• just_change_it@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Based on the number of downvotes of people critical here, the overwhelming majority here must make minimum wage.

    So when you get your bachelors degree and get your first job making $25 an hour… why did you go to college and rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt again?

    What are we doing to help people build enough wealth to own a home? because minimum wage is never going to afford it, even if it you make it $50/hr by 2030.

    • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Raising the floor should cause all other wages to increase as well. No need to bucket-crab. All worker wages have been stagnant for almost a half-century, while their efforts have created more and more wealth due to technological advances.

      What are we doing to help people build enough wealth to own a home? because minimum wage is never going to afford it, even if it you make it $50/hr by 2030.

      That’s literally what minimum wage was intended to be. A living wage that allowed one to have a family, save for a house, and retirement. That sort of stuff was near reality in the mid-20th century. Even the character Al Bundy on Married with Children was portrayed as being able to afford a house and support a family on a single income as a shoe salesman, without being thought an unusual premise.

      • Syldon@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        It is great to see the US apply some sort of protection laws that actually matter. I would have liked to have seen this applied as a minimum wage across the board not just large companies. I get the feeling that companies will downsize just to avoid the law.

        This quote is bloody awful to me. It is like an exert from a dickens novel.

        Ingrid Vilorio, a fast-food worker at a Jack In The Box in the San Francisco Bay Area, said the increase in salary next year will bring some relief to her family, who until recently was sharing a house with two other families to afford rent.

      • just_change_it@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Minimum wage should be closer to $100/hr then in Boston. I can’t imagine anything less than 200k supporting a family with the white picket house, a retirement plan, and a commute that isn’t 2+ hours each way.

        Definitely gonna quit my professional job to be a Barista at that point though. Way more fun.

        • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          I mean that would be an absolutely valid decision. We as a society have decided that we want Baristas to be a job. There’s people who would love nothing more than to do that with their lives and there’s no legitimate reason that they cannot - the world takes all kinds to stay interesting and make life worth living.

          • just_change_it@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            When you’re doing 1099 work you end up paying for your own health insurance and a little bit more in income taxes. The problem with construction contractor work is that it destroys your body over time. Definitely have seen master electricians, plumbers et al pull 150k+++ for many years in Mass.

        • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          And what does “raising the floor” do other than make everything more expensive?

          What you’re talking about is what is referred to as a “Wage-Price Spiral”. While this is the idea that is pushed a lot, it is not actually based on factual data. All recent studies have refuted that it is actually a real thing - even the Cato Institute, a right-wing libertarian think-tank, acknowledges this. Current inflationary forces are overwhelming related to price gouging, extracting more money from society to go into the hoards of billionaires.

          Real wages have stagnated since the 70s and completely decoupled from economic productivity under Reagan. The lack of a living minimum wage is nothing more than massive theft of earned wages. I do agree that just setting it at $20 is barely a half-measure. It needs to be tied to cost of living and adjusted annually, without legislative action.

    • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
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      1 year ago

      It feels like you think the things you said are against raising the minimum wage, and I strongly recommend you read your own post again.

      • just_change_it@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In Massachusetts IT wages have stagnated for 12 years. Minimum wage has doubled. Rent has gone up 2.3x or so. Housing prices have just about doubled but it depends on location.

        Junior IT people now make a couple bucks more than minimum wage. My wife was hiring for a couple of positions and the pay was around 42k. I still don’t understand how that works as a salary in 2023 in Boston.

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Hi, I make six figures and I’m very happy to see this (and also downvoted you for spreading this kinda division). Most half decent people are happy for others getting good things, not upset because they get something better or because it means you’re not as much better than them anymore.

      We absolutely should also help home prices to be affordable. The current prices in many cities are completely unmaintainable for far too many people. Everyone needs housing, so it’s dumb for us to keep cropping the price of it up.

        • Gabu@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Shills who behave like bots are bots. Anyone spreading bullshit to destabilize legitimate discussion via fallacious reasoning can fall off a cliff, for all I care