Alright, fuck Republicans, I'm onboard with that.
Living wage, I'm onboard with that too.
Fuck landlords as well, I'm waay onboard with that.
How about we raise minimum wage, but also regulate the hell out of several sectors so that the wealthy don't just consume whatever we raise it to with obscene inflation, otherwise what's the point?
I had to scroll to the bottom to see this. This is what happens every time the wage increases. No point in increasing the wage when everyone else increases the price. Can't agree with your statement more.
Just tie minimum wage to inflation
If you do that you will give even more incentive for the government to underreport inflation.
Also inflation usually measures consumer prices. Ever wonder how education, healthcare, housing, and most other major expenses can increase significantly faster than inflation? This is why.
If your rent goes up, its not inflation. If the cost of chips goes up it is. Tie it to a better metric.
We gonna let passage of broader more difficult to pass reform be a prerequisite for increasing the minimum wage?
Sounds like making the perfect the enemy of the good to me.
if you want affordable housing we need to de-commodify it and get the investors out. no more airbnb, no more one investor group owning 10s of thousands of single family homes. Dumping regular people's money into this system, even if we give them a bunch extra, is only gonna drive prices even further up. The necessities of living are not speculation opportunities for the ultra rich.
Right, I hate when people ask me if I want to buy a house to invest or to live.
Bitch, I can barely afford one and if I could buy multiple, I wouldn't because I'm not a piece of shit.
hard same. I'm just tryna actually have something at the end of a lifetime of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars just for the privilege of remaining alive. But the people who already have most of everything are like "Why shouldn't I have all of this guy's money and the house?" Swear to God we'll only have to eat one of them and the rest will fall right back in line.
No more AirBNB for entire properties.. If you need to rent out a room a few nights a week to get by it shouldn't be a problem banning those does a disservice to people who want to take a vacation without be thousands of dollars in the red, and for home owners and renters strapped for cash. Plus it would give hotels clear monopoly status, and reduce choices for basic accommodations for travelers.
This is the correct answer. If minimum wages go up, the price of everything you buy with those wages increases as well, including housing. There's artificial scarcity in housing right now because of investment firms and property management firms.
wages drive inflation but it's not 1:1 and it does tend to benefit low earners.
When the minimum wage is not livable, you subsidize their employers with your taxes.
It's not the minimum wage people should get. It's the minimum we'll accept
And "blue no matter who" means we accept people who think it doesn't need raised
except democrats dont care either
start building a new system now.
you're gonna wanna skip the polls and start buying arms now if that's your plan
Or don't skip the polls. Both sides will shoot at you, but one side will shoot much sooner because it wouldn't necessarily be political suicide for them.
I would argue you need unions more. There's no minimum wage in Iceland because we have people who negotiate it for us.
There are a lot of US states that have skirted union protections by not banning unions themselves, but just banning workplaces from requiring union membership for employees. It's called a "right to work" law that is implemented many different ways in many different states that makes unions a hard thing to nail down for the federal government.
As far as a federal ban on these laws, I think we are more in a position of fighting against a federal version of them, which is more likely to have support, than we are in a position to fight for a federal ban against those laws, though there are efforts.
You forget that dems vote against it as well: Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Jon Tester, Tom Carper, Chris Coons, Angus King...
You also forget that a $15/hour minimum wage isn't even a living wage in current year and that's what they voted against. Both sides fight for billionaires, stop deluding yourself.
Ah the DINOs. Well two are out at least.
Both sides fight for billionaires, stop deluding yourself.
Nobody's deluding themselves. I'm pretty sure we all know full well that both sides fight for billionaires, it's a question of degree and that degree matters. Is $15/hr more or less than $7.25/hr?
IOW, it's a start... it's progress. I get that the progress is frustratingly slow. But once you have $15/hr you can keep incrementing it, especially at the state level.
There's also an argument to be made for building better cities and more affordable housing (both more affordable and more of it), as well as building a society where you don't have to buy a car to participate. Life could be a lot more affordable if we didn't arrange our policies to make it so expensive.
Then we would need to get rid of lobbyists
Or just show up to city council and county supervisors and shout the NIMBYs down
Don't forget the decision banning non-competes. Apparently the decision went along 'party lines', with you know who Gop trying to keep them. But nooooooo, bOtH sIdEs SaMe.
Nothing is ever good enough for republican stooges.
In this case it was the gop with "corporations can do no wrong, all hail corporations".
Repugs want nothing less than slavery
Always have. And yet morons who didn’t pay attention in class talk about the party of Lincoln
They proclaim "party of Lincoln" while waving a Confederate flag without a shred of irony or self awareness.
Biden was the Dem that passed many of the Republican bills including making it impossible for students to declare Bankruptcy on their student loans.
Current Dems are more right than old Republicans. Republicans just went even more to the right.
Cherry picking a bit, there.
Who Made Student Loans Nondischargeable?
Allen Ertel, a Congressman from Pennsylvania, pushed to make student loans hard to discharge. Ertel was in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1983. Despite stats showing less than 1% of federal student loans were ever wiped clean in bankruptcy, Ertel argued student loan defaults were jumping up. His convincing talk changed the rules, making student loans stick around after bankruptcy unless the borrower faced severe hardship.
Joe Biden's Dual Role in the Student Loan Crisis
Joe Biden has affected the dynamics of student loan debt and its dischargeability, playing two distinct roles:
As a senator, Biden backed multiple pieces of legislation that unintentionally exacerbated the student loan crisis. These laws facilitated the growth of student loan borrowing, often increasing borrowers’ monthly payments and making these loans tougher to discharge in bankruptcy.
As President, Biden’s policy changes have further altered the landscape of student loan dischargeability, albeit in a different direction. While his administration has sought to alleviate the student loan crisis and lighten the burden on borrowers, the reforms implemented may have indirectly made it more difficult for some student loan borrowers to discharge federal loans in bankruptcy.
Here’s how:
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The administration created the most affordable repayment plan to date, shielding even more of a borrower’s discretionary income from student loan payments. While this new student loan repayment plan provides immediate relief, it might inadvertently discourage some borrowers from seeking bankruptcy discharges.
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Biden implemented an interest waiver, effectively reducing the debt burden. While beneficial for most, it could indirectly create an environment where discharging student loans through bankruptcy becomes harder.
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All federal student loan borrowers, including those with a consolidation loan, are eligible to get retroactive credit toward income-based repayment forgiveness. This move alone has already erased $39 billion in federal student loans. Experts expect that this will ultimately lead to a $400+ billion bailout by the federal government, again potentially reducing the instances of borrowers resorting to bankruptcy.
https://www.tateesq.com/learn/student-loan-bankruptcy-law-history
As a senator, Biden backed multiple pieces of legislation that unintentionally exacerbated the student loan crisis. These laws facilitated the growth of student loan borrowing, often increasing borrowers’ monthly payments and making these loans tougher to discharge in bankruptcy.
Yes literally what I said. Cherrypicking lmao. If you want to learn something:
How Biden helped create the student debt problem he now promises to fix:
“Biden was one of the most powerful people who could have said no, who could have changed this. Instead he used his leadership role to limit the ability of other Democrats who had concerns and who wanted the bill softened,” said Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill specialising in bankruptcy
(please stop using this formatting btw)
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If there's no corresponding regulation on rent prices, minimum wage is irrelevant.
Raise the minimum wage to a bazillion dollars? Great! Rent is now three hundred bajillion!
Raise the minimum wage to $25/hr, tie it to inflation... Use the $67billion a year spent on section 8 housing to build people houses which they end up owning, instead of shoveling all that money into slumlords' pockets. Flood the housing market with supply to keep the prices down, even as people are able to afford more.
Raise the minimum wage to $25/hr, tie it to inflation…
I fully believe this would cause runaway inflation as wages only went up and up as the majority of americans have more money and thus prices can be raised. This cycle would constantly repeat as raised prices cause a raise in wage until the american dollar is worthless and we're all making millions or billions of dollars a year which adjusted to inflation... is like today's $15/hr. Interest rates for loans would skyrocket to an unfathomable percentage as double digit inflation remains y/y.
The billionaires would quickly turn into trillionaires and quadrillionaires as their investments rise in price proportional to inflation.
I'm glad someone made this point. Raising the federal minimum wage too fast is a great way to cause inflation. Control rent and interest rates and creep minimum wage up in steps, going to $15 federal would be great for a while but isn't a stable solve. We can start establishing a living wage economy slowly, especially where many states still tax food and health essentials. $7.25 is embarrassing, but funnily enough, it is still the 17th highest across all countries.
Your defeatism is toxic and not supported by evidence.
So I'm curious. When you feel compelled to shit on some random Internet stranger with no apparent substantiation beyond general anger, do you prefer virtual toilet paper or a digital bidet?
You tell me I've no evidence, and that's pretty much true as I'm just making a casual remark, but you're taking it upon yourself to verbally attack me with words like toxic without providing any basis yourself.
The rest of this conversation is level headed, some agreeing, some disagreeing, some expanding on the thought.
But you've just got to scratch that Internet hemorrhoidal itch.
There is a mentality from Boomers and passed along to Gen X that full-time work does not entitle you to anything. That there are just millions of jobs in America that shouldn’t be required to pay people enough to live in the community they work, or anywhere for that matter. As long as that mentality aligns with the goals of capitalism, nothing will change.
You will hear all the excuses in the world justifying low-paying jobs. “Just get a better job if you don’t like the pay” “Those jobs are only for high school kids” “If they raise the pay they will raise the prices” The list goes on. None of them make a ton of sense if you explore the idea any further.
The idea of working hard and being, eventually, rewarded with good pay has been dead for decades. It is widely accepted that the easiest way to increase your pay is moving to a different company, which speaks a lot about longevity in this late-stage capitalism era most of us are living in today.
It's pretty funny to me to see Americans claiming that a full-time job should be sufficient to have your basic needs met - as if the unemployed should live in dire poverty.
I would fully support some kind of UBI or someway to ensure that those who can’t work can live semi-independent lives. But in order for there to be money to support that system, a majority of people do have to work.
The alternative is some kind of utopian society that has yet to exist. If we make it to Star Trek and not Blade Runner I will fully embrace the idea that everyone can have all of their needs covered without the requirement for others to indirectly support that through labor and taxes. But until then, improving workers ability to support themselves also improves the ability to support those who cannot.
One step at a time, alright? 😅
We're saying that working a full time job SHOULD give you a living wage.
Instead, even if you're working, you're still living in dire poverty.
I agree that people sbould be able to live comfortably with their job, even a low skill one. But the idea that raising wages will mean increase prices does check out though. That, or people with higher skill jobs will be paid less and then they will be the ones to suffer the most.
Imo, we should aim to make things more efficient, thus cheaper because they actually became cheaper. E.g. solving the housing crisis => cheaper rent. Public healthcare => cheaper healthcare. Better schools => better citizens that leave less trash around => less expensive trash management. More public transport, less need to buy or do maintenance to a car etc. And so on and so forth.
Minimum wages can't fix this problem (they can fix others), they're just a bandaid on a severed limb.
This is how brainwashed capitalism has made us. In a society that is purely driven by money the thought that giving people their fair share means my prices might increase. Instead, we should fix every societal problem first before doing the one thing that would actually work.
We have record inflation now, is it because major cities have passed $15+ minimum wage? Not at all, not even a little. Further proof that a pandemic has a thousand times more influence than simply paying people more.
Oh and the horrible thought a "high" skilled laborer might be paid less shudder. Like a doctor might only get paid $90k instead of $150k. How could they survive!?
What other convenient tropes should we trot out to disfranchise the only real solution of just paying people what they deserve. Oh that's right they don't deserve it because they are lazy or low-skilled or any of the other bullshit excuses we have been force fed our entire lives.
My answer is more radical. Tie their tax breaks to the linearly interpolated value of the median wage in the company between minimum wage and whatever is actually a living wage. At halfway between the two they get an equilibrium point, below it is a harsh penalty, above is an increasing percentage of their tax break. Wonder how long it would take of McDonalds owing an obscene penalty on their taxes before they started actually paying employees.
I would also be in favor of levying MASSIVE corporate tax penalties for every employee on government assistance. At this point, government programs are less socialism for the people and more socialism for the likes of WalMart.
When applied to multinationals, it would result in companies exporting high skill jobs overseas to bring pay down. Would need to legislate behavior as well to stop companies trying to get around it
Oh, I never said it was perfect and I have actually thought through all of those issues, just didn't want to bog down the comment in details and math.
I like the idea of rent prices being tied directly to pay, maybe a straight %. It would be complicated, but pitting greedy landlords up against greedy businesses sound much more fair than getting fucked from both sides.
Landlords want to make the most money, but if what they can charge was directly tied to minimum wage, they will actually fight to raise pay. Not for altruism or any positive reason, but because they want to increase their own revenue.
It’s not a great idea, but it’s something I’ve thought about for a decade or so. Especially when that “Fight for $15” took so long to that even if $15 was the minimum wage, it would still be way behind to cost of living.
Landleeches can get fucked as far as I am concerned. Implement a chit system like NYC taxies so only a fixed number of single family homes can be rentals in a town, make strict livability (not habitability) standards for those rentals with steep fines and inspections every 2 years, and cap rent at a % of the real value of the property. You let a house languish so it is only worth $40k, you don't get to charge $2k/month to live there.
I like this idea. It reduces my primary concern with raising the minimum wage, that it would cause a dramatic and hard to control increase in the inflation rate. Inflation/Cost off of living would increase, but it would probably be controllable under these circumstances.
Video evidence of a democrat voting down a minimum wage increase.
And somehow there always seems to be just enough of these "mOdErAteS" to kneecap a Democratic majority from doing what they promised when they get power.
Must be a coincidence 🤔
It's why big business donates to both parties. Even democrats can be fooled by the corporate propaganda and they all got fundraising targets to meet if they want to keep their seat.
The same Dem everyone dragged for being a Dem in name only almost as soon as she started voting dogshit completely contrary to what she ran on? The same Dem who literally left the party because she was never anything more than a corporate shill too corrupt even for the milquetoast neoliberals in the Democratic Party?
Lot of dems voted against it too
Do you consider 7 out of 48 Dems to be a lot? Versus every single republican?
What percentage of Sanders supporters do you imagine voted for Trump?
Do you suppose it's higher than the percentage of Democrats in the Senate who were willing to go on record as hating workers by voting to kill the minimum wage increase?
Because Sanders supporters are still catching shit for the loss Clinton earned, regardless of who they actually voted for in 2016.
If we're expected to vote like the party wants, why aren't legislators?
The 2021 federal minimum wage vote had 41 Yea votes from Democrats, 1 from Independent. 7 Democrats and 1 Independent voted Nay. Every single Republican voted Nay.
Yeah, Kirsten Sinema (currently an independent and dropped out) and Joe Manchin (who will also be gone soon).
So by "many" you mean "two"?And do you think if those two senators are replaced with GOP senators it will make an increase in minimum wage more likely?
The "uniparty" meme is a Marjorie Taylor Greene thing. Do you agree with the space laser lady?
Hello from California! Democrat majority everywhere but it's "still too hard" to do it. Things that make you go hmmmm
Some of the strongest worker protections in the country and the CCPA. Really makes you wonder how much more you could get if young adults actually voted in elections.
You guys are atleast at the "both sides". My people are fully convinced(brain washed) that far right is the only way.
"Both sides" is a position taken only by edgy idiots who are too lazy to do an iota of research.
"Both sides" is a strawman argument employed by people who like the status quo against people who are discontent with same.
And nothing else.
You are right both sides aren't the same. But by absolute standards, both sides are really really bad and I think that's a fair assessment all things considered. One has to be better than the other, but both are bad.
Which is why when Dems had their supermajority they passed a raise to minimum wage.
They codified Roe v Wade too, because it's just Republicans that were after that.
Which is why when Dems had their supermajority they passed a raise to minimum wage.
Do you remember what they did with that ~70 days they had to pass legislation? Affordable Care Act? Let's not act like they don't pass shit when we give them the legislative ability to do so. 51-49 that includes people like Sinema and Manchin is not a majority.
The vast majority of elected Democrats support and vote for raises to the minimum wage and codifying Roe. 100% of elected Republicans oppose those things, and it's the Democrats that are failing us?
But, but joe biden and i dont agree on everything!
We better elect a fascist instead just to make sure.
Oh, they passed the Affordable Care Act?
Healthcare is SO available and affordable now, huh?
Then you come in and say "but it wasn't even a real supermajority!"... that supermajority. Not even realizing you are saying even with a supermajority, there isn't one, because it's all the same muddle.
It must be exhausting for you to still shill that hard.
Register independent. Vote third party. It's our only hope to end Party Fascism.
This thread is chock full of idiots who would vote to lower their own wages because of a spectacular misunderstanding of how inflation works.
Either that or trolls looking to encourage others to fight against raising their own wages.
Either way, it's sickening.
Wouldn't raising minimal wage just raise prices higher without dealing with the underlying problems?
Prices are already getting higher, and we don't have other solutions.
In Australia, minimum wage is quite high and so are the costs of many goods, but things like Amazon and flight tickets are much cheaper comparatively
Not a real solution, we must get laws to really regulate renting. I can't deny the dream for me would be to outlaw renting entirely if not for particular reasons, and pushing for more reasonable mortgages + government help to buy a first home
single family houses are inefficient as hell though.
Owning an apartment/condo isn't an impossible option, although I admit it requires more cooperation than a sfh. Condo associations and fees are already a thing.
So, honest question that comes of my own ignorance. Is a minimum wage supposed to be livable? I always figured minimum wage jobs were for people like teens who didn't need to afford housing.
Yea so that's the argument that people who don't agree with making a liveable wage give. In reality there is just a great group of people who are only eligible for minimum wage or close to minimum wage jobs. So a fair bit of adults that are even trying to support their children.
So I think we can all agree that especially if 2 parents are working 40 hours a week should be able to at least live a decent life in a Western country. And that's mainly in to question here. For teens you could always have a lower minimum wage until they're older. As they have in plenty countries.
Does this address your question properly?
I always figured minimum wage jobs were for people like teens who didn’t need to afford housing.
Nothing in min wage law adjusts your wages based on whether or not you're someone else's dependent.
Since when housing should be considered a luxury? If you make minimum wage you should be at least capable of buying a small modest house/apartment which is impossible nowadays...
How do you know teens don't need to afford housing? Many do.
It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, making his intentions pretty clear.
"Supposed to be" in whose opinion?
Yes. Good meme. More like this.
I love that all the Usual Suspects showed up on this thread to push "BOTH SIDES".
Why don't states with Dem majorities raise the local wage to match housing costs?
Washington State, New York, Minnesota... none of these states have escaped this problem.
Because the problem is the capitalist class is holding the government hostage with their lobbying. Shit's class war, not culture war.
[Sic]"Don't tell me there's no class war, of course there's class war. My class, the rich, started it and we're winning."
- Warren Buffet
the problem is the capitalist class
I hope there aren't any capitalists outside the Republican party.
California does. We have a state minimum wage of $15/hr, city minimum wages, (varies by the city, but here in San Diego it's currebtly $16.85 an hour) and now food service minimum wage of $20 an hour at the state level.
Seattle's minimum wage is currently $19.97/hr. Why are you whining about placed that have already raised their minimum wage by a lot?
Cost of living has outpaced the sub-living wage minimum
Economics shenaniganery means that just raising the minimum wage will likely just raise prices.
The state apparatus should probably regulate the prices too, and improve the public housing projects.
Just raising the minimum wage won't do anything other than intensify class warfare for anyone who isn't rich or mildly rich (making more than 200k per year) and work further in the Republicans favor. What needs to happen is this:
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Cut social security entirely (all this shit does is support the old rich fucks) and instead initiate a universal basic income which yields a yearly income equivalent to working a full time job at 18.50 an hour. Why 18.50? Because that's the amount needed to cover the cost between the 7.50 minimum wage and 26 an hour which is where the minimum wage would be if wages hadn't stagnated. Furthermore this increases everyone's wealth by the same amount so the people at the top effectively get nothing while the middle class is also helped in addition to those near the poverty line (effectively mitigating potential class warfare). Also the homeless would be helped, whereas a minimum wage increase would only help those with jobs.
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Pay for the UBI with taxes that massive tax anyone effectively making over 1million a year. This means corporations and billionaires. In order to do this we have to break the slimy garbage they pull to leverage their non-liquid wealth to avoid paying any taxes while further increasing their billions.
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Impose strict regulations on corporations so that they cannot arbitrarily raise their costs in response to the newly raised tax rates.
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8 members of the Democratic caucus in the senate hate workers so much that they voted against increasing the minimum wage.
Pretending that anyone who notices is "both sides"ing is insulting to the workers Democrats said they totally wanted to help and then betrayed.
The party expects perfect lockstep from the electorate, but doesn't care about voting with the party when it comes time for the elected to do what we voted them in for.
You keep saying "Democrats" and "the party"
Tell me, which party was it that voted in pefect lock step against? Surely by your statements it's the Democrats...
Oh? It's not?
Only 8 of the 48 Democrats voted against it?
Well fiddly fee fuck me it sure seems both sides are the same and every Democrat hates workers and would never vote yes for a minimum wage increase
I didn't vote for Republicans.
I'm not being told that voting for more Republicans will totally get a minimum wage increase passed.
We gave Democrats a majority. They found enough no votes. It's what they do. In order to overcome the votes of those eight plus all Republicans we would need 59 Democrats in the Senate. And may as well make that an even 60 because Democrats won't ever get rid of the filibuster.
Of course both sides aren't the same; that's just something centrists say when people criticize Democrats in any way at all, because it's easier than defending the party's deliberate uselessness.
US has the cheapest houses in the world, the fuck are you taking about?
We could raise the minimum wage if it weren't for republicans
Most brainwashed country, I swear to god.
Are you saying Republicans aren't obstructing any kind of legislation, including their own?
Yeah but not in the way you're thinking.
I get the sense that people mistook the sentiment behind your comment.
Except the Dems have controlled the house, Senate and Presidency since 2009...
I mean. 2021-2023 Biden had House and Senate majorities...
Did I miss something?
Was it that as soon as we had a majority just enough Dems said they wouldn't vote with the party? And then party leaders saying "welp, trying would be pointless"?
Is that what I missed?
Don't get me wrong, it should work the way your meme makes it sound. But unfortunately the rich bought out both parties awhile ago.
It's why Biden and the DNC have their PAC, the Biden Victory Fund, that coordinates directly with the candidate and party, and you can give up to a million!
Like fucking clockwork. Goddamn you're so predictable.
There's a reason the right have earned the label of the poorly educated. This guy doesn't realize a simple majority in the senate isn't enough to move legislation.
It's covered endless in the political news cycles but morons cannot retain the information and spout the most banal nonsense as if they're uncovering some grand conspiracy that they aline have discovered.
If such people could feel shame they would still spread their bullshit because they don't realize how far down left side of intelligence the curve they are.
It would be entertaining if they weren't voters.
Everywhere I see you, you’re fabricating facts.
Democrats have controlled the Senate and the House for six years since 2009.
Only four of those years included a Democratic President.
They were two, non-consecutive two-year terms, a decade apart, with different Presidents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses
Another day, another fascist account to ban
They play both sides so that even when we win, we lose.
We just try to lose less.
Trying to win means votes too....
It cost Biden over a billion last election to barely win, this year they're predicting it will cost 2 billion
The reason we're told we're tuck with bad candidates who take corporate money, is it costs that much to win and the only way to get is billionaires and corporations...
But that's not true, only "moderates" need that to win.
Jimmy Carter didn't need it. Bill Clinton didn't need it, Obama didn't need it...
Bernie was able to run a competitive primary against Hillary without it too.
I don't know why people act like Hillary and Biden are normal, they're terrible candidates voters don't like, but we don't have a say in it anymore. The DNC took Biden on a victory lap before the majority of states even voted.
Shit was still bad 20/30 years ago, but it wasn't as bad as the last decade.
Like, I've never understood the rationale that because trump is so dangerous, we had to run candidates that voters from both parties strongly dislike.
That’s why I’m voting Trump.
