at this point it should be $45/hr
This does nothing to fix the problem of the “gilded” part. The rich are obscenely so, and they control the State. That must be dealt wirh before anything will actually get better.
It helps.
People wont be forced to work multiple jobs.
I’m already forced to do the work of 3 people and it took months to find this job at all. The system behind this job market disaster obviously urgently needs drastic changes but I feel like this would only put even more people out of work or doing the work of their newly fired coworkers
Weirdly, giving people money to spend props up the businesses that depend on people spending money. Who knew? (Besides Keynes, FDR’s entire cabinet, and anyone who’s read a macro textbook since 1945.
I wonder how the biggest economy in the world has minimal wage that is less than minimal wage in Poland (~31.40 PLN/h → ~$8.52 USD/h).
That is exactly the answer. The economy is based on ripping off people.
Not only that. Since in countries most jobs are included in collective bargaining, the minimums, by sector are always higher.
I had a restaurant in Spain, and I had to pay almost triple minimum.
Poland is an EU country, it’s not poor at all by world standards.
And size of the economy doesn’t have much to do with social policies.
How about we start throwing CEOs in prison when they break the law
Good luck.
Or just, yknow, anyway. I mean they definitely did something bad to be a CEO.
Yeah I mean there’s way more than one solution and we can do them all at the same time. Jail CEOs, tax the wealthy, increase minimum wage, increase union protections, tax inheritance … The list goes on.
Both?
Both is good
What we need is a maximum income including capital gains
The issue though is that the problematic wealthy don’t have an income, they own assets that they borrow against instead of selling them so no capital gains taxes get paid.
Those are all loopholes we could patch if there would be political will to do so. Unfortunately they’re all rich fucks themselves and beholden to the donor class
I suppose it’s nice to hear that there are a handful of legit progressives out there, but if we ever manage to get a living wage passed in this country, I hope it’s tied to inflation so the capitalists can’t so easily abuse it and gouge prices.
Inflation is measured disproportionally by commodity prices. That’s why you can see consumer prices nearly double, and inflation is only mentioned as 5-10%.
The corporations can triple the prices on the shelves, and if the commodities they buy to produce those consumer products are more or less the same price, inflation numbers won’t really budge much.
Minimum wage should be tied to cost-of-living, which also varies by region. If San Fransisco and backwoods Oklahoma are averaged together, that’s not going to be a very useful metric.
Minimum wage in a given district should be a proportion of the cost of living for that district, such that, for example, a person working four 40 hour weeks (160 hours) should be able to meet the cost of all their basic necessities with a defined percentage of their income, say maybe 30% (although since it’s a minimum, that percentage could reasonably be higher, but definitely no higher than 60%).
Of course, what necessities are included, and how to measure their cost needs to be clearly defined. I’d say as a baseline, that would include food, housing, utilities (including water, electric, heat, and honestly even internet and cell service because let’s be honest, those are necessities these days), healthcare, and reasonable transportation based on what’s available in the area (i.e. viable public transit or car-centric infrastructure). Arguments can be made to include other recurring expenses, such as clothes, but that would be harder to quantify. (Things like savings and discretionary expenses belong in the leftover percentage of income).
So if, for example, someone lives in a place where the cost of living is measured as $2000 per month, and say the minimum wage is tethered to the cost of living by a factor of 50%. That means the person should make at least $4000 for a month’s worth of work. $4000 ÷ 160 hours = $25/hour, so that tracks with what they’re pushing for.
Of course, some places (many places, these days), $2000 isn’t enough to make ends meet. So cost-of-living should be calculated by district. And the specific percentage is negotiable. States with good legislators might deem 30% of minimum wage income should be enough to meet necessities. States with shitty representatives might say 60% of minimum wage income should be enough to meet necessities. And that can change the calculation drastically, so there’s a lot of wiggle room. But the overall structure of the formula should be mandated nationwide, as well as a standard definition of necessities and how to measure them.
Lastly, this leaves room in the future for a particularly progressive Congress to change the definition of a work week to 30 hours or so. All that needs to change then is the number you divide the monthly income by (in this case, 120, so 4000/120 = $33/hour in our enlightened future).
It’s not going to pass; and they’re future faking (again!) to get people to vote for genocide.
There’re soft power advantages even for a Bill with an expected 1% chance of passing (GovTrack):
- It widens the Overton Window, challenging the neoliberal status quo.
- It organizes the 100+ organizations supporting it into a coalition.
- It forces Republicans to vote against a bill popular with Democrats, young people, and minority voters.
I’d rather have Democrats doing this type of strategy over sitting on their hands while they have no power. When it fails loudly in a hostile Congress it may accomplish more than a watered-down bill that quietly passes.
The right wing in America kept trying to pass anti-abortion laws for decades even though they were obviously unconstitutional, and here we are…
Obama promised to codify Roe into law and didn’t do so even though he had a supermajority.
Dems may not say it, but they love that abortion’s an issue that they can fundraise off of, and they have no intention of making it explicitly legal nationwide.
Why is that? How many times could Dems have codified RvW, since SCOTUS ruled on it? Why didn’t they?
Yup.
To ensure wages don’t lag again in the following years, the bill also requires the minimum wage to automatically grow each year to reach the equivalent of two-thirds the national median hourly wage. It also eliminates the subminimum wage, which is paid to tipped workers, youth workers, and workers with disabilities.
I’m in favor of both of these. It means we don’t have to relitigate the minimum wage battle every few years, and paves the way for moving away from tipping, which I can’t be alone in wanting.
Yes so awesome they always do theater shit like this when they know fuck well it will never pass. Also always close to election time. But if they won the majority and if every Dem voted yes and it could pass. This bill wouldn’t leave committee or they have a few safe Dem seats that will vote No. So I am not exited about this bill which is just fake bullshit to make you think the party on your side and not the rich.
Tethering minimum wage to median hourly wage is a good start, but might have some unintended yet foreseeable consequences, since it would incentivize employers to suppress wages to keep the median wage down, and thus lower minimum wage.
Far better would be to tether minimum wage to the cost-of-living. I explained in more detail in a different comment, but basically the formula has three variables: the monthly cost of necessities (area-dependent), the percentage of monthly income (at minimum wage) that should be expected to meet the cost of necessities (defined by legislation), and the number of hours that constitutes a month’s work (also defined by legislation, for now it would be four 40-hour weeks, i.e. 160 hours).
So for example, if a state legislature chooses 50% as the proportion of monthly minimum-wage income that should be enough to meet necessities, and someone lives/works in a district where necessities cost $2000 per month, and we’re using the standard workweek, the formula would look like this:
($2000 ÷ 50%) ÷ 160 = $4000 ÷ 160 = $25/hour
Which tracks with the legislation in the OP, but it’s also a flexible formula which can be adapted as needed, leaves room for negotiation (e.g. states can choose what percentage to use, and whether COLA should be measured state-wide or by district) which should make it palatable to the widest audience, and it should also adjust over time as cost-of-living should be recalculated every year.
So like, the national bureau of economic research has price indeces at ridiculously granular levels. One time I was trying to find an estimate for a client who lived near Stockton, CA and I didn’t just have to choose the right type of price index, I had like seven different locations in Stockton they were tracking too. It was just one exercise after another of follow this table to that table to that table which eventually led to actual data, and it could all have been beautifully simplified into a real database instead of the excel spreadsheet we all had to work with, but times are tough in the ledger mines.
Sounds like they could create jobs by migrating their data to a real database…
They probably have it all in one but only let us plebes have access to excel sheets
Threadly reminder, you have been stolen, for centuries.
Raising a salary doesn’t increase your true compensation for the fruits of your labor. You should be asking for dividends.
Capitalists hate this.
Does it matter what you call them if you get the same amount of cash? It all spends the same.
Don’t ask for dividends, ask for equity. Ownership. see if they have an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan. That is a term of art: it’s not one you should paraphrase, but the acronym is pronouncable and hr will recognize it) as that is the most common and easiest way for business owners to compensate workers by giving them a piece of the business. At least in statesia, ymmv elsewhere.
It matters greatly!
Do you confuse a slice of a pie for an ingredient of a pie?
With your slice, you can reinvest in whatever markets you wish, tax free ofc.
CX
Interesting edit you made there.
But sure, being part owner of where you work has its merits, but I am talking about labor for work produced. You can’t really yield equity on service economics.But at the least you see the problem with Congress evading the root of the problem.
Okay, short story a business can’t just “pay you in dividends” because there is very strict law around the issuance of dividends. If you already owned enough of the company that you could be effectively paid via your stock, you would be accepting stock options as a major part of your compensation package, not dividends.
(this is a simplification assuming only one class of stock, but) If they issue dividends, they go out to everyone who owns stock at the same ratio. You don’t just get to issue dividends to one person.
What you are talking about is a structural feature that typically only corporate sole proprietors get to take advantage of, and they have better ways to pull a sneaky on the irs. Like seriously, you’re throwing in some additional taxes that don’t need to be paid in there compared to if we just did a disbursement. It all depends what your goals are.
there is very strict law
If Congress could do something about perverse laws🤔
i’m sorry, let’s have congress change the law because you want to quibble over what you call your income?
More Congress is working in its best interest:
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;how about giving me something useful instead of just talking past me because i mentioned a word that set you off? I could use a good recipe for hulatang
It won’t end the new gilded age, but it can maybe help ease things. Chances are that companies will raise prices far beyond increased labor costs and blame the minimum wage increase. They can do this because there’s too little competition in too many industries.
Can we hang the pedo first?
Which? All of them.
Is that above the poverty line?
it wouldn’t be… once the rich crooks that own everything jack all the prices and rents and rates up to ‘compensate’.
For most of the country yes
Yes, by a lot.
The 2026 Federal Poverty Guidelines (FPL), released by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), set the poverty threshold at $15,960 annually for a one-person household in the contiguous U.S.
$25/hr x 40 hours a week x 52 weeks in a year comes out to $52,000 a year, which is more than triple the poverty level.
It puts them above 98% of the world and should be enough to live on.
Raise the bar and suddenly everything else gets more expensive as fatcats try to capture all that new discretionary income that the poor have…
Somebody on a different post just said to pin the minimum wage to an inflation index.
Ok we’re not gonna sit here and be like people don’t deserve it like minimum wage definitely needs to be raised, however this will diminish the currency and companies will raise prices in retaliation: further enforcing the currency’s diminishing value. Yes-raise minimum wage but also tack on max wage like you can’t make more than 5x than the lowest paid person in your company, a wealth tax and actually regulate the market to keep companies needlessly raising prices or undercutting other businesses and allowing monopolies. Thats its way more effective than only raising minimum wage.
That would si a hell of a lot to ease the burden most people are feeling. Hell, my wife and I could back off to 1 FTE each
