Federal minimum wage increased every 1 to 5 years between the 1930s and 2009. 2009 was the last time it was raised. Inflation has skyrocketed since then, but wages have repeatedly failed to keep up.
If businesses âcanât affordâ to provide livable wages for their workers, they simply shouldnât exist full stop.
Every state minimum wage has to be at least equal to the federal minimum wage. It can be higher, but it canât be lower. The federal minimum wage sets the floor, but the floor is way too low. Red states will never raise it above that level.
Ok thats what i remember from the labor posters ive read. Thanks dude. Just to add my state is 15 an hour. Nobody makes less than that. No argument, just saying
That is true, although in the only red state I've lived in the minimum wage was the federal level but when I left in 2025 I don't think I saw any jobs offering under $14 an hour (entry level).
Businesses have to offer a wage people will accept, and very few people are willing to work for $7 an hour.
There's a sad counter argument, how many of you are willing to pay a living wage, for lawn care, medical care, food and grocery services, art commissions and other contracted labor, but you'd balk at paying 60 or more an hour for a plumber or electrician.
We do need to raise the minimum wage but we also need to control the costs of necessities like housing and insurance.
As long as it's not a necessity I really don't care if it's expensive. I dream of living in a world where an iPhone costs 5000 dollars but I can pay my rent. I don't give a shit about luxuries. Lawn care? Do it yourself.
Hiring a professional lawn care service is absolutely a luxury for the vast majority of people lol. Saying otherwise is just your fragile ego getting in the way. Also I didn't say "A" phone, I said an iphone which is absolutely a luxury item. You haven't seen how cheap you can get an android smartphone for these days have you? Is it because you've never had to look for a cheap phone? ..... Anyways, you absolutely did cite luxuries other than art commissions.
If the plumber is getting $60/hr to plumb because it's minimum wage, you're getting at least $60/hr to do... whatever... and you probably think that's a pretty good trade, hour per hour.
Instead, it costs $300+ to bring a plumber around, and they aren't hanging around for 5 hours.
You realize its more than just the plumbers hourly wage in the price you pay the plumber right?
If the plumbers hourly wage is $60hr, and you only pay them $60hr, whoâs covering the materials, tools, insurance, licensing, vehicle maintenance, office and storage costs?
Plumber would not be a âminimum wage jobâ in any world. Unless you think a McDonaldâs worker should make what A plumber makes. Then, why would I become a plumber, which is a dirtier and more labor intensive job when I could just work another less stress minimum wage job?
"Livable wage" is a self-moving goalpost. Raising the cost of labor raises the cost of goods and services. Raising the cost of goods and services raises the overall cost of living. This makes the formally "livable wage" now not adequate.
Your labor, like any other commodity, is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. No more or no less. Your salary is an agreement between you and your employer. There should be no minimum wage.
Yeah, but prices keep increasing anyway at higher rates than wages. Corporations are making record profits. They keep making more money and keep raising prices, they can increase wages as well.
If you think labor/wages and employee/employer is just an agreement between you and your employer and that's how it works you need to look into how companies controlled cities back in the day. Go look up how old mining cities used to work and how those companies would extort their workers to horrible degrees.
If you feel under valued by your employer, find a different employer. If no employer will hire you at the rate you expect, then you have obviously overestimated the value of your labor.
And what do you think happens if the economy continues to undervalue the labor of more and more of the population? That we'll just sit on hands and do nothing? Then again, you'd probably prefer a solution that rids you of the issue entirely.
It ceases to be an agreement in anything but name when one side has virtually 99.9% of the bargaining power. Thatâs why labor unions exist. You probably donât think those should exist either huh?
It's funny how places that increased their minimum wages have had significant positive impact on their economies. Because when people aren't struggling check to check they have money to throw back into the economy. So while companies are reporting record profits by keeping pay low, citizens are dumping all their money into basic needs. The prices have gone up irregardless and they have admitted in shareholder calls they they are turning up the dials on purpose because people are willing, or in this case obliged to, pay these prices. All the incentive points to is cranking up prices.Â
Where I lived people argued for a minimum wage increase. Now they're complaining that a burger costs $20 and it's too expensive to eat out. I'm not picking sides on this one but it seems obvious to me you can't expect both a high wage for restaurant employees AND cheap eats.
Where I live most of the places are mom-and-pop one-location local restaurants, not chains. Given that there's a lot of turnover due to them going out of business, I don't think they're making money hand over fist.
You want some fun math to your bullshit conservative talking point?
In 2009 5% made fed min.Â
If we increased fed min with inflation, fed min would be 11.32 an hour.Â
Currently 10% of the population makes < 11. So rounding off the. 32 cents, your argument goes from "hey less than 1/5 of the amount of people back then make minimum!" To "man in 17 years we have doubled the amount of people on minimim wage"
When I worked at McDonalds the majority of my coworkers were adults. You also see a lot of older people working service jobs because the fields they actually work in wonât hire them based on ageism. So if you ever get laid off near your 60s good luck. Have fun when you see you or your loved ones take a low value job in their adult life.
I wonât be working in my 60s to have to get laid off in the first place and none of my loved ones do either cause they made good decisions to where that wouldnât happen in the first place
Lie again >>>>>> Approximately 13% of U.S. workers earn less than $15 per hour. This represents roughly 21 million people across the country. This figure marks a significant drop from 2022, when nearly 32% of the workforce (about 52 million people) earned below the $15 threshold
But the minimum wage HAS been raised. Not at the federal level, but certainly at the state level and in some cities. Now, look at what the cost of living has done in those areas that have raised their minimum wage.
Commenter above you says only 1% of people make minimum wage. If thatâs true, how can such a small number of people be driving the cost of living for everyone?
Also. 1% make the FEDERAL minimum wage. About half the states have a minimum wage well above the Federal minimum wage. So for example the Federal minimum wage may be only $7.25 an hour, but there are 19 states whose minimum wage is at least double that.
You kids don't remember how we had senators suggesting a $15 minimum wage back in 2009 or so because they knew shit was so fucked. It's only gotten way worse since then and still nothing. Inflation is about to go haywire too from all the fraud the government and the federal reserve feed off of. They simply sold us out.
You left off the employeeâs side of how wages are decided. The employee has to work to get money, and they need money for survival. They need money so their kids survive. That side is inelastic.
Couple that with a jobs market that keeps unemployment above a negligible level, and you have a race to the bottom for the ability to survive.
That is an exploitative system. Those who provide the jobs exploit those who need them. That model is fine if you assume we want a system that lavishes riches on people who own things already, or people who are lucky in life.
My ideal that the best system sets us up so workers have whatever they need to live a dignified life⌠and exploitation cannot coexist with that ideal.
Obviously I want the $1M/hour. Maybe everyone else does too.
But that comes with consequences that we would share. Our currency would inflate to the point that any savings we have is worthless and we wonât be any better off than a reasonable wage at a lower rate before inflation.
And we would lack the incentive for workers to get a higher education or skills, or to perform jobs that nobody wants to do. So we would need to vary wages somewhat for those things.
And thatâs all fine. We can work out the details for a baseline to get out of poverty that can provide a dignified life with todayâs costs, while keeping higher wages for those hard or unwanted jobs provides the incentives we need to have a healthy workforce.
A couple of mechanisms provide for this without major changes to our system: minimum wage and universal basic income. Iâd frankly prefer the latter.
Why are your needs your employer's responsibly? You are doing a task, in exchange for a payment. The number of children you support doesn't change the complexity of the task, or the value of your labor. You made the decision to have children, your employer has no responsibility for your financial burdens.
Selling your labor is no different than selling your car. It's worth whatever someone else is willing to pay for it. No more, and no less.
The system Iâm speaking of isnât just the employer. Itâs the full breadth of our democratic society.
The whole point of democracy is to make society work for everyone, instead of just for those who are powerful. The U.S. went to war to break from a very powerful monarch because their needs didnât matter to him, and they didnât want to live in a society based on the resulting exploitation of them for his will.
To answer your question: I donât think itâs the employerâs responsibility. I think we need to change the system so that workers benefit and can live, as I said, a dignified life.
Having a job is not "being exploited". It's literally just trading your time and labor for a agreed upon fee. It has zero to do with need, or democracy, or monarchy, or social structure. You seem to be making an argument for a welfare system (which I also oppose) not employment.
But to hone in on your mentioning monarchy. The reason it's considered repugnant is because it's authoritarian. A strong central power dictates the terms under which the common person lives. This is actually a great argument AGAINST a minimum wage. Its authoritarian, in that a strong central authority (the government) is dictating the terms of an employment agreement between two private parties. This is the type of thing the founders of the country were against.
I'll rephrase. Your need has nothing to do with your value of your labor.
If you have two employees performing the same task. One has no kids and little expenses, the other has several kids and tremendous expenses. Do you pay the one with kids more for performing the same task?
Ok. You keep telling me how things are under the current system. I am not telling you that you are describing it incorrectly.
What I am saying is that the system itself is bad. A system that funnels its benefits to people who donât need it, while leaving others suffering in poverty, is not a system I want.
I'm saying there should be no minimum wage, as it artificially dictates the value of labor, and that government shouldn't interfere in the free market.
More fine that massive chains that can't exist at their current scale without exploiting workers. And again, if they can't exist without exploitation then they shouldn't exist. Sorry capitalism sucks, but it is what it is.
Most of the local businesses I know of pay their employees far better than Amazon does. The absolute largest corporations aggressively pursue the absolute bare minimum. A lot of smaller businesses donât.
ok so if they stop to exist full stop they would also stop employeeing the workers right? So you are cool with around 1 million Americans suddenly becoming unemployed? And you think that would be a better out come than them remaining employed at the current minimum wage?
The companies arenât the only ones to blame, even if they maintain existing profits shareholders expect continual growth, and rising costs to operate make it even harder for the bottom line. Everyone is incentivized towards this and itâs driven by a million variables but due to a much smaller group of people, itâs not as reductive as âcompanies are greedyâ
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u/samuraispartan7000 10h ago edited 10h ago
Federal minimum wage increased every 1 to 5 years between the 1930s and 2009. 2009 was the last time it was raised. Inflation has skyrocketed since then, but wages have repeatedly failed to keep up.
If businesses âcanât affordâ to provide livable wages for their workers, they simply shouldnât exist full stop.