California Agrees To Raise Minimum Wage To $15

originally posted by: snowspirit

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: snowspirit

Cost of living has always been increasing and wage shave to increase with it period.

Exactly. When they froze that minimum wage in 2009, at just over $7/hr, the cost of living still went up. Lots. Too much, actually....

Across the board, lower skilled positions have seen their wages stagnate primarily because of the increase in lower skilled immigration, both legal and illegal. In addition, the economy has shifted dramatically from a manufacturing economy to a service / knowledge economy. Those with the right skills have seen their wages increasing.

Those at the lower end are being left behind.

This isn't a good thing, but it cannot be arbitrarily fixed by simply raising the minimum wage.

Ironically, those hurt the most by minimum wage increases will be the small mom & pop business, not the mega-corps who could absorb the cost increase more easily.

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: queenofswords

Sorry I don't want to live in a country where millions of people are living in poverty.

You like seeing people in poverty go to El Raqqa or Karachi and leave the US.

I don't want slaves working for me I want happy people enjoying their job with a decent home life providing me a service I appreciate.

Sick of the #ty attitude towards your fellow man. Go to Saudi Arabi.

You're okay living in a country where 16 million families have no one working?
You're okay living in a country where over 90 million people don't work?

Also please don't fall for the fallacy that people are working full time for minimum wage trying to support their families.
3.9% of hourly workers make minimum wage. www.bls.gov...
About 3 million workers.
Not an epidemic.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: onequestion

None of us want to no matter how much you seem to think otherwise, but what we want and what the reality of the economy dictates are often two different things. I wanted a horse all while I was growing up and didn't want to live with a family that couldn't afford one, but that didn't change the economic reality that I never lived with a family that could.

Wanting a horse and wanting to work full time and have enough money to pay the bills, eat and live comfortably yet modestly are two entirely different things.

originally posted by: darkbake

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: onequestion

None of us want to no matter how much you seem to think otherwise, but what we want and what the reality of the economy dictates are often two different things. I wanted a horse all while I was growing up and didn't want to live with a family that couldn't afford one, but that didn't change the economic reality that I never lived with a family that could.

Wanting a horse and wanting to work full time and have enough money to pay the bills, eat and live comfortably yet modestly are two entirely different things.

Just because you "want" something does not mean you are going to get it.

It takes long-term planning to earn a middle class income. Far too many people spend their time in school screwing around and making bad decisions and then expect the rest of us to pay for it once they decide they want to put on their adult clothes. Sorry, the world doesn't work that way.

a reply to: Subaeruginosa

How much is the median price of a home where you live?

3 bedroom 2 bath.

a reply to: TorqueyThePig

The average decent 3 bedroom house in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne will cost you around $500,000 ($377,000 US).

Though, about 3 years ago I was living in a regional city about 200km north of Melbourne and was earning around the same... you could get a brand new house with 3 bedrooms and ensuite included for $250,000 (188,000 US) there.

Government can force minimum wages as high as it wants, but the people at the top of the pyramid are not going to be affected at all. They will cut hours, or reduce employment levels, or move the company to another state..or even another country.

a reply to: darkbake

Wanting a horse and wanting to work full time and have enough money to pay the bills, eat and live comfortably yet modestly are two entirely different things.

Not entirely. I wanted a horse desperately myself. So my brothers and I got a paper route (bicycles with baskets; monthly door to door "collecting").....we saved up $250 bucks. So folks took us to get a horse. We lived without name-brand stuff, lived in the working class, integrated part of town; my dad was an engineer, owned his own company there.

My parents didn't raise snobs. Nor did we ever want for anything. My parents were frugal, but very educated.

So please note that: for lots of kids, working for that horse was the norm. Babysitting, bagging groceries, mowing lawns, selling pumpkins or lemonade, backyard "circus" kits, live entertainment shows..... We learned how to earn it. We learned how to get along with others.

I learned how to "ride" on a couple of Shetland ponies, 25-cents per hour, no adult supervision. If you want it bad enough, you know. And I wanted it. My horse's name was Huck. (ETA: Actually, "Huckleberry Heart o' Gold". I made it up. He was a grade horse. Guess how old I was when I got him?!)

originally posted by: carewemust
Government can force minimum wages as high as it wants, but the people at the top of the pyramid are not going to be affected at all. They will cut hours, or reduce employment levels, or move the company to another state..or even another country.

that's already happened years ago..."wealth" doesn't care about how well other people live, they only care about how to get other people's money. the more they can cut a workers pay, the more they make themselves. this isn't rocket science, nor do you need a degree from the Wharton business school

a reply to: onequestion

If California's Unemployment Rate Rises after this Decision , then you know it was a Bad Idea .

originally posted by: carewemust
Government can force minimum wages as high as it wants, but the people at the top of the pyramid are not going to be affected at all. They will cut hours, or reduce employment levels, or move the company to another state..or even another country.

That's why it can't just be don on a state level, it has to be done on a federal level and raising the minimum wage also needs mandatory benefits (Workers rights) to be enacted, for it to effectively raise the quality of life for minimum wage workers.

For example, in Australia there's two types of employment, 'casual' and 'fulltime'.

Casual employment- has a $20.50 ($15.50 US) minimum wage, but the boss can cut your hours or get rid of you at will and you get no benefits.

Fulltime employment- has a minimum wage of only $17.80 ($13.40 US), but you are guaranteed your 38 hours every week, can't be fired without 3 written warnings, you get 4 weeks paid holiday's and 10 paid sick days every year and are also paid for all public holidays.

imo, it's a perfect model... Employers have the choice to pay their employee's a half decent wage with no obligations... or they have a choice to pay a crappy wage, but are obligated to ensure the employee has consistent reliable work.

This is going to affect 43% of the workforce in Califprnia or 6 million people.

Holy # people we have bigger fish to fry than minimum wage if there's that many people making that little money out here. I mean a 1 bedroom is anywhere from 1200-2100 a month.


So what's everyone doing to pay their bills out here?

www.usatoday.com...

a reply to: Subaeruginosa

Good god no..

The fed is only able to think in a 1 size fits all way... and that would absolutely wreck parts of our country.. As said what works in Cali, wont work in Oklahoma or west virginia, and could very well destroy anything resembling an economy in those places that have Zero manufacturing job.

Or places that the primary employers are farmers or ranchers (not the corporate run ones, but places with a razor thin profit margin), or places that used to have logging but now just have some convenience stores, or grocery stores as employers.

Its amazing to me that the focus is always on *money*.

It seems that many have lost sight of the fact that currency provides purchasing power, but does not actually address the problems directly. If we are talking about eliminating poverty by using the very system and methods that create it, it would seem to exacerbate all issues at hand more than anything. Focusing on systems that meet basic needs directly, without a middleman that perpetuates the problem at hand, could be something that both sides can agree on.

However, to succeed, I believe it would require decentralization of many systems as well as the education and tools to truly be self-sufficient. Currency only gives the illusion of self-sufficiency.

Instead of spending so much time, energy, and resources on currency distribution, we could use all of that to design systems that help individuals grow their own food, produce their own power, and even design/build their own communications technology. At that point, the whole "livable wage" topic becomes, essentially, a moot point.

The whole conversation currently takes place within designed parameters, where any approach wont actually change anything other than the number of zeros in our transactions. And, perhaps, a false sense of temporary accomplishment.

a reply to: Subaeruginosa

Wow, that is insanely expensive! Could you afford the house in Melbourne on your salary?

Where I live in the USA (Florida) the median home price is $135,000.

My best friend just built a brand new, upgraded (granite counters, crown molding, etc) 2500+ square foot home (4 bedrooms, 2 bath, 2 car garage) for $180,000.

So if I am correct, your wages are high, but the price of things are a lot more expensive.

a reply to: onequestion

Well they are doing a good job for corporate America. We dont think this will do anything except increase research in automation to we?

Its kind of like free collage education for all. It does nothing for society but create more snowflakes to toe the Lenin line..

a reply to: RepealTheLaw

If it causes them to dump more research into automation that's actually great because we can get to the breaking point faster where a culture reorganization will be necessary or total chaos will ensue.

You guys railing against people making an ok living make me sick.

originally posted by: TorqueyThePig
a reply to: Subaeruginosa
Wow, that is insanely expensive! Could you afford the house in Melbourne on your salary?

I could obviously easily afford a house in Melbourne, if I had a savings history, a decent deposit and a good credit rating (which I personally don't, lol)... but so can a person living on minimum wage here, if they budget their wages.

Is it even possible for a person on $7.20 an hour to buy a house in a low crime highly desirable area in a major city over there in the states?

That's my whole point, people are claiming that raising the minimum wage won't make a difference because cost of living will just became more expensive, but in Australia we have a high minimum wage and people living on it have a decent standard of living and don't need to rely on food stamps just to put food on the table...

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
a reply to: DBCowboy

$15/hour is a livable wage. Your precious profits do not warrant people being on welfare because their Wall-Street-Traded employers won't pay them enough.

Male cow feces. Right now $15 is a "livable wage", so what happens when prices go up because of the $15 minimum wage? We are right back to square one.

The people pushing for this so called "livable wage" are your unions. I sat in my office and watched a phony demonstration put on in favor of this "livable wage". A couple of small buses from a temp service pull up and two vans from a union joins them. People are handed signs and stand around receiving instruction by bull horn. The TV news shows up, takes their video and leave. The signs were collected and everybody got back in their vehicles and left. Total time 30 minutes.

I have one question. Does this law exempt employees who are covered under collective bargaining agreements? The laws passed by San Francisco and Seattle have this exemption.

It's 2016, not 1980. There's not much point to a minimum wage increase without a labor compensation tariff on imported goods and services.

Wages in rural Mexico are insanely low, but so is the cost of living. I was reading an article the other day about someone making $1.25 an hour at a factory that used to be in the US paying ~$16 an hour. From the description of how well the Mexican woman was living since she got her job, it sounded like it was about the equivalent of maybe ~$10 an hour US in real terms.

A tariff to offset foreign lack of labor compensation is currently illegal for the US to implement due to multiple trade treaties.

Another similarly illegal yet sensible idea would be a tariff to punish lack of enforced environmental standards.