A pair of progressive Democrats unveiled a bill on Tuesday that would raise the federal minimum wage to $25 per hour, considered the bare minimum a single adult needs to meet the cost of living in much of the US.
The Living Wage For All Act is the first bill to be introduced by the newly sworn-in Rep. Analilia Mejía (D-NJ), who won a special election earlier this month after helping to lead the fight for a $15 minimum wage in her home state of New Jersey.
The bill is stupid. Taxes will have to be raised to pay for it.
Sarcasm ?
Nope. He serious 😂
they could, i dunno, not spend hundreds of billions on excessive military. Just a thought.
How much is excessive? Defense company workers will lose jobs.
well, they’re almost at a trillion JUST on defence. I’d say that’s a little excessive.
Why do you say that?
Idiotism, I suspect
How would this $25/hr. be funded?
Same way the stock holders and EOs are funded, maybe? 😆
Stockholders can lose money depending on the success of the companies that the stocks are invested in. In contrast, a $25/hr. minimum wage is not based on success.
Just peg it. Treating it as a moving target dies nothing.
Why does this has to be regulated on federal level and not by the states?
Federal minimum wage is $7.50 that is not a livable wage anywhere in the country. Currently about half the states have minimum wage at or below federal level, (where the state is below federal is the minimum actually paid) without a federal level most of those states would have a lower minimum wage. Anytime a job pays minimum wage you should assume they would pay less if they could.
So to answer your question, many states would happily let companies fuck their citizens, the fed is there to apply a tiny bit of spit to makes things more comfortable.
Shouldn’t this be resolved on state level? Don’t you vote on local politicians every few years? Minimum wage seems like part of local economic policy that should be decided based on local factors. Like cost of living and competitiveness of local economy.
Not with the broken system we have in place now, so many times the citizens vote for something then the politicians just change it, Americans in aggregate are not very good at understanding politics and tend to be easily swayed by anger.
And the fix is to rely on exactly identical broken system except on federal level?
I’d counter that without addressing price gouging, rent control/passive income, and pain in the ass scores are, raising minimum wage is a short term “win” that will quickly be erased as soon as inflation catches up and leases need renewed. Your bottom end apartment that was willing to rent to you for X amount because they know it’s a shithole now knows you make $25 an hour. If they were taking 2/3 of your income when you made it at $7.25, they’re going to want 2/3 of $25. The apartments that were renting to people making $25 before are going to adjust to limit access to people making even more to keep the riffraff out. And credit providers won’t view this as a step-up for us, they’ll just raise the ceiling for approval. They might have given you a home loan if you were making $25/hr in a $7.25 world, but now everyone makes that, sorry!
It’s the illusion of progress because it only addresses one facet of what needs to be done. I’d rather see a world where $7.25 is a living wage because the exploiters were cut off from their practices than one where we pretend like giving the masses “more” is the solution.
Not going to matter much because the boomers will all shout “when I was your age, I had five kids and a house on less than minimum wage! You just need to sacrifice a little more!” and then it’ll just get shut down by people who have never experienced poverty, let alone even middle class life.
My state has the minimum wage set at the federal minimum wage (7.25/hr) which is not livable in any area of the state.
They even passed laws so our mostly Democratic-leaning urban city can’t raise the minimum wage past the state minimum wage. The cost of living in that city is higher than my local area, where you can’t find a 1br apartment for less than $900/month
The federal wage has to be raised federally or red states will never do it.
“has to be”? why do you have to ask this question?
The bill is cosponsored by Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants who, she said, worked multiple minimum-wage jobs just to get by.
They said “a pair” so I’m dropping that for the Illinois folks.
“What if we still had a guilded age with huge inequalities and corruption, but workers got paid ever so slightly more”
…as if all of this is a simple income inequality problem. Most billionaires don’t even register as having an income.
Which party is fighting to abolish the wage system?
Workers’ Party of Korea
Without restrictions on rent increases , that’s just going to increase inflation. That’s what always happens.
When minimum wage goes up, every single industry thinks they deserve that extra money.
In a way, driving rampant inflation supported by a rising minimum wage tied to inflation destroys the wealth hoarding of the rich, if it is denominated on dollars. Actually, since most of their wealth isn’t, it destroys the savings of the poor and middle class.
Yeah it just makes the middle class lose what little savings they have.
Except most of the wealth is equity which would also rise along with/usually faster than the inflation rate.
They’re not sitting on cash.
Extreme inflation bankrupts a country.
Not that we aren’t already headed there. But still.
Inflation keeps going up anyways. The boring answer is to set it to something reasonable and have it go up 2% every year to keep pace with inflation rather than these big jumps that gets everyone worked up.
Someone else suggested it should be a set percentage of gdp. Not amount. That seems like a good idea too.
Companies with more than $1 billion gross revenue or more than 500 employees would be scheduled to increase their minimum pay to $25/hour by 2031, while smaller employers would be on a longer timeline to reach $25/hour by 2038.
I wish we would stop chasing moving targets here. 2031 is just 5 years, but what will it mean with inflation? Using an inflation calculator and comparing $25 from five years ago (2021), to today’s inflation rate, it bring us to $30.47 in 2026. Over five dollars in five years.
I’m no mathematician or economist, so correct me if I’m wrong, but if inflation continues this trend, wouldn’t enacting a $25 wage in 5 years still bring us below a minimum living wage? That is, if we’d started the fight for $25 five years ago, maybe it’d make sense to make it that number today. But by picking a target that makes sense today and pushing it 5 years into the future, doesn’t that mean it’ll be $5 weaker (or whatever change inflation causes) when it finally rolls out?
Calculate future inflation before picking the target, then tie the number to inflation, damn it. These low numbers just mean we’ll keep chasing new minimums and will always be left behind.
I agree, we need to stop chasing a moving target. Instead, minimum wage needs to be adjusted every year to account for inflation.
Fun fact, the maximum amount you can donate to your congressmen is increased every year to account for inflation. So, we already have the formulas in place.
Oh my god not this shit again.
Great now do a wealth tax next please.
Newsom is gearing up to veto California’s newest attempt
Wealth tax is kinda stupid because that just makes hiding all of your assets in a tax haven the default for rich people. Right now at least I believe most American billionaires are paying SOME tax in the US, because most nominally own some stuff in the US.
Actually closing the loopholes one can use to skirt existing taxes is actually more beneficial. And using your stock holdings as collateral for a loan should trigger a tax event, consider it realized gains. Also start taxing stock options when they’ve vested, not when the stock is sold (which might be never). When sold, the increase in value is also realized gains and should still be taxed too.
Yeah I hadn’t researched anyting but just think that the wealthy need to pay more in taxes there’s got to be a way to do that. What you describe seems like a viable path forward.
We need a federal minimum wage that increases with inflation every year as a default.
If your wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, you’re taking a pay cut, every year — for the same (or let’s be real, slightly more) expected workload.
It’s time for the work force in this country to organize and stand united as a whole.
A thousand rich people cannot withstand the might of 300 million working voters.
Yeah that’s not gonna happen. It makes too much sense. The Democrats need one feel good piece of legislation every decade to show the poor that they give a shit about them and raising minimum wage is that legislation.
For a short time, everyone gets fooled and thinks that Democrats actually give a shit about them. Meanwhile, for the next decade they just continue to fuck them in the ass until the next minimum wage increase they can pat themselves on the back.
It will happen if cynical/optimistic people like us find a way to make it happen.
Can’t wait to hear all the people complaining about this because they’re already making $25 an hour. As though keeping everybody else down will somehow make things better for you.
If you’re making $25 an hour, and the minimum wage changes, you should demand more money for yourself, not less money for other.
This is the way.
By the time this passes we’ll need it to be $30/hr.
Hopefully this can pass and it’ll be tied to inflation.
Isn’t it weird how when billionaires make more money “a rising tide raises all boats”, but when the poorest make more money, suddenly there’s extreme resource scarcity?
“a rising tide raises all boats”
I’ve never heard any billionaire claim that; they don’t even pretend to give a fuck. I guess “trickle down theory” is the closest I’ve ever heard.
Rising tide raises all yachts. Most of us can’t afford boats, so we’re just drowned by the tide.
should have pulled yourself up by your bootstraps. /s
*hung
A swift “well, don’t you think you’re worth more than that” can build many bridges
It’s called “punching down economics”.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson
Plus they’re still pro-genocide.
I’m making about that much and I’m sick of my bosses saying “well it’s a good wage”. I would have so much more ammo for a raise if it was the new minimum. Don’t understand people who don’t understand a rising tide.
Can’t wait to hear all the people complaining about this because they’re already making $25 an hour.
Sort of the joke with these bills.
You live in a neighborhood where $30/hr is the functioning poverty line, due to rent and utilities prices skyrocketing. Inflation makes a mockery of a five year phase in for a modern minimum wage.
Why not simply tie wages to inflation off the bat? Or straight up public employment doing work the private sector no longer cares about?
I suspect Mamdani’s public run grocery store will end up paying more than $25/hr in wages by the time it goes live - two years before this wage bump comes into effect
As someone that makes around $25, that’s still not even that much money. It definitely feels like a good minimum wage as I can afford my bills and food relatively easily (although it is getting harder as prices go up) but it’s still not really enough to make my life that much more comfortable than it was 5 years ago.
The only complaint I have is that I needed to work for 10 years in order to reach a wage of what would now be considered minimum wage. It’s always seemed like every increase in wages I have ever gotten has been a year or two too late conpared to how expensive everything is. When I was making $14 an hour the average house prices in my area were $100,000 to $300,000. Now that I’m making almost twice as much and could afford a house 8 years ago, house prices in my area average around $400,000 to $800,000 and sometimes over $1,000,000. It’s like I’ve been playing catch up since the day I was born. In my opinion, I should be making $30+ an hour.
$25 an hour treated me extremely well in the southeast with my partner making about the same or at least pre-inflation. Even then that just meant keeping a slightly tighter budget, but still a pretty comfortable life.
So, in other words, it took 80 hours a week to live comfortably at that wage…
I mean we probably could have been okay with less. We did take a trip to Europe lol
But also at the same time kids still felt out of reach. 2 weeks in Europe was about 5k, but even 1 kid would be way more than that. World’s off
Bucket crab ass mentality
Fix poverty and you’ll see a bunch of completely unrelated problems magically disappear.
Which is exactly why rich people love poverty so much. Revenue stream.
The rich also like poverty and homeless so they can use it to scare the masses. “Thinking about asking your boss for a raise, careful. Ask for too much and you’ll be replaced and end up homeless.”
The system requires people to be unemployed. If everyone had a job and paid their bills on time the country would collapse.
Remember that the next time they talk numbers and labor supply.
This would be super great, therefore it won’t happen. There is no hope.
That kind of “no hope” thinking is how nothing changes. If you believe something would make the country better, then it’s worth more than just a passing comment.
You’ve got your own voice. Use it. In a system like ours, that means being able to explain your position and defend it when it’s challenged.
Otherwise you’re not really standing for anything, you’re just agreeing in theory and giving up in practice.
You have your voice. They haven’t taken that away yet. Use it effectively.
W take
Should be about 40 usd, minimum.
That won’t solve this problem. Did you miss the point?
Great, next time you have a majority, pass the increase.
You don’t need a super majority, stop your parliamentary bullshitting. Use “the nuclear option” (Trent Lott, R coined the term in 2000s to scare the dummies), you only need a SIMPLE MAJORITY VOTE.
Don’t try it just once… repeat until passage, party whips can make it happen. If they can’t, go public with the holdouts and why, every day. Refuse to pass anything else until it’s done.
People have been fighting for 15 an hour so long it’s no longer enough. Poland has better worker benefits and pays almost as much as the USA; we will soon be surpassed by Eastern Europe.
When the labor law was passed in 1938 or so, the minimum wage was supposed to be enough to keep a family of four above the poverty line with ONE WORKER. Make that the law, because you obviously can’t be trusted to raise the wage on your own in the future. You embarrassing hacks.
Great, next time you have a majority, pass the increase.
Impossible. Can’t be done. You don’t understand how politics works.
Now donate $2028 to my reelection campaign or this Palestinian refugee gets shoved into a wood chipper.
Actually the Palestinian gets shoved into the chipper regardless 😁 Palestinian genocide is bipartisan!
The last time the Democrats had a majority was in the 117th Congress. They introduced a minimum wage increase bill HR 603 with 202 cosponsors, not a single one Republican. If the Democrats have a slim majority, all it takes is for a few Democrats whose districts rely on votes from small business owners who don’t want to pay higher minimum wage during a pandemic when their business is shut down to stop it. Those small business owners vote, and their employees listen to people like you. If you vote for enough Democrats that aren’t in that position, of course it will pass. The messaging to the employees should be that if their Democratic representative isn’t meeting demands, they should primary them, not that they should let Republicans win.
The Democrats ALWAYS have just enough defectors who will cross the aisle to stop any progressive legislation.
Because they’re not a real Party; they’re Controlled Opposition.
Every single Dinosaur Democrat needs to be ousted, starting with Schumer.
People voted for them. They serve their voters. That’s how democracy works. They are “controlled” by their voters. People who don’t understand that get governments who don’t listen to them and instead listen to people who do understand that, like the aforementioned small business owners.
You could fit a continent in the gap of your understanding.
I’m going to assume you’re just laughably naive, as a best-case scenario.
Democrates have enough problems with out encouraging them to act like republicans.
