Lets assume 15 dollars an hour happens

[Captain N]

What is the minimum value of a 1/5 of ones life, per hour?

I'll take Things To Make The Working Class Better For $1000, Alex

Enough that the remaining 4/5 has adequate shelter, good food, clothing, and the ability to save in case of an emergency?

[Cricket22]

I think it's hyperbole to imply that everyone has super expensive electronics. TV ownership is way down, most young 20-somethings have maybe a smartphone and a laptop. Maybe an ipad...personally I think that the people who MUST HAVE the newest and most expensive smartphone out there are pretty ridiculous but that's just me, you can get a smartphone now for $35. Laptop prices are also down. I honestly don't think the average person has "many thousands of dollars worth of electronics" as implied.

Fast food can actually be cheaper than buying quality food at the grocery store, depending. Probably not cheaper than rice + beans but cheap. "Chicken in every pot"...chicken is expensive now, depending on how much protein you want in your diet. Overall though I'm a big proponent of eating at home/buying in bulk/learning to cook/growing your own veggies, indeed in the long run it is often much cheaper (startup costs and having the space for a garden, though...).

I'm glad that you stated that you own your own home and therefore only have property taxes to worry about. Housing prices are on the rise now and that is half of the problem. Admittedly I'm on the coast, but here in Portland I'd be lucky to get a condo right now for less than $200k. Ofc moving away from urban areas (and subsequently, job centers) means lower cost of living and housing prices.

The days of people paying cash for a home are probably long gone for most Millennials.

We only bought this house About 5 years ago. If it wasn't for the real estate bubble,we might have taken out a mortgage and bought sooner. During the bubble it was cheaper to rent. Saved our money while waiting for the coming crash. Our house was a foreclosure property, a "fixer upper" we bought directly from the bank, cheap, cheap. My husband was in construction, so he's been doing all the work himself.

Knew the market was bound to crash, but took longer than expected, and the crash was far worse. So we were able to pick up several distressed rental properties really cheap, by taking out cash advances on our credit cards. Fixed them up, rented them out, and then mortgaged the rentals to get cash and pay off the credit cards. Only the rentals have mortgages, and generate a positive cash flow. The house you live in is an expense. The houses you rent out are assets.

We have an acre of property to grow on. Seeds (veggies) at the Dollar Store are 25 cents a pack, and we trade seedlings with other growers to expand the variety of our veggies.

We save money every way we can possibly conceive, and spend a lot of time brainstorming.

[Yvaelle]

do i get breaks with the handmaidens of lolth too?

Only if you don't give them a break!

[breadisfunny]

Only if you don't give them a break!

that sounds fine with me. can i rub lolths feet? or brush her hair? or give her a back massage?

[kneehidude]

The same as it would without.

That is wishful thinking, if I ever heard it.

[Adam Jensen]

yay let's all head on back to the 1900's! horray for slave wages!!! long live corporations!

It's as if the gilded age wasn't a part of American history to some of these people.

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You would have to be economically illiterate to see it as "free stuff" rather than an investment.

More purchasing power = more stimulated economy = more demand.

But hey, let's ignore all that in favor of the very rich who want to keep things the way they are.

[Cricket22]

X

i know i'm jumping into this out of nowhere and picking a single sentence of your kind of out of context, but i want to argue this point rather severely for two main reasons:
1. most minimum wage jobs are not exactly grueling, but are tedious and monotonous and boring - and to humans, that's an incredibly shitty situation to be in for hours and hours every day.
i'm not saying being a fry cook at a burger joint is equally as taxing as being a fruit picker or a miner, but hand-waving away the reality of how mind numbing and difficult these types of jobs are is incredibly naive.

2. most minimum wage jobs are some of the most important positions to the company, if not the most.
for example, the cashier and fry cook at mcdonald's are the entirety of my experience with the establishment... their attitude and competence is what form my opinion of that place 100%.
their work and their output has the single biggest effect on my decision to frequent that location that anything besides food/ingredient quality, a single cashier has more impact on the company than every corporate executive put together.

menial "low skill" jobs are difficulty, physically and mentally draining, are just about the most important position in the entire company, and get shit on by everyone and treated like anyone with those jobs should be beaten or something.
it's completely fucked up and makes no god damn sense whatsoever, and i think that making it mandatory to provide them with a salary sufficient to maintain a reasonable standard of living in a first world country isn't asking too much.


and are A. more interesting and engaging and likely rewarding to participate in, B. labors of love by the people within them, or C. both.

i make 30 dollars an hour to watch TV and occasionally click 'update' to software patches, and i make this much to do this little because i know how to google and i'm fortunate enough to be in an industry that still has a lot of mystery about it - most people think that knowing how to keep an enterprise computer running is akin to voodoo magic.

it's completely ridiculous that to do NOTHING for 8 hours a day in my own office in an overstuffed chair i get paid three times more than someone busting their ass in a state of constant pressure and humiliation, just because i've memorized a handful of facts about microsoft office.

Funny you should mention that. If you read my other posts about my friend who owned a hotel? Which she subsequently lost? she lost it because she was the worst business person, and worst boss ever. Employees walked out on her all the time, but as her friend, I helped out, in more ways than just doing her bookkeeping. I bartended, did the laundry, cleaned rooms, etc.

It was a full service hotel with banquet facilities that accommodated about 300, and the most fun I ever had there was when she called me up in a panic -- because she had 6 functions that weekend, and her entire kitchen staff had walked out. My husband and I had nothing better to do, so we ran right over. No experience, no training, all by ourselves, cooked all 6 functions that weekend, for parties ranging from 70 - 250 people. Included was a wedding reception, sorority party, funeral party, civic group, etc.

The menus had already been set, and we had to look up recipes on the Internet. The dishwashing staff had all walked out too, so we also had to wash all the pots, pans and dishes, and needed the Internet to figure out how to refill all the cleaning solutions and operate that monster of a machine.

My husband and I know how to cook, but cooking in massive quantities is entirely different, and the food is so expensive, you can't afford to make any mistakes. Crash courses on the Internet was real helpful for that, so I guess you could say, the Internet WAS absolutely essential!

It got pretty tense at times, but we did it, all food came out great, and we ended up staying and cooking for over a month until she was able to hire a professional chef, who brought his own staff with him.

Again though, no experience, no training, no problem! Compared to my normal work of having sitting at a desk and wrack my brains out, cooking those banquets was an absolute blast! Best of all, roasting over hot grills, lugging those gigantic pots around, and washing all those dishes, I lost 10 pounds!

If I could earn the same cooking in a kitchen with my husband, that I do sitting at a desk, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

[Hooked]

California textile manufacturers are already talking about moving to mexico. Thousands of jobs gone already.

[Deleted]

I love how it's still some novel and strange idea in the US, and to some extent in the UK too, that workers should be able to support themselves somewhat comfortably using one full time job.

A $15 min wage? I dunno man, that sounds like it's gonna be more expensive for the customers. Their CEO makes $7-8million a year? Yeah, well, he earned it by doing a good job obviously. Why shouldn't he be allowed to pay his worker bees a pittance, such that state assistance is a requirement for those workers to top up their earnings?

[breadisfunny]

It's as if the gilded age wasn't a part of American history to some of these people.

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More purchasing power = more stimulated economy = more demand.

But hey, let's ignore all that in favor of the very rich who want to keep things the way they are.

more like they think the gilded age was the golden age.

[drwelfare]

California textile manufacturers are already talking about moving to mexico. Thousands of jobs gone already.

I can see it hitting the South East hard, the manufacturing jobs we have pay well for the area, but not as much as other parts of the country, like the auto plants.

Their cost to pay and keep employees jump and they look to move out of country.

[Hooked]

All of their soft communism is failing already.

[Linkedblade]

Wouldn't higher income for everyone increase business and revenue though? People will have more disposable money to spend. Am I wrong in thinking that?

People making $15 or more now will seek compensation. Pay will increase for everyone. Prices for goods and services will increase.

Congratulations you've accomplished nothing but inflation

[Adam Jensen]

People making $15 or more now will seek compensation. Pay will increase for everyone. Prices for goods and services will increase.

Congratulations you've accomplished nothing but inflation

Funny that that's never happened in any minimum wage hike in history.

[Fugus]

People making $15 or more now will seek compensation. Pay will increase for everyone. Prices for goods and services will increase.

Congratulations you've accomplished nothing but inflation

Congratulations for failing at reading the math behind it which been posted multiple times debunking that with both math and history.

[Linkedblade]

Funny that that's never happened in any minimum wage hike in history.

They never doubled the minimum wage in history either

[Sunseeker]

People making $15 or more now will seek compensation. Pay will increase for everyone. Prices for goods and services will increase.

Congratulations you've accomplished nothing but inflation

As has been demonstrated time, and time, and time and time again: the increase in goods and services will not even remotely match the increase in income. Worst-case-scenario projections (that use actual econmic data and not Biblical prophecy) are a 25% increase in the cost of goods and services. Which still means that everyone nets as 75% increase in wages! For a minimum wage worker who goes from 7.50 to 15, that means they're going to have a net increase ~$5.63. per hour.

[Linkedblade]

Congratulations for failing at reading the math behind it which been posted multiple times debunking that with both math and history.

The math is shoddy at best and that didn't involve those currently making that amount is more getting their compensation.

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As has been demonstrated time, and time, and time and time again: the increase in goods and services will not even remotely match the increase in income. Worst-case-scenario projections (that use actual econmic data and not Biblical prophecy) are a 25% increase in the cost of goods and services. Which still means that everyone nets as 75% increase in wages! For a minimum wage worker who goes from 7.50 to 15, that means they're going to have a net increase ~$5.63. per hour.

Either way you've devalued the currency. That didn't help anyone.

[Sunseeker]

Either way you've devalued the currency. That didn't help anyone.

So what? The currency devalues all the time anyway. And half the countries we trade with don't even let their currency float on the market. The devaluation of the currency won't even remotely impact US trading power, and the buying power of citizens will increase dramatically, which will in the long term, slow currency devaluation.

Jesus you'd think there was some kind of science behind this, like, fucking I dunno, economics or something.

[Captain N]

They never doubled the minimum wage in history either

They absolutely did -- In 1960 the Minimum Wage was $1 and by 1974 it was $2. The span of 14 years doubled the minimum wage. It also increased from $2 in '74 to $4.25 in 1991 - a span of 17 years.

Our last wage increase was in 2009 to $7.25 -- California currently has $15/hour to be in place by 2021...a period of 12 years.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm

Yes...it has been doubled in the past without any of the disasters that the Chicken Little crowd believes will cause the sky to fall.