Repub senator calls for conditional $15 min. wage

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Valid

[Riedquat]

The need for a living wage is a market force. If you don't have a sufficient minimum wage, then the business is already being subsidized by the government with food stamps and other services that the underpaid workers need to get by.

Although I agree the problem could lie within wider society - wages go up (good) but cost of living goes up too (not so good) and choice of jobs drops thanks to the ever-increasing downsides of automation (very bad; historically good, when there was barely enough labour to do the basics, much less so now when the economy is productive enough for everyone to live in comfort and the reason some don't lies elsewhere).

[Rocketboy1313]

The need for a living wage is a market force. If you don't have a sufficient minimum wage, then the business is already being subsidized by the government with food stamps and other services that the underpaid workers need to get by.

Although I agree the problem could lie within wider society - wages go up (good) but cost of living goes up too (not so good) and choice of jobs drops thanks to the ever-increasing downsides of automation (very bad; historically good, when there was barely enough labour to do the basics, much less so now when the economy is productive enough for everyone to live in comfort and the reason some don't lies elsewhere).

Keep in mind, innovation in automation is competing with undervalued labor.

If you could buy/invent a machine to do a task, but you currently do that task with desperate poor people who are cheaper... that invention will not happen.

Part of pressing society forward is forcing existing paradigms to be broken.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

The need for a living wage is a market force. If you don't have a sufficient minimum wage, then the business is already being subsidized by the government with food stamps and other services that the underpaid workers need to get by.

Although I agree the problem could lie within wider society - wages go up (good) but cost of living goes up too (not so good) and choice of jobs drops thanks to the ever-increasing downsides of automation (very bad; historically good, when there was barely enough labour to do the basics, much less so now when the economy is productive enough for everyone to live in comfort and the reason some don't lies elsewhere).

The cost of living goes up whether the wages do or not. And if they could replace people with robots, they already would have.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Cost of living goes up more from land value and demand to live in the area.

[pilight]

The minimum wage should be tied to congressional pay. If congress gets a raise, the minimum wage goes up the same percent.


Need a little help to get by, congressman? So does everybody else...

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I like that idea. And if they don't honor the agreement we go to their private gyms and shit in all the tanning beds.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well that's not really gonna fix any problems now isn't it?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

You'd be suprised. Read up on the Fridge Raid protests of Scandanavia. I believe it's what the kids are calling "direct action".

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Maybe but we shouldn't resort to our baser instincts lol