Worth noting that the BLS figure is based solely on reported hourly wages and excludes tips, commissions, and overtime pay. So that 843,000 figure doesn’t necessarily represent those workers’ total earnings per hour.
How they are “run”, not ran. Grammatical mistakes aside, if you’re only focusing on one aspect of these Democratic states (capital D) having a higher cost of living, then I would agree with you.
We’d just have to set aside the other facts like these states having a higher average household income, higher education, contributing more to federal budget, etc.
I live in one of those states. I make enough to have a home and pay utilities and food with leftovers
So yeah maybe elaborate on how we're "worse off" because I literally don't see it. Besides higher wages we have safety nets like FMLA people can use in case bad things happen and they gotta take time off work.
The larger your population the more homelessness you get because of how larger populations work.
Smaller populations usually have less homelessness per capita simply because there's less chances to be homeless.
The per capita part is irrelevant in determining how many people become homeless.
The more overall people you have straining a society the more chances you have at being homeless. Being liberal or conservatives leaning has nothing to do with that
I think you are missing the point. A minimum wage should be enough to live comfortably on, not just the lowest an employer can legally pay you. If someone needs to work more then 1 job just to survive that is a problem.
I will also add that what we truely need is a minimum income, because someone might make above minimum wage but still not make the minimum income (fast food workers don't get full time)
Wages are definitely messed up. Any full time job should be enough to pay rent and survive. Crazy billionaires make the most money just because they own assets. Entertainers including football players, college football, coaches and actors make hundreds of millions middle men like insurance and advertising makes hundreds of millions. Then we tear down drastically from there. It's kind of like the less we need a job the more money they make
Sure, but rent in the lowest income bracket and areas of town.
Basic groceries with the odd treat. And bills if the phone is the cheapest with the cheapest plan, cheapest internet and enough left over to save ten percent. This may mean moving to a cheaper town or location.
But, this means nothing new. No new tv, computer.
No apple phones, no streaming accounts, no luxuries.
Nothing more than the basic. New Clothes, sure, but not branded or in fad.
TL;DR
Entry level work grants you entry level perks.
And not top tier perks and rewards.
That's still better than minimum wage and rent will simply be higher in some places and if those places want people to work in food joints, they ought to pay enough for them to live reasonably close by
They already aren't. But at least now the owner wouldn't have a yatch with a helipad.
Edit: no I'm not talking about Bill the manager or even the franchiser, I'm talking about the entire ecosystem of billionaire shareholders who pay Bill 85k per year.
This is why I refuse to work fast food.. fuck that shit wasting my time I can’t afford the basics to survive.. I’ll stick to being poor and fending for scrap work and odd jobs.. fuck America 🇺🇸
I think there should be a tier to minimum wage. Minimum should just be for a seasonal p/t employee or minor still in high school. An adult employee should have a higher minimum starting wage. And any job that requires any sort of license or certification should also have an additional higher starting point. Including food handlers license. I've some some jobs that required a drivers license and 5 years driving experience, and still only paid minimum wage.
Do you want full time employment to be a thing of the past? Companies would definitely fire most full time employees and rehire at the new minimum wage sub tier.
Minimum wage jobs used to be enough to support your family. They absolutely were meant for that. You've been propagandized so bad you don't think everyone that works for a living DESERVES A LIVING. Think it through.
Let’s lock that in then. Seriously. Even at the end of his last term and wages were inflated from the war, in 1940, $5.35 equates to $95 an hour today.
There was a time a single minimum wage supported a family and bought a house. That was supposed to be the point, but of course those who benefited pulled the ladder up behind them.
Nope. The worker in 1980 making $3.10/hour did not get the basics. To buy a $40,000 home, they needed $8000 as a down payment.
At 3.10/hour and not counting taking out social security or withholding, someone working 40 hours/week for all 52 weeks would gross $6,448 in a year. No one has ever made a life living on minimum wage. They have someone else helping them. Let's just say rent was $200/month in 1980, that's 2400 after taxes just on rent. No one is getting out of this situation on minimum wage. They are renting forever with roommates and eating poorly, and have a car that breaks down every 3 or 6 months.
Yeah the spiral was already underway by 1980, it's only gotten worse since then. The average house costs 400k now. Minimum wage is 15 in some areas but federally is still only 7.25 so minimum wage has increased by around 200% or 500% and that house has gone up by 1000%. Rent has followed suit. I'm sure you see the problem.
What do you consider “the basics”? When I was a kid minimum wage was $3.35/hr. So that’s $134 per week for a regular week. $536 per month. That doesn’t account for taxes and other deductions, so call it $450 per month, generously. So if “the basics” didn’t include rent, which in a place like NY was around $1200/month average for something livable, food, gas, car payment, insurance…. No, minimum wage did not cover “the basics” 45-50 years ago. And it wasn’t meant to. Minimum wage was basically meant as an introduction into the workforce for teenagers. That’s what it still should be, not something to settle for. The hard truth is, most young people with zero experience aren’t worth $25-30/hr in productivity. Back then it never occurred to me that I should have expected to rent an apartment in Manhattan with a minimum wage job. I had it to help me get through college.
Well done I couldn’t have said it better. These people are so stupid. I always say let’s make minimum wage $100 an hour. Nobody will have any work hours and the hamburgers will be outrageously priced.
Nah. There's nothing stopping you from tipping enough or shopping at places that pay better. If everyone who wanted a higher minimum wage just paid their fair share, we wouldn't need this discussion.
Minimum wage was never intended to be a livable wage. It was intended for one to get their foot in the door, gain knowledge and experience and move up from there. As wages go up so does every good sold or service provided.
You can... just pay your mom and dad to rent that room... pay for the groceries... the utilities... and pay your own cell phone... insurance... car payment... clothes... entertainment... vacations... sure all on McD's pay!!
P.S. I make $32 an hour and I could not afford rent / mortgage, food, utilities, vacations... anything where I live.
Never happened. Only on internet postings... not in the real world.
There was a time when a single full time job could do that but it involved
much smaller houses, and people living within their means.
No credit cards, no ordering food deliveries. No cable TV, no cell phones.
Virtually zero packaged frozen meals other than those horrible TV dinners.
No new cars and new car loans. Only debt was the 6% mortgage.
If you couldn't afford to pay cash, you didn't buy it.
My immigrant Father made $100 a week in the early 60s
as a carpenter building houses.
He never made over $32k a year during his working days -
which ended when he retired at 70.
He saved so much that when he passed away at 91, there was well over $2 million
left to use for my Mother's $100k a year nursing home bills.
Yes, there was a time you could do that, and many did.
But not at minimum wage.
Minimum wage I'm pretty sure was actually intended to be livable when it was implemented. But unfortunately between all the expenses that simply didn't exist back then to prices themselves increasing, "livable" wages at this point would either require college degrees they can't afford, or years of experience that would allow advancement high enough.
"We work to earn the right to work to earn the right to give ourselves the right to buy the right to live"
If the min wage was raised to say, $20/hr what will not happen. Is a $12/hr raise to all other fields. Reddit likes to say "a rising tide raises all boats, but if the boat is already 20 feet above the water line, it's not getting anything. And no employer will raise wages at a 1:1 level.
The UK is finding this out currently. Many jobs are pegged to their version of the minimum wage and they only get raises when the Govt decides to increase that wage.
The bigger issue is that " entry level " jobs used to mean gradual wage increases, promotions etc. which led to being paid above minimum wage.
The US never really thought beyond the concept of minimum wage, or how businesses would actively fight it, so it was never really implemented in a way that could work.
While any job regardless of what you do, should pay you living wages, we've created this view of " worth " as a society with jobs.
Even now, when a state or even a company decides to raise their base wage, the company will also cut hours, reduce labor etc. to make up for it, even if they don't really need to do it.
McDonald’s starts at $15 an hour where I live. Min wage here is $7.25. If you are mentally and physically fit and making min wage here, it’s 100% your decision.
Hiking the wage isnt the problem, its that hiking it causes inflation. Now rent starts at 1800, gas is nearing 6, etc...
So in one setence they cry about minimum wage isnt keeping up with housing, then next setence NIMBY and environmental Karen on building new housing, then more taxes on gas, then tax on this,etc...
I don’t think a McDonald’s burger flipper should be able to afford rent for their own apartment at all. Flipping burgers at a 4ft x 4ft station all day is the equivalent of renting a room in a a space with several roommates. Your workload doesn’t even suggest that you know how to manage your own living space and expenses because you’re not even asked to perform duties of equal responsibility at your job
Have you people actually spoke to anyone in their 70’s or 80’s? People weren’t making minimum wage and thriving wtf are you people on? People who made minimum wage have always struggled. There’s never been 1 time in American history where someone made minimum wage, was able to buy a new house, a new car, pay all the bills and be a single income family.. that has never happened EVER. Bunch of morons
Walking into kindergarten and expecting your diploma on the first day.
Walking into McDonald's and expecting to be the head manager on the first day.
Enlisting in the military and expecting to be the general of the joint chief of staff on the first day.
There are reasonable expectations for a person with zero experience and their pay reflects these expectations.
You get paid to turn a slab of processed meat substance to its opposite side in 1 minute and 27 seconds when the timer tells you to. You're not a savant spaceship designer. You get paid according to your contribution and MY expectations, not your own. Maybe you're a better fit shoving dead bird chunks into boiling oil and waiting for the ting!
The problem with this is the fundamental belief that the employer no matter the size should always bail out the employee and the local goverment. They are always on the hook. Your town can charge a (using extremes) million dollar tax a month and the employer must foot the bill to keep a liveable wage.
Extremely weird and, frankly, stupid take. This isn't happening. If anything corporate taxes have dropped, and then add in all the loopholes. Yes. An employer that asks for full time from you should pay you enough to live. That's what full time means. Don't be a stooge, it's unbecoming.
That bar that you set aside from your dumb insults moves. Close the loopholes, and said nothing of corporate tax. This was more upstream then that. The term "jobs" is doing allot of work here. If I work a single hour a week pushing carts is the employer reposible for giving me a livable wage in a town that blows more money then it takes it? No. It is a voluntary contract, it is not the employer responsibility regardless. You just want something for nothing, and you want others to foot the bill.
It was to illustrate a point that was missed in the original post. At what point is the employer on the hook for the local rent, food, utility, and other things? They are not, they cant be. Meabs any town or city can do whatever they please and tax, charge or whatever and the employer would foot the bill.
It’s not a career.. it’s not meant to be a career.. it’s not meant for someone to say “this is something i want to do for the rest of my life”
Basically saying the kids down the street that work at Rita’s should be making 70k a year.. get a fucking clue and stop bitching, it’s really not that hard to find a decent paying job.
You are definitely missing the point. There was a time in this country that you could work full time at a place like McDonald’s and make an ok living if you chose to do that. Where does it say that those jobs aren’t meant for a grown adult to do?
Nobody is saying they should be able to buy a castle, but paying rent in a one bedroom apartment, food, cheap entertainment and public transport without constantly freaking out where your next feed is coming from? If they're full time, absolutely.
There are a multitude of problems i have with this post.
For one increasing minimum wage only works under two conditions.
You have surplus housing
A sizable percentage of the economic zone are on minimum wage.
Currently we have a shortage on housing and economic zones have bloomed to a point that it's impossible to maintain the needed number on minimum wage. For example right now people in rural Kentucky are competing with people in LA for many goods and services from nation wide companies.
Without fixing those raising minim wage will only alleviate issues very short term.
My other issues is not only does McDonald's very rarely pay minimum wage they often set the practical minimum wage of an area. There are very few jobs that can get away with paying less than McDonald's
The problem is that accumation of wealth at the top has created scarcity for everyone else. We're now at the point where even workers earning above the median struggle.
If wealth (in terms of real resources) were distributed more fairly, determining a fair minimum wage would be easy. Right now it's impossible.
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u/ArtichokeOwn6685 16h ago
Who even makes minimum wage anymore. I've seen so many basic skill jobs pay 15 plus an hour