This raises the lowest rung on the ladder, reduces the set of contracts that adults may consider or consent to, and can eliminate entire jobs and threaten entire sectors such as the old apprentice mechanic / gas station attendant and now fast food.
And higher income can lead to increased spending on businesses that are paying their employees more. I’m not saying it’s a silver bullet but you can poke holes in anything. The point is, one party is proposing “something” and not just posturing.
The cost of ingredients for a burger doesn’t radically change if a burger flipper gets paid more and the price of the burger isn’t going up drastically either.
Clearly companies with billion dollar market caps can also be held to higher standards because no one is going to pay more than they are required for labor. Maybe the minimum wage is a percentage of the business total profits and minimum wage at $7.25 is just the floor?
A lot of wealth is locked up in the wealthiest people which could be circulating in the economy instead of being in a Swiss bank account.
There are multiple layers, multiple solutions instead of hoping wealth trickles down. Poverty wasn’t solved under the last Trump administration as I recall nor do I expect it in the upcoming one.
> And higher income can lead to increased spending on businesses that are paying their employees more.
> The cost of ingredients for a burger doesn’t radically change if a burger flipper gets paid more and the price of the burger isn’t going up drastically either.
These things are two sides of the same coin. The increase in wages is the same as the increase in costs, so if one of them is small then so is the other one and if one of them is large then so is the other one.
> Clearly companies with billion dollar market caps can also be held to higher standards because no one is going to pay more than they are required for labor. Maybe the minimum wage is a percentage of the business total profits and minimum wage at $7.25 is just the floor?
This is only less of a bad idea because the bad idea then applies to fewer businesses. Also, the billion dollar market cap companies would then just contract it out.
> A lot of wealth is locked up in the wealthiest people which could be circulating in the economy instead of being in a Swiss bank account.
That's not real wealth. That's just money. Money is numbers in a computer. Taking non-circulating money and putting it into circulation has the same inflationary effect as printing it. Whereas leaving it non-circulating doesn't consume any real resources (land, labor, etc.) because it's just bits.
However, most rich people don't store their "wealth" as cash money anyway, they buy stocks and things, which in turn puts the money in the hands of businesses to use to hire employees etc. That money isn't non-circulating and what you're doing then is reallocating resources from something else.
You're trying to solve the problem that people aren't being paid enough by passing a law that literally says they have to be paid more. It's like passing a law that literally says housing prices have to be low. That's a dumb law. You can't just magic up a change in labor demand or housing supply. You need to figure out why wages are low or housing prices are high and do something about that.
Riverheart|1 year ago
The cost of ingredients for a burger doesn’t radically change if a burger flipper gets paid more and the price of the burger isn’t going up drastically either.
Clearly companies with billion dollar market caps can also be held to higher standards because no one is going to pay more than they are required for labor. Maybe the minimum wage is a percentage of the business total profits and minimum wage at $7.25 is just the floor?
A lot of wealth is locked up in the wealthiest people which could be circulating in the economy instead of being in a Swiss bank account.
There are multiple layers, multiple solutions instead of hoping wealth trickles down. Poverty wasn’t solved under the last Trump administration as I recall nor do I expect it in the upcoming one.
AnthonyMouse|1 year ago
> The cost of ingredients for a burger doesn’t radically change if a burger flipper gets paid more and the price of the burger isn’t going up drastically either.
These things are two sides of the same coin. The increase in wages is the same as the increase in costs, so if one of them is small then so is the other one and if one of them is large then so is the other one.
> Clearly companies with billion dollar market caps can also be held to higher standards because no one is going to pay more than they are required for labor. Maybe the minimum wage is a percentage of the business total profits and minimum wage at $7.25 is just the floor?
This is only less of a bad idea because the bad idea then applies to fewer businesses. Also, the billion dollar market cap companies would then just contract it out.
> A lot of wealth is locked up in the wealthiest people which could be circulating in the economy instead of being in a Swiss bank account.
That's not real wealth. That's just money. Money is numbers in a computer. Taking non-circulating money and putting it into circulation has the same inflationary effect as printing it. Whereas leaving it non-circulating doesn't consume any real resources (land, labor, etc.) because it's just bits.
However, most rich people don't store their "wealth" as cash money anyway, they buy stocks and things, which in turn puts the money in the hands of businesses to use to hire employees etc. That money isn't non-circulating and what you're doing then is reallocating resources from something else.
You're trying to solve the problem that people aren't being paid enough by passing a law that literally says they have to be paid more. It's like passing a law that literally says housing prices have to be low. That's a dumb law. You can't just magic up a change in labor demand or housing supply. You need to figure out why wages are low or housing prices are high and do something about that.