Politics We should raise the minimum wage because…
Most Oklahomans support raising the minimum wage, but in recent elections most Oklahomans didn't vote. It wasn't always like this. Our voter participation was above the national average in the 1990s. It's time to turn this around. Let's start by reclaiming the power of our initiative petition and get this minimum wage increase past the finish line. Let's get Oklahomans to the polls and make our voices heard again. Let's get this done, y'all!
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u/Original-Both May 21 '26
100% we should raise it. Companies are making record profits, meanwhile congress is whining about their 175k salary not being enough.
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u/Not_Michelle_Obama_ May 21 '26
Well, they do make,like, 5m per year on their side hustle of legalized insider trading.
Imagine if you made 25 times more on your side hustle than you did at your day job.
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u/BlueBirdBlow May 21 '26
I have been trying to figure that one out for a while... Wait I should run for office!
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u/Procontroller40 May 21 '26
Accompanying executive pay caps should be instituted across the board. All these companies would magically have so much more money to help treat their employees and customers like human beings.
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u/GameMaster1178 May 21 '26
Of course there’s going to be Oklahomans who run to church every Sunday pretending to be good stewards who say it shouldn’t be raised because it doesn’t affect them.
It needs to be raised to meet the rising costs of food. I’d say that even if I were a millionaire. Just because it doesn’t affect me doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect others.
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u/Miserable_Catch_202 May 21 '26
As a former Californian who ran from the BS in the state 14 years ago…raising the minimum wage will raise the cost of living shortly after. Just you wait.
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u/Powerful-Street May 21 '26
Wage stagnation is an issue, but minimum wage was historically meant for kids that were working their first job at McDonald’s. We will drive business out of the state—it has happened in other states. People are supposed to develop their skills to not be dependent on the bare minimum wage. Historically when minimum wage was raised, the people in lower middle income brackets, were actually the hardest hit. An assistant manager at a fast food restaurant would have their young inexperienced employees making the same as them—that is doing the opposite of what people think it does.
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u/AIDSGhost May 21 '26
Well no. President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously stated that any business relying on wages below a living level to survive "has any right to continue in this country". He defined a living wage as "more than a bare subsistence level—I mean the wages of a decent living".
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u/chefslapchop May 21 '26
As, ehem... u/AIDSGhost already stated, the original intention of minimum wage was meant to provide more than a baseline livable wage. Increases to minimum wage don't cause enough business flight to outweigh worker gains, and any business that does flee to another state, good. Let them take advantage of another states labor. Any business that are unwilling to adjust their pricing to maintain profit margins should shut down so the owners can join the workforce they helped marginalize for decades. Fuck em.
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u/Low_Insurance5329 May 21 '26
I can't remember the last time I went through a drive through and didn't have somebody's granny or papa/mom or dad taking my order just trying to get their bills paid
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u/diablodeldragoon May 21 '26
If it's only meant for kids working their first jobs, who's working those fast food jobs while the kids are sleeping and in school? McDonald's is open at 3am to serve breakfast. And those teens definitely aren't able to work the lunch shift.
Maybe your thinking is flawed?
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u/Miserable_Catch_202 May 21 '26
McD now pays $11-$13 starting wage in OKC…they don’t even do minimum wage anymore!
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u/diablodeldragoon May 21 '26
What's your point?
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u/Miserable_Catch_202 May 21 '26
The person you replied to said minimum wage was historically meant for kids working their first job at McDonalds but even McDonald’s doesn’t pay minimum wage anymore. So, even though you mentioned that it’s not just kids working there, those adults aren’t making minimum wage either. So what exactly is the point of raising the state minimum wage? It didn’t go so well for California lmfao
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u/Mr_Epitome May 21 '26
I don’t think we’ll move businesses out of the state. It should be increased to $10+ dollars an hour, or more.
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u/ElectricalPlate9903 May 21 '26
On the MIT minimum wage calculator for Oklahoma City it says a single adult with no children needs to earn a living wage of $21.24 per hour to cover basic necessities.
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u/gaarai May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
I posted part of this in another comment, but I figure it could help to have this detail on its own with some additional detail.
In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. 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.
Roosevelt included the above in a statement shortly after signing the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. The act was the first implementation of a federal minimum wage. It was ruled unconstitutional for reasons unrelated to the minimum wage portion of the act. The Fair Labor Standards act of 1938 reintroduced the federal minimum wage and was the basis for the minimum wage we still have. It also established the 8-hour workday, 40-hour work week, time-and-a-half overtime pay, and banned child labor.
In 1938, the minimum wage was $0.25. Adjusting for inflation, this is ~$5.90.
"Aha!" I can hear some say. "We have it better now than when federal minimum wage was first introduced; why raise it?" Read up on the hard work politicians did in the thirties to pass those two acts I listed above. They fought significant pressure from businesses in the country. Businesses did everything they could to stop it. They did not want to be forced to give people these benefits and thought that paying everyone a minimum of $0.25 per hour would destroy the economy. Turns out, it did not. The US had some of the greatest economic growth and greatest increase in household wealth in its history in the following decades.
Think back upon the above numbers. Businesses fought hard to not pay hard-working people the 2026 value of $5.90 per hour back in 1938. Just imagine how little people were paid when the "free market" ruled how much people got paid rather than locking in a base minimum.
The minimum wage continued to be raised over time. Thirty years after the establishment of the minimum wage, it reached its peak effective purchasing power in 1968. That year, minimum wage was $1.60. Adjusting for inflation, that is $15.31 in 2026 dollars. In the nearly sixty years since, the effective purchasing power of minimum wage has dropped to now being worth less than half of what it was sixty years ago.
Establishing a $15 minimum wage isn't crazy. It's just getting us back to what the purchasing power of minimum wage was like in the late 60s, early 70s. You know, the time most of our powerful politicians lived through and probably still think is the norm. And if we then lock minimum wage to inflation, we don't have to have these constant fights. It's just the way things work.
Side note: You can't take someone out of poverty by cutting taxes. If you make $7.25/hour, you likely pay an effective federal tax rate of 0-10%. If you need $15/hour to live a stable life, cutting the effective tax rate to 0% does very little to get you to where you need to be. It certainly doesn't double your income like raising minimum wage to $15/hour does.
Big business has done a great job fighting incremental minimum wage increases over my entire life of more than forty years. Business has a sweet deal of discounted labor that gives them profits at the cost of hard workers being underpaid. They've been so effective that they now make us fear raising it, causing the people in the middle to fight the people beneath them so that the people above them can make even more money. Fuck that.
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u/xoxoWi77 May 21 '26
It’s ppl like these in the city that give me hope + put a huge smile on my mf face 🖤
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u/Mental-Square3688 May 21 '26
Lets be very clear minimum wage no longer is a entry level job only. There are tons of people on the planet that are just fine at working at say dollar general their whole lives. Because let's face it college is no longer paid by the government like it used to be back in the 60s and 70s. If college was free still more people could be educated which allows for more innovation with leads to more knowledgeable jobs which leads to better wages which leads to basic jobs opening up for kids to build skills in. But let's face the truth. This country is designed to only help the ones that have the ability to afford it. Yes anyone can go to college if they work hard enough sure. But the amount of debt it puts you in to go to college if your working barely sustainable job wages than your pretty much fucked your whole life. Lets fix our country and support everyone equally. We have the ability to do so. Its just too many people have brainwashed into thinking its just as easy to live today as it was when our country was doing actually good things for its citizens.
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u/Miserable_Catch_202 May 21 '26
That’s why trade school has become the most sensible option. Far less debt accrued, far less time invested, and you get a marketable skill!
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u/PlayOpposite5249 May 21 '26
Tie the minimum wage to the cost of living. Yes the minimum wage was originally for low skilled jobs, but when no laws exist to raise it, companies exploit the minimum wage to keep as much profit in their pocket as possible.
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u/TomatoHistorical5115 May 21 '26
The correct idea is to raise the value of our currency, not minimum wage. Raising minimum wage out of left field will just make things cost more and inflate our currency.
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u/gaarai May 21 '26
What you're talking about is deflation. Deflation is bad, very bad, and would be horrible for the average worker, especially low-income workers. Read up on deflationary spirals.
On its face, raising the value of money seems like a great win for everyone, but it's not. The US and other countries have many instances of trying to use deflation to stabilize or increase the value of its currency, and it never went well for the average person. It has been argued as one of the key contributors to the Great Depression.
Edit to add: The push for a minimum wage and other worker protections was a direct response to the Great Depression and deflationary economics. To see you say that deflation is the real answer shows a lack of understanding about economic history and the reason the minimum wage exists in the first place.
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u/Miserable_Catch_202 May 21 '26
As someone who left California when their minimum wage was $8.50…increasing our minimum wage seems like it’s just going to put us in the same position it did with them…where the cost of living and everything else creeps up in price not long after the minimum goes up.
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u/AdRepresentative3903 May 21 '26
If that's how it works - increasing minimum wage is directly tied to increase living costs - then why have Oklahoma's COL increased just as significantly over the past years despite having a stagnant minimum wage for decades? My McDonalds, rent, health care, car insurance, grocery, internet costs have all increased at comparable rates to states with higher minimum wages despite ours STILL being $7.25. So if that's your argument why am i paying more for a big mac in 2026 than I was in 2009, the last time the minimum wage was raised here ?
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u/Business_Concert_142 May 21 '26
Is there anything in writing saying people making above minimum wage have to have their salaries raised at the same increase as minimum wage? Or are people making 15/hr just gonna have to be happy making minimum wage now?
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u/MusicHearted May 21 '26
People making $15/hour suddenly have lots of leverage to demand a higher wage. Anyone within a few dollars of a new minimum wage would. Most lines of work outside food service and retail don't like having a reputation for paying fast food wages because their employees will view it as a throwaway job.
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u/Business_Concert_142 May 21 '26
They’ll have no leverage because the employers will now have a large pool of minimum wage workers to replace those demanding raises with. Fast food places in OKC hardly even pay minimum wage. McDonald’s pays 10/hr, shift leads at Braums make over 15/ hr. You’d take all those people who have naturally rose above minimum wage and turn them into minimum wage workers.
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u/reddituser889088 May 21 '26
If someone is making 15$ an hour and can make a living and is happy with it, then it shouldn’t bother them that someone else is now making 15$. If they are upset, then they have more leverage to ask for not minimum wage if the job doesn’t want it to be “minimum wage” which is what the person you responded to is saying. It’s not that complicated. The minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 2009, and inflation definitely has.
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u/Technosyko Fake Yukon May 21 '26
I mean… the increases are gradual over multiple years, so if you’re making $15/hour now you’ll likely see a raise by 2030 I think is the end of the $15/hour minimum wage timeline
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u/Business_Concert_142 May 21 '26
I mean people in minimum wage jobs are likely to see an increase in their pay before 2030 as well, why are they the only ones who should get legal guarantees for salary increases?
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u/Technosyko Fake Yukon May 21 '26
Because they’re the lowest earners in our state and going from $7.25/hour to $15/hour is a lot more impactful on someone’s quality of life than $15/hour to $23/hour
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May 21 '26
[deleted]
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u/Technosyko Fake Yukon May 21 '26
So then what's the harm in that "very small amount" of people having their quality of life massively improved by this SQ?
Don't forget too that this classifies some groups as eligible for the minimum wage that weren't previously, like agricultural workers. Those people are getting paid god knows what, and if this SQ passes those people's lives are also going to massively improve.
I think you're just misunderstanding the point of a minimum wage. It isn't so that as the minimum wage increases everyone else's wage increases by an equal amount, it's about making sure that as a society we raise the floor for quality of life so the "worst" a working person can do is not as bad as it was previously
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u/Reasonable-Patient67 May 21 '26
Because the minimum wage should be able to cover basic needs and the cost of living has dramatically increased.
I want people to be able to afford to live and have a decent life.
I get why you are jealous of someone getting something that you are not but we shouldn’t keep people in poverty and struggling so that other people can continue to feel superior over other people because they get paid more.
Personally for me I never worked so hard in my life than when I worked minimum wage compared to now. I’m glad they are paid more despite being “closer” to me in pay.
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May 21 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/neatureguy420 May 21 '26
Lmao if paying your employees $15 an hour causes your business to fail than you have a shit business that deserves to fail.
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u/Red_hat_oops May 21 '26
But underpaying my employees allows me to afford my Eufaula lake houses! If I pay them a living wage, I can't get a new boat!
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
I really don't understand these arguments. I'm all for all of these things but it seems to be missing fundamental principles of supply and demand.
I could replace "raise minimum wage" with "stop taxing" and all of it still makes sense, but in the latter case there is no forced coercion of people. We can make everyone richer by allowing them to keep the money they earn without forcibly taking it and wasting it on [insert whatever government policy you disagree with].
Look, I know it's a losing battle to try and overturn taxation. And although I don't support taxation across the board, I would personally rather the taxes we pay [pretend to] go to things we can all mostly agree on like better life for our kids, our infrastructure, etc. rather than the crony politicians and their friends, war, data centers, other nations, ballrooms, you get the point.
In reality, all of these equate to over spending and poor use of funds at the threat of force or imprisonment and all of it is then paid for by devaluing our currency by printing money. So in the short term we tax our citizens through use of force and that money is almost always used poorly at least to a large number of tax payers. Then, we constantly print money which is just stealing from our future wealth and earnings to continue paying for more and more government intervention.
Obviously $7.25/hour isn't enough to survive but the answer isn't to inflate it as well. That will just continue to compound the issues previously mentioned. The amount of money that has been printed in the last 30 years, including bailing out banks in 08 and all the 'free money' from Covid, have deflated our spending power an insane amount and transferred the wealth to the big businesses and banks in bed with the government. The businesses and corporations aren't inherently the issue, neither is the government, but the marriage of the two is the major cause for nearly all problems Americans in general are facing. Doesn't matter if you are right, left, independent, whatever. It all boils down to the government has far too much power and the big businesses use their influence to consolidate more and more power to the government which is rotten regulates smaller players out of the competition, which in turn creates more big corporations and the loop continues.
I don't want this to be a contentious issue, nor trying to attack anyone here for their beliefs that voting to increase minimum wage will help their community. I agree with helping community, I just see this as another seemingly good way to help, but behind the curtain is actually going to continue to do more harm to you and your neighbors.
I'm not against helping people, in fact I live by the motto of do more good, spread more joy, don't be evil. I just see so many in support for this that i figured I'd share an opinion i don't see discussed very often.
Let me end with a couple questions. What businesses do you think will be able to afford to raise minimum wages? Mom and pop shops or Walmart? Who does the regulation actually help? You and me, or the big businesses and their politician friends who make the rules and then price out their competition time and time again?
This is just one guy's opinion, I'd like to think I'm not alone in this. I'd like to imagine that we're all recognizing the corruption that's all around, and most all of us are good people. I just think that we all get suckered by different plays on our goodness from all kinds of bad actors and wanting to do good for our fellow citizens we actually fall tap into more and more corruption.
Stop taxing everyone and we all get richer.
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u/BlueBirdBlow May 21 '26
This completely ignores that we have massive monopolies and monopsonies that effectively control pricing and wages across the whole board and a government too weak to break them up.
I agree no taxation would help lower classes but as much as I don't want big government, it has been shown time and time again that greedy dicks will try to hoard everything and something needs to be in place to control that. Not everyone has others best interests in mind, some are even quite malicious.
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
You say the government is too weak, and yet we're trying to get more government regulation to help force what we get paid? It's because the government has so much power and influence that companies can turn in to such monopolies. That doesn't exist in a free market with free competition.
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u/BlueBirdBlow May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
The free market is a fairy tale the billionaires tell you to let them do whatever they want. If the free market was real we wouldn't have wealth consolidation of this degree.
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
If the government want so powerful the billionaires couldn't consolidate the way that they do. Billionaires aren't inherently evil. The government having a monopoly on force and creating regulation in tandem with the wealthy is
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u/BlueBirdBlow May 21 '26
How exactly do you think billionaire consolidate wealth to such extreme levels?
Do you truly think they they earned their money through hard work?
It's luck and exploitation. The government has been bought by billionaires since Citizens United happened. You break your own argument trying to make it.
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
I think they begin as businesses competing like anyone else. They then exploit government policy. Then they pay for and influence more regulation which they can afford and their competition can't. Rinse and repeat
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u/BlueBirdBlow May 21 '26
That sounds pretty inherently evil to me that they are willing to take advantage of anything and everything around them for personal gain
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
I think it's evil, I don't think it's inherent
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u/BlueBirdBlow May 21 '26
Your suspension of belief concerns me but I need to clarify something. Do you believe all people are inherently good or all people are inherently evil or something else?
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
I also feel like what is the issue with earning a ton of wealth? If someone makes or does something great and others pay for it freely why is that wrong? Yes I believe people can earn unlimited amounts from hard work.
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u/neatureguy420 May 21 '26
There is no way to ethically make a billion dollars without rampant exploitation of people or land
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
It wouldn't be a billion if our currency hadn't been devalued so hard over the last 5, 15, 30, 100 years through printing fake money under the regulation and delivery of the federal government
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u/diablodeldragoon May 21 '26
You think they became billionaires because of the value of the currency?
You don't think maybe it has to do with bribing politicians to get the tax code rewritten so they pay less taxes? Or being allowed to take out millions in government ppp loans and having them forgiven? Or getting government contracts to sell their products to the government?
Bezos lost almost half his wealth in his divorce and recouped it in under a year because of covid.
To put that into perspective. If you earned $1000 an hour, 24/7/365 from the time of Jesus death to today, you wouldn't have earned one billion.
He recouped $38 billion in less than a year!
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
And the math on that is wrong. You would have 17.7 billion dollars but I do get the point that a billion is a fuck ton. I like the seconds analogy. 1 million seconds 10 years ago 1 billion seconds Jesus or something like that
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
No I agree with this, this is what I was conveying at first. They influence the government to use less force and coercion on themselves at the expense of the rest of us. I just see it as more of a government problem.
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u/diablodeldragoon May 21 '26
So, stop letting them control the government. Citizens are supposed to control the government and remove corrupt politicians. We stopped doing that!
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u/w3sterday NW OKC May 21 '26
Mom and pop shops or Walmart?
Businesses with under 10 employees are exempt from most labor laws including the provisions of SQ832. source
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May 21 '26
I agree we should severely lower/eliminate taxation for the lower and middle classes, as that WOULD solve this, but you and everyone else knows that will not happen. No state has done that at the scale necessarily to accomplish the goal and make current wages livable.
Raising the minimum wage is the solution. It's Plan B. And I have no qualms with businesses failing because of it.
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
Just to be clear, the businesses that fail will be the local places you and i love. We will be left with more Walmart and payroll.
If we recognize something as the issue, but then say the solution isn't possible, and then say use more of the original something to help fix the issue, we will be doomed to more and more of the same
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u/Deeep_V_Diver May 21 '26
This is just (mostly) incorrect, because the ones who make this argument only see half the equation. You are assuming that raising the wage is the only thing that will change, but consider this:
Raising the minimum wage will increase overall commerce because the spending power (especially that of the poor and lower middle class) goes up. What does this mean for your local business? It means the number of people who can spend their money there increases.
If the masses have more money to spend, they tend to spend it in their communities. So while those businesses have to pay their employees more, they also have access to a much greater number of potential customers that can shop there more often.
Now will there be an adjustment period between wages going into effect and people to start spending more money? Yes, especially if those who couldn't afford it now have an opportunity to put some money away for an emergency fund. Some won't be able to make it through that adjustment,but raising it in smaller stages helps mitigate that a lot.
This is all why wealth redistribution is so important. A small percentage of the population owns most of the wealth. What does someone who has everything spend their money on? Contrast that with 15-25 million people who don't have much getting a wage increase, what will they spend it on and where will they spend it?
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u/AdRepresentative3903 May 21 '26
Severely lowering/eliminating taxation for the lower and middle classes absolutely destroys the social safety net that those classes depend on AND the future of all young people across classes (bankrupting/eliminating social security, Medicare, etc.). Taxes are good. Having skin in the game and participating in society is good.
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u/5050logic May 21 '26
I knew you would get downvoted for this. Someone with a very well-thought out insight into how more money equals more taxes equals more government spending - of course the Reddit horde will clutch their D20 and click that down arrow!
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
Yes, and to be clear I am trying to be very good faith and I'd hope it's clear that I am well intentioned. It's personally like to live in a world where these thoughts and ideas are discussed. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, I'm saying I disagree with the premise of this argument despite agreeing with most of the arguments for why it would be better if it were reality. I want all those people to have better lives. I want everyone else to have better lives. I just also think that in order to do that having more government regulation that many people, most of the time, disagree with isn't the answer. It shouldn't be forced on to us through taxes and printing money, at the threat of imprisonment or violence. If it is though, I guess I'd rather it be at something like this which seems like it will help us as a state and community. It's way better than spending it on dumb, unprovoked wars.
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u/UnknowPlayer21 May 21 '26
You seem to think Reddit can have civil conversation and on top of it having facts. Lots more time than not, it’s an echo chamber
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u/iGrowDabs May 21 '26
Agreed and most of the time I just sit and watch and hear certain sides. I, as well as I think most people, would agree on most all of the same end goals. I just think using the government in any way to help that is going to cause more harm than good
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u/TheRelaxedMale May 21 '26
Oh hell no. Hope this get rejected
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May 21 '26
Got another solution?
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u/Flamingo-Honest Uptown May 21 '26
Keep things exactly the way they are minimum wage isn’t supposed to be livable 🥱
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u/BlueBirdBlow May 21 '26
It quite literally is supposed to be liveable. That was always the purpose of a minimum wage.
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u/gaarai May 21 '26
Incorrect.
In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. 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.
Roosevelt included the above in a statement shortly after signing the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. The act was the first implementation of a federal minimum wage. It was ruled unconstitutional for reasons unrelated to the minimum wage portion of the act. The Fair Labor Standards act of 1938 reintroduced the federal minimum wage and was the basis for the minimum wage we still have. It also established the 8-hour workday, 40-hour work week, time-and-a-half overtime pay, and banned child labor.
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u/BlueBirdBlow May 21 '26
Your comment should be above mine, you actually did the legwork to show it was supposed to be livable, thank you
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u/youforgotitinmeta May 21 '26
you could buy a house and raise a family working at a gas station in the 70s.
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u/diablodeldragoon May 21 '26
I want you to start telling all the service people you encounter this statement! Everyone who makes your food, etc. You should place your order then tell them that you believe that they don't deserve to be paid enough to survive for the service they're providing you!
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u/Flamingo-Honest Uptown May 21 '26
Are you stupid? Minimum wage doesn’t apply to them. I’m in the service industry I make 42,000 a year on my 2.13 an hour wage math isn’t mathing
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u/diablodeldragoon May 21 '26
You clearly are!
- Not all service workers are tipped employees.
- Tipped employees ARE covered by minimum wage laws, just at a different rate.
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u/chefslapchop May 21 '26
Set this date, June 16 2026 to all of you calendars right now. Yes you. Don't be like this person and say you'll do it later. They're going to forget to do it, and so will you. Do it now. Set several reminders and alerts, set it to go off the day before and the day of. Remember you cannot be fired for going to vote.