[user9999999999]

the min wage is long overdue, its should be somewhere near $25/hr this is how you 'tax' billionaires

[murderfs]

That's a good way of turning the poorest US workers into the poorest US unemployed. If you raise the minimum wage above the actual value of an employee, then they're just going to get fired. Even if they still provide more value than their being paid, it makes automating away their job more competitive.

California tried this with a $20/hr minimum wage in fast food restaurants: the next time you go into a McDonalds, count the number of empty cash registers and number of shiny new ordering kiosks: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34033

[XorNot]

McDonalds were going to do that anyway.

And what's the point of a minimum wage of it doesn't provide a living? That's just letting private enterprise piggyback off the welfare system.

[Tryk]

So by your logic we should consider lowering the minimum wage in order to ensure employment.

Employment is not a means in itself, the point of being employed is to "make a living". If a job cannot sustain a person then it should not exist.

People deserve to live with dignity, earning a living wage.

[hackable_sand]

Pure japes.

Ordering kiosks mean we can meet volume because more time is spent in production. Same with mobile ordering.

The employee count doesn't need to change up or down.

[agent_turtle]

I got my first job as a grocer in 2010 which paid a minimum wage of $7.25/hr. That was 15 years ago and the minimum wage is still $7.25/hr.

[xienze]

But is anyone _actually_ getting paid the minimum wage these days? Might want to check what the grocery store you worked at in 2010 is really paying these days. I’d bet good money it’s significantly more than $7.25/hour.

[WalterBright]

According to the WSJ, the California minimum wage increase for fast food workers reduced the number of those jobs by 20,000.

[AuryGlenz]

Why?

Pretty sure the data of the past few years has shown we don’t really need a minimum wage apart from ensuring people aren’t absolutely taken advantage of. Nobody is paying just minimum wage anymore, apart from servers and the like that make most of their income from tips. The local McDonalds pays at least 50% more, for instance.

[kortilla]

This is how you tax small business owners. The vast majority of businesses are not owned by billionaires

[agent_turtle]

You view this as zero sum. How many new business owners would be created if people had enough to save? How many new businesses would exist if more money was flowing in the economy? Should businesses exist if they can't pay livable wages?

These aren't hypothetical questions. We have an answer for them all over the country where state minimum wages are rising in Democratic states.

[monster_truck]

Perhaps if we taxed the billionaires more we could subsidize increased wages for small business owners or even do something actually good like provide universal basic income so that they cannot be so easily exploited for wildly undervalued labor

[ipnon]

Why not $250/hr? Or $2,500/hr?

[ekianjo]

the eternal question people avoid. there is no "fair wage" definition.