Living wage advocates, how are restaruant owners supposed to deal with being squeezed like this?

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

those are all valid points, and no MW increase wont fix it. No one measure will, less it be extremely broad in it's scope, but a MW increase is a step in the right direction. The change that needs to take place will not happen all at once. More people with more money = more political speech = change.

To what aim?. If you're always the leaves closer to the rake being pulled along then you'll never control the rake

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

This thread shows why capitalism is a dead end for the working class.

And?

They fare better than they would have otherwise.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

I am not concerned with the ruling class, balancing their interests, and looking for ways for them to continue ruling society and exploiting 95%+ of the world's population and resources. Just as I would not be concerned with the interests of feudal lords, slaveholders, the aristocracy/nobility, etc., or looking for reforms under those systems "in a way that makes sense for everybody."

There's no "balance" between capitalism and socialism unless you were talking about something like converting the entire economy to worker-owned and worker-managed enterprises but retaining commodity production and the market, or talking about something like mutualism. And even those are debatable, a lot of people would say "that's just capitalism" (although I wouldn't necessarily agree with those assessments... but these are examples of actual "mixed" systems).

Food stamps are not socialism.
Minimum wages are not socialism.
etc.

How do you distribute labor responsibilities in a place like a Mercedes car plant?

 

[Calmye]

Whi cares?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Here's the main problem it would solve.

Fathers could earn enough on a regular full-time job that mothers could stay home with the kids.

Single mothers could earn enough on one job that they don't have to work multiple jobs or long hours.

My dad was raising us on $9-11/hour back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the minimum wage was $4.25, so I'm guessing that's about equivalent to $15/hour today. With that he was paying off a cheap mortgage in a low-cost area and we were never below the poverty line. Sure, we didn't have extra shyt and money was always tight, but we made it. School wasn't shyt, but I graduated with great grades and got into college. When us kids got old enough to take care of ourselves, my mom got a job herself and started working part-time, then eventually full time. My dad eventually got a promotion and was able to retire just fine. My mom will retire soon, having worked full-time for 20 years, and they're doing quite well. All three kids went to college - my parents couldn't really help much with that, but we got scholarships and financial aid packages are fine in that area.

My dad was able to make enough for the whole family and my mom could stay home. That's a BIG difference in life. If every head-of-household had a stable income and every young kid had a mom at home, 1/2 of the community's problems are getting solved there. Wages not being high enough to support a family is one of the reasons that ain't happening.

A living wage doesn't solve every fukking problem in the world. But it doesn't have to. We're not saying that everyone will be stuck on a living wage or on one income their entire fukking lives. But there needs to be a baseline that people can get through that early family-rearing stage on their own, then they have another couple decades to worry about retirement with.







You realize that a quarter of income for someone making $48K and a quarter of income for someone making $15K are different things?

Take a quarter off of $48K, you still have $36K left to take care of your other needs. Take a quarter off of $15K and you only have $11K left. That's a big difference.

Can you find one example of someone buying a new house right now on minimum wage income? Like, one example in the entire fukking country?

Only 2% of workers make MW. Your dad didn't make MW.

 

[Brown_Pride]

I think the biggest challenge the working poor face is corporate lobbying. We can talk till we are blue in the face about what needs to be done, but as long as politicians are in these corporations' pockets it's all meaningless. Second thing is all the growing expenses the working poor have. Everyone keeps talking about how costs are skyrocketing while pay stays flat. Nobody seems to be asking why costs are skyrocketing... they just want to hand whoever we are paying blank checks to enable further price gouging. I think we have to examine that. I think there are a lot of basic things everyone needs. Public healthcare. I think we need public colleges in the same vein as high schools, paid for the same way K-12 schools are (since it's proven that college loans are a drag on the economy which is worse than a tax). I think accepting that more and more Americans will be reliant on dead end minimum wage jobs and protectionist measures to artificially boost wages for them is a mistake. People need better jobs and the means to get them. And there are better jobs out there, and even more will come as the economy grows. Etc.

I don't understand why people are attacking me. I legit do want what I think is best for everybody. Better paying, more secure, more fulfilling careers and a smarter, bigger social safety net. More power for workers and the end of corporatism. My ideas throughout this thread have been dead consistent. The shame campaign to not go with the redistributionist HL groupthink is confusing. I think raising MW is a legit issue to be examined but it doesn't solve any of the problems I listed directly.... and like arbitrary aimless tax hikes on "the rich" it won't fix anything. It's shameful how people use the plight of the poor to push their own agendas, often at the poor's expense, or at the minimum to beneficial way they can explain.

So how does raising the MW detract from anything you've said?

 

[Brown_Pride]

To what aim?. If you're always the leaves closer to the rake being pulled along then you'll never control the rake

...just what in the exact fuk are you talking about?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

what we think the bottom of society should be
think about what that automatically means if we decide that the bottom should be a guarantee of good healthcare, a clean and safe neighborhood, good libraries and parks, a great education, 8 hrs of leisure/day, 8 hours of sleep/day, and a modicum of savings
think about what that implies about the rest of society, it means we will all have that
it means a more dignified existence for everyone
a more safe existence for everyone and a more stable existence for the society because everyone is invested in seeing this kind of society work.

Now will we achieve this? possibly
but whether we can or not is irrelevant
this should always be the star we reach for
This is the ethos that will always guide us in the right direction
there is no one watching over us, but us
there is no sky daddy, not even "the market" is watching over
we make all the rules
if we decide society can be good and kind
then it will be
we will put our ingenuity to this task
that is the potential of man

Poor people have a chance to impose those standards on themselves especially with regard to safety and cleanliness. Why haven't they?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

this is weird
for the economic pontification in this thread
people quoting gdp's, purchasing power
all of a sudden this metric is baffling and terra incognita, as if google does not exist
I have genuinely enjoyed watching you guys play with that one

I'm not playing dumb. Parity is useful to compare the validity OF the comparison.

So let's talk about what a living wage is and what it supposed to cover.

And I find it utterly insulting that you think that at any wage level you'd have some stash of savings.

You can save. Just pool you money and share a room in a house.

You want a life you're used to, not the life that reality challenges you to accept.

 

[Brown_Pride]

Destroy? No

But people pretend that MW only applies to big cities on the coasts.

There are fly over states where $10 is enough. Seattle, LA, and NYC has to even experiment with $15 because they know $10 is crazy. But good thing the rest of the country doesn't have to abide by that because their literally can't.

Irresponsible wage increases apply to a loud but ultimately small segment of the population and is just a constant go to escape argument that doesn't affect anyone in middle income brackets. The bottom exists for a reason.

I could see this argument being made. Cost of living varies from city to city and it's difficult to argue that one $ amount could effectively apply across the board. Perhaps the MW could vary by city based on some type of data.

 

[tmonster]

Poor people have a chance to impose those standards on themselves especially with regard to safety and cleanliness. Why haven't they?

The same reason you don't make your own shoes

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

So how does raising the MW detract from anything you've said?

It's a low hanging fruit of every worker movement argument.

The real issue is why profitable companies think their workers are worth such low wages in certain industries

 

[tmonster]

I'm not playing dumb.

too easy

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

I could see this argument being made. Cost of living varies from city to city and it's difficult to argue that one $ amount could effectively apply across the board. Perhaps the MW could vary by city based on some type of data.

It does! That's why I don't understand what people are arguing for with the national MW. I posted the article about Seattle restaurants struggling to balance tips and pay scale by increasing prices that came out two days ago.

Many localities add to MW and raise their local wages. Then many businesses raise their wage floors to be competitive just ever so slightly.

2% of all American workers make MW. So an increase isn't some radical life changing event.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

too easy

Address the rest of the point.

What is a living wage? And what lifestyle should it afford?