford to buy from them; the resulting job losses and inflation would devastate the very people Democrats say they care about; the US would be crippled in its competition with foreign countries.

But good Democrats won't be fooled. They know that even the smallest mom and pop business has hidden millions it's just too greedy to share with workers, and that the economy could only be "stimulated" by "liberating" this cash and putting it to work. They know that the Tea Party exists only to serve its 1% masters. That's why they won't settle for a measly $10.10 per hour and will demand $30. After all, if $10.10 is good, $30 is much better.

Unless, unless ... raising the minimum wage is just a ploy to make Dems look "caring" and "generous," unlike "mean-spirited" Republicans, and Democrats really know why minimum wage increases hurt the poor, which is why they're not pushing for much more than $10.10.

What do you think? I say it's a cynical Democrat ploy at the expense of the poor.

 

So don't make the smallest mom and pop business pay that much.

 

Lock it into the cost of living increase and it is a touch high, should be about $21.72, but it's workable. It could be a ploy, because $10.10 really is not a living wage at all. But workers are stupid, unorganized, uninformed and afraid of losing their jobs to ask for a living wage.

 

Nah, they need to pay the going rate in an unregulated capitalist system. Why should I have to pay their wages and benefits that I don't profit from? If they cannot afford to compete with corporations, close their doors.

 

I'm not sure if you you being sarcastic. I'd prefer their doors stay open - they're less likely to engage in the same scrupulous activities as said corporations.

 

bobov, realize that there are a lot of posters here who have difficulty recognizing sarcasm.

 

if we locked it into the cost of living increases congress gets, we would never have to address this issue again

 

No, I see no need to subsidize any business big or small. Conservatives are begging for unregulated capitalism, and until they get it, they will not be satisfied. Capitalism demands you compete, and if you can't, close your doors. When they are all setting on the curb, and foreigners have their jobs, then they will understand what their stupidity has wrought on them. Trying to shore up all these little businesses with taxpayers money is wrong, I do not profit from paying another man's wages and benefits, and especially from stores I don't even shop in. End all corporate aid and let businesses stand or fail on their own. I think they call that tough love.

The only way I would be interested is a socialist economy with set wages, control over business and pricing, etc.

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I am not sure if it should be the cost of living increase or set to the annual GDP, one or the other.

 

You do, but you benefit more when it comes out of the pockets of rich people who wouldn't have spent the money. Spent money is how an economy runs.

 

Corporations are pyramid schemes, not business.

 

The spent money we are talking about is the wages and benefits a company pays a low income worker, which I am forced to subsidize so he ends up with a living wage. I am not the owner, I do not benefit from his profits, and do not buy his products, so please explain how any of this benefits me? Do I get a special consumer benefit card that gives me a discount in his store on products? No, I get gouged, just like the worker gets raped.

 

I can't say that you specifically should pay subsidies, I don't know how rich you are. You benefit when the rich pay subsidies because that props up the economy. Accumulation, particularly at the top, is a malus on production.

 

Minimum wage should be based on the cost of living for a region.

Rural areas and Detroit would have a lower minimum wage than Los Angeles, or NYC.

Another alternative is offered in the video below.

Next problem ?


Moi

[video=youtube;c13q2wYZr_0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c13q2wYZr_0[/video] ​

No ​

 

Not so long ago, MacD's in Australia was paying over 20bucks/hr for flippers.

 

The whole tax system should be tossed in the crapper. If you are a US citizen, you should pay exactly the amount of the can man on the street to support your government and not a penny more, equal taxation, no deductions, just a fee for living here. Let states tax at will for their own needs. BUT if the can man can only afford $50. a month, that is all you and I should be paying, or the crotch Bros. Let government use its import/export taxes as well. I should not have to pay anymore than the guy standing next to me, make government live within its means.

This has several advantages, it ends corporate & foreign aid, massive military, and gets rid of the corporate lobbyists by taking the money out of government. It gets rid of most social programs and it gets rid of most regulations and government employees. There is something in it for everybody. I would benefit more when we cut the corporate umbilical cord and make them stand on their own two feet, not on top of my two feet. same with foreign aid. Let the UN military police the world, bring all our US troops home and stop feeding foreign corporations.

And if government wants more tax money, let the invent ways to raise the wages of the can man. It is an incentive to work for the people.

 

Subsidies have nothing to do with "government living with it's means."

 

I blame the US plight on the worker, who is unorganized, uninformed, and to willing to let corporations take advantage of them. They even despise unions!!! LMAO! Unable to see that organization and cohesion is power. while they complain of union dues that would benefit them and their families, they work for less than what the are worth, the prevailing wage. And then they are all for letting me be taxed to support them!!!

 

Taxes do. Why would or should there be subsidizes? Unless you are speaking of the states doing something. I am saying everybody should pay the same federal amount of taxes, and the only way you can do that fairly is to lower the taxes DOWN to what a can man on the street can afford to pay. Everybody should pay for the privileged of living here and using its infrastructure.

 

The cost of living should be the same across the federal board, and let these regions either have an advantage people flock to, or disadvantages people flee from. This is where state manipulation comes into play like Texas is doing to draw more people to it.

 

OK. $29.99.

 

I sort of agree except even the high cost of living states need some minimum wage workers.

Moi

No ​

 

But you're sure $21.72 is affordable? There'd be no closings or job cuts or unaffordable price increases or inflation? Do you know that only between 1 and 2 percent of all workers get the minimum?

 

The principal operating cost of a business like Wal-Mart - the biggest business in the world - is labor costs. The least vulnerable businesses are those that hire the fewest workers. You see how raising the minimum wage helps working people?

 

My "mom and pop" ran a small business. Just them. What makes you think people struggling to survive are less likely to cut corners?

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I know. It's astonishing and instructive. I wonder how far you'd have to go to make any of them think.

 

I think it would all balance out nicely with only minor changes among some states. Or the people would move where they could live cheaper. When a state sees them leaving they would have to make corrections to stop the bleeding.

Costs are really just a state of mind Farmer brown's chicken makes the same egg, so why should it cost 5 in NY, 3 LA, .25 in Boise?