>

Man, I don't care if a McDonald's line cook makes the same as me. I just want us both to be able to afford living without 6 roommates.
It's more that we need to embrace change beyond paychecks. The right to life, liberty, and happiness must mean the right to food, shelter, education, health care at a minimum. Paycheck adjustments should be the determining factor between a US based vacation vs a European vacation, not whether someone gets to sleep in their car or under a bridge. >

This person empathizes. >

My life has been a roller-coaster. I get it. I definitely get it. >

Cue the cries of FIRST THEY WANTED 15 NOW IT'S 25. WHY NOT GIVE THEM A BILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR. malarkey the reps love to spill. >

He is correct.  $$15 an hour won't work either. 


$15/hr full time = 31000/year


$26,000 after taxes


Rent is $18,000 ($1500/mo)


Food is $3600 ($300/mo)


Electricity + Phone + Internet is $3000 ($250/month)


Congratulations, you are out of money.


Clothes? Gas? Car Payment? Maintenance? Insurance? Entertainment/Leisure? Unexpected expenses?
Oh...don't forget that you have no health insurance and are one accident/medical emergency away from total financial collapse.
u/PorkTornado >

I live in the Bay Area where $15 an hour is minimum wage. $1500 a month wouldn’t even get you your own shitty studio unless you were extremely lucky.
Our combined water and gas/electricity bill for an 800 sqft, 1 bath apartment with two occupants is already nearly $200 a month… And that’s only because we never turn the heater on and work to conserve water… we were actually praised by the water service for being in the top 20% of water conserving households.
Our fiber internet should be $39, but with all the random fees and taxes the county adds on it’s more like $55, and my phone bill isn’t even included in that… And the Internet will get more expensive next year because we had a sign on discount, probably to around $60-70.
All this to say, I am fortunate in that I make a decent wage, but it is rough out here and $15 an hour absolutely isn’t enough. >

I live in a tourist area, and our McDonalds already pays $17 to start. >

I do wonder how many people are actually making minimum wage now. It’s so far below market, and most states have higher minimums, so it’s almost completely irrelevant. >

According to BLS statistics (warning: pdf), about 1.1 million people are being paid at or below the federal minimum wage. 

In 2021, 76.1 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 55.8 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 181,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 910,000 workers had wages below the federal minimum. >

That statistic is going to be skewed because most states minimum wage is higher than the federal.  And they are states with large populations like California and New York. >

I remember when I was once against raising the minimum wage until I was taught about it going up with production until it just didn't. There is no excuse to not raise minimum wage at this point in juncture. >

He’s right. Needs to be at least $25 in some parts of the country with the cost of living now. >

$15 was barely a living wage when the fight for $15 started. $14 a decade later is an insult. >

Yeah, always worth repeating "Fight for 15" started in 2011. >

Y'all took too long. >

He brought up a $15 minimum wage back around 2015. That's about 8 years ago. In todays dollars a $15 minimum wage would be almost $19/hour. >

Yeah I mean at this point we’ve been having this conversation so long 15 is a lowball. Even the proposed 17 is too >

That's what happens when it's been almost 14 years since the last minimum wage increase. >

I'd love to make $2/hour more than I make now. >

Wages, including minimum wage, should match productivity. What if, instead of being expressed in dollars, wages were expressed in relation to the country's per-capita GDP? The dollar equivalent would get automatically adjusted each time either population and/or GDP are officially calculated, eliminating much of the need for constant wage re-evaluation. >

Okay. I’m just going to come out and say it. $50 an hour and then we wait a century for everything else to catch up. 
It’s kind of what they’re doing with the national debt but actually useful. >

Modern American politics in a nutshell: a nasty, partisan battle for an outdated solution that should have happened a decade or more ago, may still not happen (or at least will require further erosion of the solution via "compromise" to satisfy ideologues) and, like many (most?) modern problems, traces back to Ronald Reagan. >

My man! >

Duh >

I wish we could have an age-tiered minimum wage. A 16 year old is just fine making $15/hr because 99/100 they are living with an adult who also works. However, $20/hr for 18 and over seems very reasonable. 
Above all, we just need to do something. Bernie may not think $14 is high enough, but $7.50 is way too damn low, so let's just start somewhere. >

No, workers are workers. Pay them for their labor. >

In general, a 16 year old is going to be less productive than a 25 year old. Of course not always, but as a general statement no one can disagree. I also think there is great value in teenagers having part time jobs to learn to work and make money and manage a budget, etc.  Employers should be encouraged to make space for teenagers to work for them part time.  It's good for society, in my opinion. >

This is where the wage difference between part time and full time workers comes in. The problem is that many companies have figured out they can schedule two part time workers per full time and stop paying benefits, and they abuse this to scam workers. >

Right, which is why I think a teenager in high school can and should be subject to different labor laws vs an adult.  A child doesn't need benefits, like health insurance. >

Let’s get to $14. It’s better than $7.25 isn’t?
And when the sky doesn’t fall you push for more. Don’t turn your nose at $14 so that nothing gets done! >

Pragmatism: get it to $15, then once it's at $15 raise it again to $20, then raise it one more time to $25
Progressivism: it has to be exactly $25/hour, anything less than perfect is unacceptable, if we pass the $14 now they won't be willing to negotiate another raise in the future
Basically the only two mindsets behind different takes on the minimum wage that I see here.
I personally think minimum wage should federally be set at $17.50/hour, and pegged to the cost of living based on your ZIP code. So people in Los Angeles will get like $24/hour because rent is extremely expensive there, and people in rural Arkansas will make $17.50/hour because it's good enough for their lower COL.
Edit: instantly downvoted, I guarantee you it was the progressives who did it >

Well their all or nothing stance on the minimum wage has done nothing so they can feel superior to us dumb dumbs while it stays $7.25. >

That's my main issue. Their ultra-puritan "we either get exactly what we want, or nobody gets anything" approach is unironically really, really toxic. Progressives need to be more pragmatic, otherwise they'll never get ANYTHING EVER.
I have actually personally moved away from being a "Bernie/AOC tier progressive", and as I get more life experience and knowledge I find myself gradually solidifying into a weird "in-between" political spot that's further to the left than a liberal, but not as far as a progressive.
I guess that's what the Socdems are? Further to the left than a liberal, but not as far to the left as a progressive. >

I think AOC has moved away from the Bernie progressive in many ways. She now has seen how laws get passed and it usually involves compromise. >

That would be a good thing, if she wised up and became more pragmatic. >

neither does 15, and neither does 17. >

Twice that isn't a living wage anywhere in the country, even for basic needs, healthcare, sanitation, even if you're living on ramen and keep your power bill low.  
Keeping in mind the extra costs associated with someone who chooses a shitty low cost apartment in a shitty part of the city (repairs cost more, place can be broken into more, mold is less likely to be dealt with properly by landlords, broken plumbing isn't fixed as quickly or well, air conditioner breaks more often, pests make you sick more often) all that stuff that costs the poor so much more than if they could afford a better place. >

When was the last time a minimum wage bill was brought up in the senate. I feel like all they do is just "talk" about it. They should bring it up once a week until it passes. >

No amount of minimum wage will do it. The system is set up to inflate around wages. You could give everyone $100 an hour and a carton of milk would suddenly cost $50. >

$7.25 until 2025 at the earliest.  What a joke >

So everyone can suffer more from this inflation?  $200~ per a supermarket trip is already killing us >

see that's the thing.    
Most places started having minimum wage at 14-15 bucks an hour in my area, prices then started jumping up to compensate so we get the same amount of stuff (or less) for a higher price to compare to the wages.  
the big multibillion dollar corporations only want top dollar, so they charge as much as they can get away with.   
same reason rent's so insanely high, or cost of living in general.   
if we kept up with inflation, minimum wage when our parents and grandparents were young (in my case, in the early  70s) being like $1-$2, today would be around $30/hr. >

If minimum wage increases, so should everyone’s salaries.