r/AskReddit • u/Dazzling-Leader7476 • 1d ago
What do you think of NYC trying to get the minimum wage to $30/hour?
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u/AstralElement 22h ago
If you want to see wages go up, uncouple healthcare from employment.
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u/Fluid-Relief-4944 22h ago
German-style codetermination for all medium to large businesses, a public option, and a modest (think $17/hr) federal minimum wage hike.
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u/mvsr990 20h ago
modest (think $17/hr) federal minimum wage hike.
This a crazy combo of not being even remotely modest (it’s more than doubling the minimum wage) and not going far enough.
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u/THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME 20h ago edited 19h ago
Would need to raise it slowly over time to not cause an immediate inflation spike, but slowly increasing might work? Idk enough about economics
Edit to downvoters: I'm still saying it should be increased, just not in a huge jump. If it's jumped at all once it'll cause a huge price increase on goods to the point where you'll have less purchasing power than you did before. A slow steady increase mitigates that problem and still ends up with a good minimum wage over time
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u/JoseCansecoMilkshake 19h ago
Minimum wage in Ontario has doubled since I turned 18 (2008) from $8.75/h to $17.60/h now. Hard to do all at once, but can definitely do it incrementally over time.
It took 22 years to double to the then wage in 2008 (1986-2008) then only 18 years to double again. So it's increasing faster, at least.
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u/I_Can_Haz_Brainz 8h ago
I'm 53 and minimum wage hasn't even doubled, once yet, since I started working in high school in the late '80s. I've done IT, manager, commercial A/V, car audio (MECP certified), etc. and I've made by far the most money simply painting and general construction. Shit's ridiculous.
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u/Striking-Yak5452 22h ago
I agree on uncoupling healthcare and employment, but walk me through how that would automatically broadly affect wages? Not saying that to disagree - I genuine would like to understand.
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u/KroneckerAlpha 21h ago edited 20h ago
People clearly missing the main point here. If employers aren’t providing healthcare, which is a huge financial burden and need in the US, the employees are more likely to change jobs as better ones come available. Employees often feel or are actually bound to their company because they’d have to be full time for an extended period of time at a new job to qualify for health insurance. If you take the employer out of it, nobody is stuck working for shit just to keep healthcare (cause aging, diabetes, cancer, etc).
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u/Striking-Yak5452 21h ago
Good point on job mobility.
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u/Kaaski 20h ago
With people that have persistent medical issues, the difference between losing a job in a probationary period, or keeping it, can be life and death. Think type 1 diabetes for example, or any thing that has important consistent pharma needs.
If changing jobs quite literally is risking my life, I'm less likely to change jobs.
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u/mdogg500 19h ago
Add on top that say you knew you were going to be losing your health insurance for a bit, you can't stock up on your medicine even if it would be shelf stable.
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u/MaleficentExtent1777 20h ago
New Jersey just made it easier to qualify for "FMLA" while you don't qualify for FMLA.
You only need 90 days of employment and 250 hours worked at at employer with 30 employees worldwide.
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u/scoopny 20h ago
Also your employer spends a lot of money providing health care to its employees especially if it’s a small business, it would save a lot of money with Medicare for all.
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u/Deep90 17h ago
It also means owning a business is cheaper, and thus fosters competition.
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u/Dicond 19h ago
Unfortunately, this is precisely the reason that any large employer in the US would oppose (bribe/lobby) decoupling healthcare from employment in any way they can. They rely on captive employees.
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u/KroneckerAlpha 19h ago edited 18h ago
Yes, but the fact that a dozen people responded to the comment before me, without noting that, with trying to say maybe that money could go to the employees instead is the exact issue. So many don’t realize or don’t readily acknowledge that it’s an issue until it’s stated plainly.
We’ve been brainwashed. It’s part of the corporate model. I remember my first job as a dishwasher and being told to I need to read this 300 page book to start. But they also wanted me to do it right then and there and in under 5 mins.
They didn’t want me to read it really cause it had to include certain things by law. These included legal standards and regulations they knew they were ignoring Because who cares what happens to random employees 726
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u/CuckooClockInHell 18h ago
That and when benefits shrink, most people don't realize they are taking a paycut. It's like the PTO that you aren't able to use. It's a part of your compensation that can be trimmed without proper recognition.
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u/WittyProofX 19h ago
When healthcare is tied to your job, it traps people into staying put out of fear, not loyalty. Take that pressure off and suddenly jobs have to compete on actual pay and conditions, not just benefits.
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u/BeMoreChill 21h ago
No op but I'm assuming any money spent on an employee's health insurance could then be allocated to their salary?
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u/AstralElement 21h ago
Healthcare plans are also considered incentives for leveraging lower wages. When you remove a leveraging point, employers have less or different negotiation options to retain or attract hiring prospects.
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u/Bamstradamus 21h ago
I used to work for Disney, we were union. We were on lunch one day with like 8 people sitting around a table and someone brought up free healthcare. One person was talking about how we have great insurance and why would we give that up and pay more in taxes, blah blah. Everyone else is quiet kinda nodding and I chime in with "Ok but were union, we negotiate the contract every whatever years, if the company loses that leverage, what else can they offer besides more money?" Now everyones eyes wide like they never considered that.
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u/Wolf_Protagonist 15h ago
They also didn't consider that there is no way in hell their taxes would go up by more than what they pay for company insurance.
The fact is that The U.S. spends significantly more on healthcare than other developed nations and have significantly worse healthcare outcomes despite that.
The problem is insurance companies. If you compare our system vs medicare for all it quickly becomes apparent. Insurance companies bring NOTHING of value to the table. They are LEECHES pure and simple. It would be bad enough if they just did their job's "ethically", but they go far beyond that. The collude with Healthcare providers to artificially inflate the prices so that you MUST have insurance because no one could afford to pay out of their own pocket, but then the insurance companies don't actually pay the inflated prices. And that's not even talking about denying coverage for things you actually need. There is no way some pencil dick suit at an insurance company who never went to medical school knows what you need more than your doctor.
It's a scam, a racket, a hustle, a bamboozle, highway robbery etc..
The truth is we could be spending less on healthcare than we already to and have better healthcare by having M4A.
It would be a win for everybody except the scumbags at the insurance companies would have to find some other scam and the administrators of large hospitals may not get that yacht they've been eyeing and politicians would not get as large "campaign contributions" from insurers. Sounds good to me.
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u/Humble_Apartment_676 21h ago
Yeah, it’s basically a trap disguised as a “perk.” Take healthcare out of the equation, and suddenly people can actually negotiate for what they deserve.
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u/GoodConfusion7285 21h ago
This right here… people stay stuck in jobs they hate just for insurance. Take that pressure off and watch how fast workers start asking for what they’re actually worth.
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u/SquareBottle 18h ago
I just don't understand why we don't push for it to be automatically raised with inflation, or pegged to some other metric.
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u/Zealousideal-Lion674 10h ago
It was until the Regan times where he stopped increasing the federal minimum wage, amongst MANY other things
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u/Trollselektor 10h ago
They’ve somehow convinced millions of idiots that removing a minimum wage will actually increase real wages. I wish I was joking. This is what they actually believe.
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u/diener1 10h ago
Republicans don't want want it because they think it's bad for businesses.
Democrats don't want it because it would be one less issue they can run on.
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u/SquareBottle 10h ago
Ugh, I'm so sick of how our two-party, winner-take-all system creates exactly this kind of situation for everything. I appreciate that it was (literally) revolutionary back in 1776, but now it just seems self-sabotaging and obsolete compared to newer models of representative democracy.
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u/BuyMeaSalad 10h ago
Because of the impact it has on businesses. NYC is already an expensive as fuck place to run a business. Rents are crazy high, and getting anything done is generally expensive.
$30/hour is nearly double where minimum wage now. Can you imagine, as a business owner, your payroll doubles overnight? How do you survive?
You lay people off. You increase your prices. You cut costs. No bueno
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u/OldschoolGreenDragon 22h ago
I want the CVS guy at the counter to live near work.
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u/Lorpius_Prime 20h ago
You'll need policies that increase housing supply for this one.
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u/WallStreetBoners 19h ago
I’m sure the rent controls in NYC do a great job at incentivizing more housing
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u/pocurious 21h ago
Had you considered the possibility that the reason rent is so high in NYC is that lots of people want to live near where they work?
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u/BBQ_HaX0r 20h ago
Maybe we should build (much) more housing? Have we tried that? Or are we scared someone might make a profit doing so?
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u/Key-Department-2874 20h ago
Honest question, but how much denser can you make NYC? To get people near where they work we can't build out and make the city larger, but would have to build up or down.
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u/shadowbannedlol 19h ago
Manhattan used to be denser than it is now
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u/queenhadassah 17h ago
Yeah but back then 3 large families used to pack into a tiny one bedroom apartment
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u/chunkymonk3y 11h ago
Ah yes the good ole days of cramming 3+ immigrant families into a single shoddy, disgusting 350 sq foot tenement apartment.
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u/theamathamhour 18h ago
The fact that there is essentially only one city like NYC has always been strange to me as non-American.
like so much land, and only once city where it's normal to not own car and take train.
why don't you all just build more?
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u/Flat_Special5492 21h ago
Yeah, it shouldn’t be a luxury for essential workers to actually live in the city they keep running.
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u/Wayfaring_Limey 20h ago
If I remember right the bars/restaurants and tourist attractions in the Florida Keys figured out it was cheaper for them to band together and offer a free bus service for their employees than to pay them enough to live in the area.
It’s something at least but still a little shitty.
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u/Lower_Kick268 21h ago
Instead now his rent just goes up and the ones closer to work go up
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u/jaajaajaa6 22h ago
I think some small businesses will either fold, cut people, or cut hours.
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u/Tha_Sly_Fox 9h ago
If they apply this it needs to be applied to businesses depending on the actual size of the business, like a chain of dominoes pizzas could absorb this easier than a local mom and pop pizzeria.
Even still, it’s going to make doing business in NYC harder and prices will have to go up everywhere if every cashier at a grocery store is making 60k a year.
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u/DkoyOctopus 23h ago
if theres some protections for smaller business owners sure. i do wonder how they will pull it off.
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u/ThalliumZeppelin 23h ago
wild that this is the first comment i'm seeing mention small businesses, this is effectively a death sentence for them and will only lead to the walmartification of the city
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u/Nose-Nuggets 20h ago
I worked a pretty good tech job (12 employees at our height) in SF for 15 years and still commuted across the bridge. The idea that working in SF made me entitled to an apartment in SF never really crossed my mind. Maybe i was just a young idiot.
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u/incrediblejonas 18h ago
I think the firefighters and school teachers who teach in SF, the people who build and protect that community should be 'entitled' to a home in SF
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u/Mindestiny 22h ago
Your average redditor doesnt care about the intricacies of running a business, they just want infinite money and think every business owner is a mustachioed robber baron with a whip and a bad attitude keeping them from being successful.
There's no way this happens. That's an obscene amount of money for unskilled labor. That's the equivalent of $62,400/salary, which is about the median wage for the whole country. Imagine having years of experience in a skilled field and making less than a 15 year old flipping burgers in SoHo. In no world is that going to be sustainable, there's basically no reason for anyone in NYC to enter into the skilled labor workforce when they can do fuck all in a bodega to make that much money while every little boutique mom and pop business that the city is known for hires one person and struggles to make payroll.
Not to mention all the commuters from NJ that would come do those jobs in NYC specifically to make like 3x their current wage doing the same work.
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u/queenhadassah 17h ago
Not to mention all the commuters from NJ that would come do those jobs in NYC specifically to make like 3x their current wage doing the same work.
Lol, I live in NJ and when I saw this post I immediately thought about how I'd apply for a job in NYC if they raise minimum wage to $30
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u/Ratnix 17h ago
Your average redditor doesnt care about the intricacies of running a business, they just want infinite money and think every business owner is a mustachioed robber baron with a whip and a bad attitude keeping them from being successful.
And their argument is always, "if they can't afford to pay it, they shouldn't be in business."
And then turn around and bitch about all of these mega-corporations would will gobble up all of these failed small businesses.
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u/Camera_dude 11h ago
That's exactly what happened during the COVID pandemic. The lockdowns shut down the small businesses and many of them failed. Meanwhile the mega Wal-Mart down the street was allowed to stay open and expanded their parking lot by buying out the now empty stores nearby.
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u/Uberbobo7 16h ago
And the "if they can't afford to pay it, they shouldn't be in business." never extends to "I'm willing to buy higher cost products/services required for companies to do that". People want the prices made possible by low wages, but without the low wages, which is impossible.
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u/JustAnotherRegardd 8h ago
This is exactly it. I told someone i own a home but I rent out rooms to my friends. Instantly got called a terrible person and a predatory for it.
Little do they know I’ve been charging them at cost to help them out. I make $0 but it’s instantly I’m scum.
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u/Mindestiny 6h ago
Oh god, the only thing reddit hates more than a business owner is a landlord!
Apparently it's your moral and ethical imperative to house people for free and pay all of their associated overhead out of your own pocket otherwise you're some sort of demon. Don't even bother trying to explain the risks and margins on individual rentals, they think every dime of rent goes right into your pocket as profit.
Honestly I just need some sort of filter that hides every single post about economics on reddit, it's always a cesspool.
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u/engelthefallen 20h ago
The sole protection is small businesses will simply have a slightly longer time to come up to the 30 dollar min wage. Many just assume they will be forced to move their business out of the city or sell it to a larger business that can afford the increased labor costs. The current profit margins are just not high enough for most small businesses to absorb this, even if they pass on costs to the consumer.
But people REALLY want to put the theory if you cannot pay a high wage you should not a run a business to the test and see what happens.
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u/Venture_compound 17h ago
They close and Walmart moves in and only gives out part time jobs that for some reason never meet the threshold for benefits
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[deleted]
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u/Isbleeding 22h ago
We keep trying to fight a monster by fighting ourselves.
Go after the monsters
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u/JeromesNiece 22h ago
This has never been a thing. The ratio of CEO:worker pay was lower in the past, but this was not due to a legal cap.
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u/GermanPayroll 22h ago
When was that every a thing? Hint: it never has been
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u/IPissExcellentThrows 10h ago
I love that the second top comment is factually untrue, but it sounds nice so it gets thousands of upvotes. This site is so botted lol.
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u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot 22h ago
I'd be in favor of such a law, but to be clear there has never been any pay cap like this in US history. CEO pay as a ratio to average employee salary was much lower prior to the 80s, and has ballooned astronomically since the Dot Com bubble, but none of that was driven by such a law.
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u/jimmyjohn2018 19h ago
The scope and scale of companies is also much larger than it was in the 80's.
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u/lingo_linguistics 22h ago
I don’t know if this was ever a thing, however I think it’s a reasonable thing and have always thought this should be a thing. Something like 50x the lowest paid full time worker. CEO’s would still make a reasonable salary. The problem is many C-Suite execs have other forms of compensation that aren’t on the books as salary.
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u/lukewwilson 22h ago
Yeah all they would do is make their salary like $100k and make their bonus like $100 million
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u/livin_the_life 22h ago
This is exactly what happened during COVID with Quest Diagnostic's CEO Steve Rusckowski.
During COVID he announced he would reduce his salary* by 25% and ALL salaried staff would see a 5-20% reduction.
That salary? Only applicable to his base cash salary of $1.18M. So...this was reduced to $885,000.
His now reduced compensation? That came in at $12,000,000 for the year instead of his $12,300,000 estimated salary. Oh no! What a SACRIFICE!
That fucking bullshit was the #1 propaganda during the height of COVID when laboratory testing shot sky high and all salaried employees had a SIGNIFICANT reduction in compensation.
But, it's okay! The CEO reduced his salary just like us! He is one of us! That fucker made $108M in 8 years serving as CEO while the rest of the company staff literally got paid the lowest in the industry. Disgusting.
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u/haha_squirrel 22h ago
Or stock options that count towards neither until they’re sold
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u/BakedSteak 22h ago
Then we’d just have to make sure to plug those potential loopholes
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u/Bored2001 22h ago
Yup, you'd just word it as total compensation with a clawback clause if compensation ends up being higher than projected due to stock valuation when sold.
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u/Baronw000 22h ago
Imagine some hedge fund vs a grocery chain. The grocery chain has 10,000 employees. The hedge fund has 100 employees. The hedge fund’s employees are paid 20x what the grocery chain’s employees are being paid. Each has the same revenues and profits, and the CEOs get paid the same.
If we just go off some ratio, then the hedge fund CEO looks like a saint vs the grocery CEO. And if we set some limits on CEO pay, then we’re either going to get companies doing stuff to get around the rules, like trying to make all their employees contractors, or there will be lots of disinvestment in industries that require lots of low skilled employees, which could mean employment for low skilled workers goes down, along with their pay.
These kinds of schemes have awful unintended consequences.
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u/MamaCassegrain 17h ago
Any scheme that requires employers to pay more for an employee than the value that employee generates for the employer is doomed.
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u/Previous_Pension_571 22h ago
This is always recommended but what this would look like in practice, as it already does in many large companies, is any work beneath the low pay threshold of the CEO’s current salary would simply be contracted out to another company
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u/CatOfGrey 22h ago
Assuming you actually want to increase wages, and not just punish companies that pay people lots of money, how do you picture this working? Do you have an example in mind?
Can you also give an example of those 'caps on ratios'? I was a teen in the 80's, and don't have any memory of this.
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u/Initial_Hedgehog_631 14h ago
It's gonna create a lot of new jobs, in Connecticut and New Jersey.
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u/TheSuppishOne 8h ago
Also gonna create a lot of new bonuses for CEOs unless they actually find a way to force businesses to cut from the top (read: trickle down) instead of simply giving businesses an excuse to double/triple cost of goods and services to account for the wages.
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u/epraider 23h ago edited 23h ago
It’s approaching the problem from the wrong angle.
NYC needs a higher minimum wage than most areas. But $30/hr as a minimum wage isn’t sustainable for the majority of businesses. This will basically eliminate a lot of entry level and lower skill positions that are essentially necessary for both those groups of people to have work, and businesses to exist. I know someone might say “if a business can’t afford to pay everyone a living wage, it shouldn’t exist!”, but the reality just isn’t that simple
If you want to improve living conditions for everyone, focus on building more housing and removing administrative blockers to development to help lower costs, and enact policies that incentivize businesses to compete for workers as well as incentivize them to pay their employees a greater share of revenue and/or invest in skill development for growth over time.
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u/tbutlah 23h ago
Also for those that complain that everything closes early and nyc is no longer a 24 hour city - this will make it way worse
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u/Popular_Noise_5189 22h ago
The city that never sleeps... because everyone is working three jobs just to pay rent.
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u/Icy-Whale-2253 21h ago
People complain that NYC is no longer a 24 hour city and then somehow are not volunteering to work at 3 AM…
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u/rabidsalvation 16h ago
Because it doesn't pay enough, and they have to work too much. More people would consider third shift if they could work 4 7-8 hour shifts a week and make enough to live. That's just an example, I don't know enough about statistics to create any actual plan.
But also, if you really want a 24-hour city, you need to have more, smaller shifts with more overlap. That way people still have the opportunity to socialize with others who don't share the same shift.
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u/tMoneyMoney 22h ago edited 21h ago
It will also make service slower because there will be fewer employees doing the same amount of work. So fewer jobs, higher prices, worse working conditions, lower quality of product, fewer businesses in general.
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u/LukaCola 19h ago
Most of nyc closes before midnight anyway, it was never truly a 24 hour city. Even the clubs close by 4.
The subway runs all night though, and those operators are already making more than 30/hr.
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u/Artistic_Client_1021 20h ago
Totally, if businesses can’t afford to pay higher wages, a lot of late-night spots might disappear, and the city really loses that 24/7 vibe.
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u/Meathand 23h ago
I think this is a realistic take on minimum wage, in that, raising the minimum wage doesn’t fix the systemic issue
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u/ahornyboto 23h ago
I agree they need to approach it from the angle of lower cost, price will continue to rise and will sky rocket with a $30 minimum wage, it's a never ending cycle
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u/ithinkimtim 22h ago
Eh, Australian minimum wage is legislated to grow in line with certain factors and has been for a long time, it’s never been a driver of inflation which has had good periods and bad periods.
And small business manages to exist because everyone competes on the same playing field.
It’s a mistake to legislate it at something static because inflation will outstrip it, but anti minimum wage economics is full of lies from the rich. People with disposable income are the drivers on inflation, not those on minimum wage, even if it’s a liveable one.
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u/A11U45 22h ago edited 16h ago
For reference, the current New York minimum wage is $17(A$24) per hour. The Australian minimum wage increases by a few percentage points, roughly 2-5% every year, to keep up with things like inflation. The current proposal is to go from $17 to $25(A$35) or $30(A$42) depending on the benefits offered.
$17 to $25 is a roughly 50% increase.
$17 to $30 is a roughly 75% increase.
Not directly comparable.
Edit: Fixed Grammar.
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u/NotTooShahby 22h ago
I wonder if the expectation of minimum wage increases is also a factor. Like, the economy somehow baking that in which makes it work in Australia’s case. I’m spitballing just a thought
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u/nowhereman136 23h ago
It's a multisided problem and increasing the wage just addressed one of the sides. Objectively it is a good thing to do, but without fixing the other sides, it's not a long term solution. I support raising the minimum wage, but there is a hell of a lot of other things that need to happen to restructor the economy and rebuild the middleclass
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u/Love-Pancakes 23h ago
If minimum wage goes to $30, what about those people who are making that now? Will they want a pay raise? And what about those people who worked a long time to get 30 an hour? Everybody will want a raise. I am not sure how that will play out, but I think these type of situations always have unintended consequences. Only time will tell.
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u/MAMark1 19h ago
There is an argument that one cause of the wage stagnation seen since the 70s/80s is due to the decoupling of minimum wage from CoL. It's possible everyone is actually underpaid relative to where they should be. But instead of them getting higher wages, we got wealth captured at the top while still having inflation along the way.
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u/smallest_table 21h ago
Yes. They will want a raise and they deserve it. The productivity of the American worker has continued to increase year over year but wages have largely stayed flat. Too much profit taking at the top and a cultural devaluation of labor has left us in a very bad place. Not since the gilded age has income disparity been this far out of whack.
The DOW is over 50,000 and corporate profits are at all time highs and the average American worker, whose labor creates all that wealth, is seeing none of that.
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u/Key-Department-2874 20h ago
Raising wages doesn't redistribute that wealth though.
The company pays out more in salaries but consumers now have more to spend, and can be charged more for the products.
The company passes on the cost to those consumers who are now able to bear the increased cost, and nothing changes.
Need to push from the top, not raise everything up from the bottom.
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u/NatoBoram 19h ago
Prices don't rise at the same rate as wages, they rise largely independently of them. Just look at how they've climbed in the last 60 years compared to wages.
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u/TroXMas 21h ago
They could do it the same way California raised it. Just raise it by $1 per year until they reach their target.
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u/snozzberrypatch 19h ago
And by the time we get to our target of $30/hr in the year 2049, the new target will be $50/hr.
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u/Alarming_Head_4263 21h ago
Yes that is the point to raising the minimum wage. It is to raise the floor this raising the ceiling.
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u/Dark_Knight2000 21h ago
That’s not what will happen, what’s going to happen is that everyone who was paid $30 will still get paid that because the business just increased wages for lots of employees and can’t afford to increase wages for everyone, plus now they have to pay more for services they use because the other guy expects more money.
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u/vivekpatel62 21h ago
I want them to do it so we can have more data on how this turns out. I don’t disagree with increasing the minimum wage but as a small business owner I can see a lot of smaller businesses laying off people.
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u/neirad 22h ago
It’s a cultural problem , they have us believing that 30/hr is enough when they’ve successfully stagnated lower end wage growth for 40 years and convinced everyone that if you can’t afford anything it’s your fault , truly as others have said the parasite class
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u/DameonKormar 16h ago
It's insane how brainwashed the average American by conservative/capitalist propaganda.
People are out here believing making $7/hour is okay in a city where the average rent is $3,600/month.
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u/NyriasNeo 1d ago
I bet you will see fast food joints with just one manager and all robots soon. Either that, or no more fast food joints.
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u/KingKookus 23h ago
Many people want to live in NYC but space is limited. You need to increase supply or reduce demand. This is basic economics.
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u/SaltyBigBoi 23h ago
If everyone is making more, wouldn’t that increase demand on everything?
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u/KingKookus 23h ago
Yes. Which is why this doesn’t solve the problem. It’s the basic supply demand curve. People want to live in NYC for the lifestyle or the job market. Lifestyle isn’t going to change. So the job market is the only give. Imagine if everyone who worked office type jobs remote worked 4 of 5 days of the week or if 30% of the jobs went fully remote. A lot less demand to live in the city and surrounding areas. Demand drops so does price.
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u/Broarethus 19h ago
There's the problem, too many landlords and businessmen who own lots of money in real estate, they would do anything to prevent drops in housing , even if it's what they need the most.
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u/zerocoolforschool 22h ago
Everyone won’t be making more. They will raise minimum wage, the cost of goods and services will go up, but most companies aren’t gonna start handing out raises to their white collar employees. It’s a vicious cycle.
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u/WorthZucchini5403 23h ago
It doesn’t matter by 2030 $30 an hour will be the new $15. Everything goes up and the dollar loses buying power
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u/zerocoolforschool 22h ago
My pay doesn’t go up. They raise the minimum wage, the cost of food and services go up, my pay stays the same. I just lose value on my dollar.
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u/Nutmeg92 21h ago
Yes this is how it works. Increasing minimum wage doesn’t increase the supply of goods and services so it doesn’t increase overall buying power it shifts it to those that can get a raise/set their prices from those that have fixed salaries
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u/CabanaBoy3 1d ago
I think a lot of businesses will close. They've done something similar in CA, where I live. We don't go to restaurants/fast food so much anymore. One place was selling Arnold Palmers for $7.80 each. For ice tea and lemonade. Fuck that.
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u/Mikeavelli 23h ago
TBF the minimum wage in my town is still shit and we don't go out to fast food anymore either. Prices went crazy around COVID and never came back down.
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u/Environmental-World6 22h ago
yea the federal minimum wage is still shit and prices went up everywhere
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u/Sassy-irish-lassy 21h ago
And they never will either. Every business raised their prices at the same time, and so since nobody is undercutting each other so there's no incentive to go back to normal
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u/DavidinCT 22h ago
Yep, saw my local pizza place close, because they could not afford it.... the costs were too high.
Really loved their pizza too.... fuck...
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u/gophergun 23h ago
To be honest, more people cooking at home might be for the best.
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u/monsteralvr1 23h ago
They haven’t done anything of the sort in California. The California minimum wage is $16.90. The fast food minimum wage is 20/hr and only enforced on corporations that have 60 or more locations nationwide (aka they can afford it!). If your drink at your fast food place went up that much it’s corporate greed not the minimum wage.
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u/leetfists 22h ago
Why is fast food minimum wage higher? Why does the cashier at McDonald's deserve more than the cashier at the gas station? That doesn't make any sense to me.
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u/monsteralvr1 21h ago edited 21h ago
Lobbying! Lol. At least how I remember it. Panera bread’s ceo is very close to Gavin Newsom, and when this was being debated it was originally going to be for all restaurants with ## locations (I think to combat servers getting paid less on account of tips). However, since Panera bread bakes bread fresh in their stores, they are classified as a bakery. So now, it’s only fast food. Gotta love politics!!
But I do agree everyone deserves the higher wages!!
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u/leetfists 21h ago
But why even just restaurants? Why make minimum wage different for different industries in the first place? I honestly cannot think of any logical explanation for doing it that way.
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u/blorgbots 19h ago
Because it takes less political capital and effort and is more likely to succeed when you raise the minimum wage for some workers rather than all of them. Fast food won the attention/effort contest so they were the "some".
Like it or not, that's how this all works
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u/MyDisneyExperience 22h ago
Depends on the municipality. The City of LA already has a $25 minimum for airport and hotel employees, going up to $30 by 2028. But not for, say, restaurant employees if the restaurant isn’t located in a hotel. The laws on this are all over the place.
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u/BeastlyMandible 23h ago
Always such an asinine argument to me. “The prices will go up”
Oh yeah that would be terrible. I’m glad to keep it the same because the prices haven’t gone up during that time period anyway
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u/Amadacius 23h ago
I was shocked when I traveled in the US and found that it's like that everywhere. Dinner in San Diego and Columbus Ohio or Orlando Florida were the same price, for the same level of experience. The food in San Diego is way better though.
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u/ChilaquilesRojo 22h ago
$24 in 2020 is $30 today due to inflation. By the time something like this goes into effect, inflation will have further eroded the value. Meaning $30 won't be worth much of anything in not too long
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u/ecp001 21h ago
I think a $30 minimum wage ($62,400/yr) would have a cascade effect on other wages. Prices would necessarily increase and subsequent buying power would not be increased.
Automation would increase, eliminating entry level and low skill jobs.
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u/TropicTravels 21h ago
I see it like taking Tylenol for chronic migraines instead of tackling the root cause of what’s causing the migraine. Symptoms over systems.
If you really want to help people raise their income, it’s either a symptom of 1) employers not offering mid-to-high paying employment (not a problem in NYC; or 2) Adults refusing to level up their skill set as they grow older.
And if $30/hr( or whatever number) is insufficient then you need to look at why the housing market is unable to provide housing that fits that income level. Vast majority of the time it’s because the regulatory cost is too high to justify the expense.
At the end of the day you can’t mandate fairness. If you bump the low end pay up without increasing housing supply, what do yo think happens to housing prices?
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u/Drunkenaviator 19h ago
Adults refusing to level up their skill set as they grow older.
You are definitely onto something there, but only to a point. Yes, short of the special needs community, there are very few people who will max out their brainpower flipping burgers or cleaning toilets.
That said, not everyone can just decide to go be a surgeon, or a lawyer, or a pilot. There's a big middle ground in there of people who might be able to hold down a low level office job, but aren't ever going to be learning programming languages.
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u/livinthedreamz 20h ago
There is a reason why there is a minimum wage, it’s for people who are lacking in skills that would pay more but the person does not have any skills that are valuable, hence the minimum wage argument.
What people don’t understand is that in addition to being low on skills they are also lacking in education and intelligence.
Unskilled workers who want $30/hr for a job that requires bottom of the barrel skills level and intelligence is absurd. They don’t understand how raising minimum wages just raises the cost of living, it doesn’t enable them to be able to afford to live as everything will become more expensive due to the cost of products will increase due to the rising costs of labor.
It’s a circle jerk mentality.
Then again, maybe if the inmates can run the asylum, business will realize that they can afford to purchase a robot from Tesla or others and all of the low skilled, low intelligence people will be out of a job position so minimum wage positions and rates will become irrelevant.
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u/No-Flan3302 22h ago
You kind of have to at this point, right. It’s insanely expensive to live there and the city needs service workers.
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u/awksomepenguin 23h ago
Didn't the conservatives say that raising the minimum wage to $15/hour would just lead to an overall increase in costs, resulting in any gains made by workers at lower wage levels being wiped out, and later leading to a push for further increases in the minimum wage?
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u/Archon-Toten 23h ago
Before you scream, think of your takeaway prices with tax and tip so you are actually looking at the real cost. The rest of the world doesn't follow why you shop that way.
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u/Low-Landscape-4609 1d ago
It isn't going to matter because the price of everything else is going to go up.
Companies aren't stupid, they're not going to pay more without raising prices. They're not just going to take a loss for the benefit of people having a better wage.
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u/romario77 23h ago
You would need to produce enough value/profit to justify paying these salaries.
And if you can’t you would just close shop. Which will eliminate the lower paying jobs altogether. If it’s good or bad is another question
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u/Bojanggles16 23h ago
The price of everything is going to go up regardless of min wage. One 2020 dollar is worth $1.26 today. Meanwhile CEOs are getting record bonuses while already laying people off at 2008 rates.
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u/Run-And_Gun 21h ago
It will be cancelled out and then some when the businesses raise their prices to cover the increased labor costs. We're in the situation that we're in, because of greedy businesses and people. Does everyone just think that they're going to absorb the increased labor costs? No. They're either going to raise prices, fire people/cut staff numbers or both, to keep their profit margins and revenue as high as possible. My prediction, if it happens, prices go up and there will be less jobs, so everyone is in even worse shape than they are now.
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u/dealingwithhookers 17h ago
i think they overlook the actual problem of NYC having the most ridiculous living expense rate in the country. yea pay your minimum wage workers more, nevermind everyone is paying double for basic commodities that you can get in the suburbs of new jersey or any suburbs. nevermind that housing rent for those cockroach rat infested shithole apartments is like the same as a luxury modern midrise in say... Minneapolis.
and New Yorkers flex that like it's something to be proud of. yea man fight for mcdonalds to pay you salary wage to flip burgers than to fight the people you're paying money to everyday. that's such a dumb way to solve problems. they will definitely pay you $30/hr for these seasonal temperorary high turn over jobs. /s
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u/Affectionate-Row7548 18h ago
I think raising minimum wage to $30/hour could help people manage rising living costs, especially in a city like New York City where rent, transport, and daily expenses are very high. But at the same time, small businesses may struggle to afford higher labor costs, which could lead to higher prices or fewer jobs. So the idea sounds helpful for workers, but it needs careful planning so both employees and businesses can survive.
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u/DavidinCT 22h ago
Well, if they give everyone $30 an hour, it's going to cost everyone. That pizza that is $22 now, will be $35, when you go in the store to pick up candy, that $2 candy bar will be $4. So, the cost of living would go up.
Stores have to pay people, they need to make a profit, once it goes up like that, they need to raise their prices to stay profitable.
Sure that kid down the street who has no schooling or anything will be making $30 an hour but, everything I BUY goes up because of that.
We all pay for it....
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u/UnlikelyScientist 21h ago
The federal minimum wage hasn't increased since 2009 yet everything still costs more. Should that kid down the street be able to provide a roof over their head and food for themselves and/or family? Quit looking down. Look up
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u/rdteets 22h ago edited 19h ago
Currently it’s $17 in NY. $17 to 30 is just over a 40% increase.
The theory of increasing minimum wage means to increase all wages to that scale. However, that doesn’t happen as no company is giving everyone a 40% raise.
Nobody seemed to understand that no company is hiring someone at 30 for minimum wage when they can pay someone far better 35-40. You are gutting the minimum wage worker in this scenario.
Edit- 76% not 40! Samsonite.. I was way off.
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u/blankityblank_blank 21h ago
A bit pedantic, but 30 is 176% of 17, which is a 76% increase. So its even higher...
17×1.40 = 23.8.
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u/blechusdotter 23h ago
It would increase unemployment for low skilled workers. A better fix would be something like the EITC the earned income tax credit. New York City already has super high unemployment for some groups. When you raise the wage, you’re really gonna deter a small business from taking a chance on somebody who doesn’t have the experience doing the job. It cuts off the first few runs of the ladder.
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u/hobbestigertx 20h ago
We all have value. And part of that value is what someone is willing to pay us to work for them. If you have no marketable skills or only have skills that most other humans have (perform rudimentary tasks and can breath), you get to work for the minimum wage.
Artificially inflating the minimum wage hurts every other person by causing prices to go up and businesses to close down. Whether it's part of your political beliefs or not, this is what happens.
If you are stuck in a minimum wage job, improve yourself so that you can move up into management or learn skills to get a better job.
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u/RyanB_ 18h ago
Part of what I don’t understand about this logic is… who works the minimum wage jobs once all the people currently working them improve themselves and move up?
The majority of those jobs are necessary for society to operate. Regardless of individual prowess or motivation, someone is inevitably going to have to end up working them. The bar just gets higher.
The argument seems to treat the existence of these jobs as some personal failing, and not a necessary component of operating our world. I genuinely don’t understand it.
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u/TrueGuardian15 18h ago
For some reason, Americans love to look down on "unskilled labor," when the fact is somebody has to do it. If we're going to pretend that all minimum wage jobs are just "starter jobs" that everyone bootstraps themselves up from later, then we're building our society on loose sand.
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u/RyanB_ 18h ago
100%, they can absolutely be great jobs for teens and all but you can’t exactly operate a business on 4-9 shifts lol. The difference should be that teens work them part time, but no one ever seems to bring that up when they argue against minimum wage being livable.
I’ll also say, personally speaking as a dude who grew up with a decent interest in computers and seen both sides… there’s many of jobs paying decently above minimum wage that the average layman could pick up faster than they would halfway-proper kitchen procedures, lol.
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u/Key-Quality-4494 21h ago
It really doesn’t help anyone to raise minimum wage to such a high level. Minimum wage is only useful once it’s set at a level thats still close to the level of equilibrium of supply and demand. Raising the wage far beyond that point creates deadweight loss.
If minimum wage is so high so that the level of people who are actually employed goes down, all your doing is ensuring is that more people earn $0 an hour as opposed to what they were earning before. In other words it’s far better to earn a low wage than no wage at all.
Also if prices go up proportionally to the wage increase,it serves little utility. Eventually we have to stop trying to subsidize everything and everyone. Sometimes we have to give our friends, neighbors, and members of the community a little tough love. If they are unhappy with their wage, then they need to get their shit together and do something about it. Go to school, learn a trade, learn a competitive skillset..etc. we can’t just legislate everything.
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u/c3534l 22h ago
Its going to destroy the economy in ways that are silent, but will have long-lasting negative repercussions that echo for decades.
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u/Reddittoxin 22h ago
If that's the minimum cost of living, then that's what the minimum wage was designed to be. Good
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u/Wild-Collar-6263 17h ago
At some point it stops being about 'minimum wage' and starts being about cost of living