For the love of god, increase it to something reasonable then implement yearly increases based on inflation so that I never have to hear about this again.
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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This or tie it to the average government wage of a member of Congress, they get a raise and the people get a raise.
They would slash their own salaries to $7.25 or less and enjoy the usual net pay raises from their billionaire donors and stock increases as a reward for keeping it that way.
And voters will cheer them on for being so selfless and suffering with the common man.
Tie minimum wage to GDP/GNP, inflation, etc.
Tie congressional salaries to be a fixed multiple of minimum wage.
If congress wants more money, they have to make everyone’s situation better.
CT actually does the annual increase based on inflation thing. It's at $15.60-something currently I believe. It can be done.
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"Rose."
$7.25 was unlivable 15 years ago.
And by the time we get a $15/hr minimum wage, a living wage in any state worth living in will be $75/hr.
Which is exactly why I hated the "fight for fifteen" slogan... Great you got your $15 in some states 15 years later and now that's worthless.
Minimum wage should not be voted on by congress. It should be pegged to cost of living by region. The government already does all this measuring of cost of living by region. Make the minimum 125% of cost of living and be done with it. It’s clear congress can’t handle the task.
Make the minimum 125% of cost of living
Do the math for a 32 hour workweek to meet this criteria and make it so you have to include healthcare benefits proportional to the hours worked.
Ironically the company I work for would go under if they had to pay a living wage like this to the workers. We pay minimum wage in our state to close to 400 workers, almost all of whom cannot speak English today. It's miserable manufacturing work but 100% required, the product is positive to humanity and can't possibly be outsourced. Can be better automated though, which should be done.
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Yeah, an hour of someone's life is just worth less in the flyover shit states.
EDIT: Why don't the worthless people in the flyover shit states want to vote for us?
The “low cost of living” in the “flyover states” is subsidized by a complete lack of accessible social services or government accountability.
You can get a house for a bit more than 100,000. But you’ll pay for it by sending your children to a school where your high schooler is being taught math by someone with a GED. Or when you lose a tire to a crater in the road. Or when a tornado hits your town and emergency services aren’t available because your Governor is in Paris and didn’t bother to tell anyone.
It’s really Galt’s Gulch here. The low cost of living/low pay works like a trap, because how the fuck can one save up to get out?
No, but the same food and lodging costs drastically different based on location in this country. A New York City cost of living would bankrupt small businesses in rural Nebraska who also price their services based on regional costs. It’s just more logical than a flat minimum wage for the whole country.
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For reference, the cost of living doubles every 25 to 30 years. $7.25 in 2024 is worth less than $5 in 2009 money. Less than the $5.15 that was the previous minimum wage.
Put a little asterisk after that number, a lot of employees who earn tips can be paid even less.
That's truly inhumane. Even when I was a server - not America - I was paid the same wage as a line cook of similar experience.
And Republicans are arguing to pay disabled people and children less.
I think diisabled people can already get paid less, if they are receivingstate assistance. I don't know how it works, but I had a retarded family member who lived in PA and he made like 1.25 an hour, which is still below minimum wage since this was nearly 2 decades ago. I know he received assistance in various ways, but it just seemed wrong.
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They don't make less just because they're paid less by their employer. The minimum wage of how much they actually make is the same.
And as a result, servers in the US make a lot more than line cooks of similar experience. That wage gap is a source of frustration for cooks.
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I remember the McDonald's I worked at gave everyone raises right before minimum wage went up to 7.25 to make it seem like it was their choice.
I was struggling to make ends meet back then. I had a shitty car and tiny apartment with a roommate and just scraped by. No fucking clue how people are making it work today. I have a decent job now and I'm still just scraping by.
We need unions.
You really really do. I don't mean to target you personally here. This is meant for everyone reading:
If you have time to hang out on Lemmy, then you have a couple mins looking up what unions the industry you're in has or is trying to setup.
Just learn, I'm not even asking that anyone do anything.. but if you know more about the situation where you live, maybe you can help people.
No corpo is gonna do it for you. It's workers for workers.
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$7.25 in 2009 is worth $10.62 today. $4.95 in 2009 is worth $7.25 today.
In effect, the value of federal minimum wage has decreased by 31% in the last 15 years, since a dollar today only buys 69% of what it did in 2009, on average (as defined by the consumer price index)
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This is wild. Especially since the US separates tippable jobs.
I just looked this up. $7,25 is 6,68€
In Germany minimum wage is 12,41€ ($13,47) as of its last adjustment Jan 24. Thats f*cking DOUBLE. Further adjustments are already planned. And there is no difference between wait staff and other workers.
Here the leading argument is, that one full time job on minimum wage should provide you the minimum you need to live on. You can not live on 7,25 working only 40h a week, can you?
The "best" part is any job that is paying minimum wage is going to be part time, so more like 15-30 hrs a week.
Oh, and they want you to have open availability, so they can schedule you whenever they feel like each week, with no rhyme or reason to your constantly different shifts so you can't try to get a second job either...
There was a study a few years back showing that there isn't a county in the country where full-time minimum wage could pay for a 1br apartment and basic necessities.
That should be the bare minimum. A full-time worker should be able to live within a reasonable proximity to their place of employment. I make 80 grand and have to drive 90 minutes to work.
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Realistically for housing to be 1/3 of your income, the minimum wage should be closer to $20/hr right now. I live in a pretty small town and most basic 1Br apartments are starting at ~$700/mo so around $1k/mo once you factor in utilities. If we round the numbers a bit, 3000/160=18.75 so housing would be a bit less than 1/3 of gross income, and noticeably less than 1/3 of the person's income after taxes and insurance.
The abysmal wages compared to the cost of living are why micro-financing ("Buy now pay later") is a thing now
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Canada is us$12.50. That's getting close to double, and we share a long border.
You wanna make almost twice more money AND pay 1% less tax for the free healthcare, then go north.
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Thank God there's been no inflation since then, or people might be struggling!
And in 80 years it has risen $7.00 from its 25¢/hour origins.
We need a new word for dignity because the one we are using is doing it wrong.
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we should tie the hourly minimum wage to the cost of spending one minute in a hospital bed. Maybe that'll get Republicans on board with free healthcare.
Second Bill of Rights. Unpack the supreme court, get a super majority in all branches of government and make it law.
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We need to stop looking at minimum wage as a set number across the country, It creates a wage disparity for the working class. A livable wage in Alabama would not be a livable wage in California, a livable wage in California would be an insane wage in a place like Alabama.
The minimum wage needs to be directly tied with median housing costs either at the state level or at the county level. The wage needs to be set where housing would only comprise of a max of 30% of income. So at 30% if the median rent is $2000 per month, the livable wage in that area would be set at about $6700 a month, or about $42 an hour. This would help control housing costs as well as keep wages livable.
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Hasn’t it been 25 years? I could have sworn that happened in 2000
By memory Obama largely raised the federal minimum wage to match many state minimum wages in 2009
I think someone misunderstood what the "Fight for 15" was getting at
Well done USA. Approaching 3rd world wages. 🙄
but inflation!!!
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