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 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Dude gas prices here are fething ridiculous. Everywhere else I've lived in the US, fuel prices were fairly predictable around a community. That is very much not the case where I'm at. Take for instance, last month I used to only buy fuel by my school because it was the cheapest around Tacoma, Puyallup, Lakewood, etc. (I go to school in Lakewood); and out by my house it was pretty expensive (comparatively). Now, just yesterday when I filled up, that is completely flipped; Lakewood is now the expensive stuff, and out by where I live is the "cheap" stuff

Yep. Prices are not 100% related to minimum wage, so an increase in minimum wage will increase buying power. Not the full amount of the increase, but some.

I am very much a conservative but in this case, I do believe in a higher minimum wage.

And I do believe that most businesses can absorb it.

But "can" and "will" are two different things. And the reality is, whether to keep their current margins or to use the increased min wage as an excuse, businesses ARE going to raise prices.

Those that are for raising the minimum wage should expect and accept this. Else, they're mired in idealism or they are on a slippery path to legislate everything.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
So here's a thought. Assuming all the restaurants are raising their prices excessively to support the wage, and customers can't afford to dine out, even with the minimum wage increase, supply and demand suggests they will have to lower their prices, which won't be close to putting them out of business given a 5% price increase is all that is apparently needed to cover a $15 minimum wage.

Based on that, it'll be a mess for a couple years then steady out.

The problem is once things steady out people will be right back where they were.

Raising minimum wage helps nobody and just causes a period of upheaval.

In a universe where literally the entire cost of running a business is paying people on minimum wage, that would be true.*

As I already outlined in my-obvious-to-even-a-slowed-child common sense post above, that is our universe. Stop with the insane left wing propaganda.

Minimum wages have nothing at all to do with income equality and everything to do with artificially creating inflation. You hike wages, people hike prices to compensate, you end up back where you started only the numbers are larger.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Minimum wages have nothing at all to do with income equality and everything to do with artificially creating inflation. You hike wages, people hike prices to compensate, you end up back where you started only the numbers are larger.

And in the mean time, everyone else who was already making that level of pay gets shafted.

Anecdotal example. A relative of mine is taking a job where she is managing a pet kennel. A large one, capable of holding a couple hundred animals. Her pay (not including other benefits) will be starting at $15 an hour. She will be running a 1.5 million dollar business at that pay. This type of minimum wage hike? She'd have to pay the folks who do nothing more then clean the poop out of the stalls and wash towels the exact same.

So, someone whose responsible for managing payroll, scheduling, handling advertising, etc, will be drawing in the same dollar per hour that sprays gak out of a stall for 4 hours a day.

(The Peoples' Republic of Seattle has much bigger and dumber problems; claiming imposing the minimum wage on franchises as if they were big businesses isn't discriminatory because they didn't mean for it to be, denying Whole Foods of all businesses a license to open a new store with no actual legal justification because they want union votes/money...)

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Well, Oakland CA (where I live) is already on that train- our minimum wage went up to $12.20/hour in February, and will continue to rise yearly until it hits $15/hour.

The immediate consequence of this is that every restaurant in the area has jacked up their prices, which is annoying, but what can you say I guess.

You might also say the immediate consequence is that people on minimum wage are earning something slightly more livable, which would have been the point of the law, right..?

Not really no, as $12.20 an hour is nowhere near enough to make ends meet in this city, where the average rent for a one bedroom apartment is $1600 a month. And Oakland is the "cheap alternative" to San Francisco (which is why we're in this clusterfeth, everyone's been priced out of SF), bear in mind.

It's kind of a "eh, better then nothing I guess" type situation.

 djones520 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Minimum wages have nothing at all to do with income equality and everything to do with artificially creating inflation. You hike wages, people hike prices to compensate, you end up back where you started only the numbers are larger.

And in the mean time, everyone else who was already making that level of pay gets shafted.

Anecdotal example. A relative of mine is taking a job where she is managing a pet kennel. A large one, capable of holding a couple hundred animals. Her pay (not including other benefits) will be starting at $15 an hour. She will be running a 1.5 million dollar business at that pay. This type of minimum wage hike? She'd have to pay the folks who do nothing more then clean the poop out of the stalls and wash towels the exact same.

So, someone whose responsible for managing payroll, scheduling, handling advertising, etc, will be drawing in the same dollar per hour that sprays gak out of a stall for 4 hours a day.

Exactly and if those stall sprayers wanna complain about luxuries like Food ( no you are not entitled) maybe they should be more pragmatic. Instead of wasting all that gak by spraying it down the drain they can spray it on to their plates. Thats called "Recycling" those lefties love that. If it was good enough for the bitches that ate it first it oughtta be good enough for a bunch of idiots that only bitch instead of getting a real job.

 djones520 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Minimum wages have nothing at all to do with income equality and everything to do with artificially creating inflation. You hike wages, people hike prices to compensate, you end up back where you started only the numbers are larger.

And in the mean time, everyone else who was already making that level of pay gets shafted.

Anecdotal example. A relative of mine is taking a job where she is managing a pet kennel. A large one, capable of holding a couple hundred animals. Her pay (not including other benefits) will be starting at $15 an hour. She will be running a 1.5 million dollar business at that pay. This type of minimum wage hike? She'd have to pay the folks who do nothing more then clean the poop out of the stalls and wash towels the exact same.

So, someone whose responsible for managing payroll, scheduling, handling advertising, etc, will be drawing in the same dollar per hour that sprays gak out of a stall for 4 hours a day.

Sounds like your relative isn't getting paid enough.

 Psienesis wrote:
Beginning in April, the city of Seattle begins its transition to a minimum wage of $15 per hour. Businesses have seven years to come into compliance with that over a series of staged pay-bumps.

Recently, the Seattle Weekly published an article, which has circulated through some conservative circles as proof that raising the minimum wage is damaging to business.

http://www.seattlemag.com/article/why-are-so-many-seattle-restaurants-closing-lately

However, the Seattle Times reached out to the owners of the businesses reportedly closing over the minimum wage hike, and found that, in every case, the increase of the minimum wage had absolutely nothing to do with the closures (and, in one case, the business was sold to a friend of the owner who plans to reopen it under a new name).

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/truth-needle-is-15-wage-dooming-seattle-restaurants-owners-say-no/

A livable wage hurts nobodies' interests, unless your interests are in keeping poor people on slave wages (in which case, feth you.).

That it isn't proof that $15 minimum wage is a bad idea does not mean it's proof that it's a good thing. That's fairly basic statistics. When you can't draw conclusions due to a lack of data, you can't draw conclusions due to a lack of data. That cuts both ways.

Regardless, adjusted for inflation minimum wage used to be equivalent to about $15.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
her pay (not including other benefits) will be starting at $15 an hour. She will be running a 1.5 million dollar business at that pay. This type of minimum wage hike? She'd have to pay the folks who do nothing more then clean the poop out of the stalls and wash towels the exact same.

Sounds like your relative isn't getting paid enough.

Yeah, I feel like Djones heard that anecdote and maybe took away the wrong conclusion. Sounds like a lot of work and responsibility for a lousy $30k a year.

Reminds me of a joke:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Minimum wages have nothing at all to do with income equality and everything to do with artificially creating inflation. You hike wages, people hike prices to compensate, you end up back where you started only the numbers are larger.

That’s completely wrong. The impact on inflation will only be proportionate to the part of the economy made up minimum wage. That is, in an economy where the only input in to production is minimum wage work, and everyone earns minimum wage, then the result will be as you explain.

But in an economy where there are other factors, such as rent, raw materials, and people who earn more than the minimum, then the flow on inflation by definition has to be less than the increase in minimum wage, meaning an overall improvement in the living standards of people earning the minimum wage.


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 djones520 wrote:
So, someone whose responsible for managing payroll, scheduling, handling advertising, etc, will be drawing in the same dollar per hour that sprays gak out of a stall for 4 hours a day.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the problem there is with someone getting $15 an hour for managing payroll, scheduling, handling advertising for a $1.5m business

I'm all for an increase in the minimum wage, but I personly think $15 might be a tad too much. I say raise in too $10, and have it automatically raise in relation to inflation.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I'm all for an increase in the minimum wage, but I personly think $15 might be a tad too much. I say raise in too $10, and have it automatically raise in relation to inflation.

If that'd been done from the start, minimum wage would be something close to $20 an hour today.

^ I was going to way that. If minimum wage matched the rate of inflation it'd be like 21 bucks an hour.

I think 10$ is perfect for what min wage is meant for. Teenagers and college students working for spending money.
It is not meant to support a 40 yr.
You want a job, go train for one. a guard card is 200 in california, and depending on the establishment, you could get 600 a night

 djones520 wrote:
And in the mean time, everyone else who was already making that level of pay gets shafted.

Anecdotal example. A relative of mine is taking a job where she is managing a pet kennel. A large one, capable of holding a couple hundred animals. Her pay (not including other benefits) will be starting at $15 an hour. She will be running a 1.5 million dollar business at that pay. This type of minimum wage hike? She'd have to pay the folks who do nothing more then clean the poop out of the stalls and wash towels the exact same.

So, someone whose responsible for managing payroll, scheduling, handling advertising, etc, will be drawing in the same dollar per hour that sprays gak out of a stall for 4 hours a day.

I fail to see what the problem is in this situation. The conservative ideology that dominates opposition to minimum wage laws is that the free market is always correct, and concepts like what people "deserve" to make are irrelevant.


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 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I think 10$ is perfect for what min wage is meant for. Teenagers and college students working for spending money.
It is not meant to support a 40 yr.
You want a job, go train for one. a guard card is 200 in california, and depending on the establishment, you could get 600 a night

It must be nice living in a fantasy world where everyone can get a job that pays better than minimum wage with a trivial amount of effort. Too bad that isn't the one we actually live in, where a lot of people don't have the same lives as middle-class college students.

 Peregrine wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
And in the mean time, everyone else who was already making that level of pay gets shafted.

Anecdotal example. A relative of mine is taking a job where she is managing a pet kennel. A large one, capable of holding a couple hundred animals. Her pay (not including other benefits) will be starting at $15 an hour. She will be running a 1.5 million dollar business at that pay. This type of minimum wage hike? She'd have to pay the folks who do nothing more then clean the poop out of the stalls and wash towels the exact same.

So, someone whose responsible for managing payroll, scheduling, handling advertising, etc, will be drawing in the same dollar per hour that sprays gak out of a stall for 4 hours a day.

I fail to see what the problem is in this situation. The conservative ideology that dominates opposition to minimum wage laws is that the free market is always correct, and concepts like what people "deserve" to make are irrelevant.


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 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I think 10$ is perfect for what min wage is meant for. Teenagers and college students working for spending money.
It is not meant to support a 40 yr.
You want a job, go train for one. a guard card is 200 in california, and depending on the establishment, you could get 600 a night

It must be nice living in a fantasy world where everyone can get a job that pays better than minimum wage with a trivial amount of effort. Too bad that isn't the one we actually live in, where a lot of people don't have the same lives as middle-class college students.

You don't need to be a middle-class college student to get a restaurant job that pays more than minimum wage.

I can't get a minimum wage job in most cases and I'm a 25 year old with an extensive work history. Albeit I can't stand for long periods if at all.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I'm all for an increase in the minimum wage, but I personly think $15 might be a tad too much. I say raise in too $10, and have it automatically raise in relation to inflation.

$15 is high, and if this was across the whole US and put in place tomorrow it'd be disastrous for employment. But it's important to note this is Seattle, with a much higher cost of living, and the increase is set to come in over several years. For businesses under 500 staff this increase will only be in effect come 2021.

But I agree that for the whole of the US something close to $10, linked to average wage increases (slightly higher than inflation) would be pretty solid, I think.


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 Bookwrack wrote:
If that'd been done from the start, minimum wage would be something close to $20 an hour today.

True, but it's worth pointing out that at the high point of minimum wage in the late 60s, it was a very different economic environment. The US was so overwhelmingly dominant in the world economy that it could absorb such a high minimum wage and maintain competitive advantage. That is not true today.


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 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I think 10$ is perfect for what min wage is meant for. Teenagers and college students working for spending money.
It is not meant to support a 40 yr.

You don't work with the economy you want to have, you work with the economy you have. Minimum wage may notionally be for teenagers and college students, but a very large number of adults are working minimum wage jobs, because that's all they can get.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I think 10$ is perfect for what min wage is meant for. Teenagers and college students working for spending money.
It is not meant to support a 40 yr.
You want a job, go train for one. a guard card is 200 in california, and depending on the establishment, you could get 600 a night

Except that's a universe that is not the one we live in. Security here makes minimum wage unless you work security for a place that is a union shop (like Virginia Mason hospital). Nearly half the people being hired to minimum wage jobs are over the age of 21, and of that half, something like a third have families.

$10 is, in the Seattle area, in no way, shape, or form a livable wage.

 Hordini wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
And in the mean time, everyone else who was already making that level of pay gets shafted.

Anecdotal example. A relative of mine is taking a job where she is managing a pet kennel. A large one, capable of holding a couple hundred animals. Her pay (not including other benefits) will be starting at $15 an hour. She will be running a 1.5 million dollar business at that pay. This type of minimum wage hike? She'd have to pay the folks who do nothing more then clean the poop out of the stalls and wash towels the exact same.

So, someone whose responsible for managing payroll, scheduling, handling advertising, etc, will be drawing in the same dollar per hour that sprays gak out of a stall for 4 hours a day.

I fail to see what the problem is in this situation. The conservative ideology that dominates opposition to minimum wage laws is that the free market is always correct, and concepts like what people "deserve" to make are irrelevant.


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 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I think 10$ is perfect for what min wage is meant for. Teenagers and college students working for spending money.
It is not meant to support a 40 yr.
You want a job, go train for one. a guard card is 200 in california, and depending on the establishment, you could get 600 a night

It must be nice living in a fantasy world where everyone can get a job that pays better than minimum wage with a trivial amount of effort. Too bad that isn't the one we actually live in, where a lot of people don't have the same lives as middle-class college students.

You don't need to be a middle-class college student to get a restaurant job that pays more than minimum wage.

Aye, really? Because when I was that sort of age and in need of that sort of work, I spent nearly two years killing myself as a part-time minimum-wage KP, and there was never even a hint I'd ever see a pay raise or be allowed to move across into "easier" jobs front-of-house(I use quotes because I'm well aware of how much bollocks front-line customer service staff face, it's less grunt work but perhaps even more emotionally draining), or even be offered any training. When I finally left that job and went looking for another, do you know what other employers thought my almost-two-years as a KP made me capable of? Being a minimum-wage KP. This was in the pre-recession UK mind, which was supposedly a land of milk & honey that we're currently forcing the poor and disabled into suicide ostensibly to claw our way back to.

The vast, vast majority of employers who use minimum-wage service and manual labour aren't interested in training you, promoting you, or paying more than the minimum they can legally get away with. It all very well to babble on about bootstrappery and so forth, but the simple reality is capitalism is a system that requires losers; it is mathematically impossible most people to "win". The reason people deserve unemployment benefits is that the neoliberal capitalist economic system cannot function without a large pool of unemployed people to keep the labour market fluid, if every single person magically found a job they could live on tomorrow and nobody was ever without a job offer again, capitalism would collapse. The reason people deserve a legally mandated minimum that is a *living* wage is the same; neoliberal capitalism requires an underclass of poorly paid unskilled and semi-skilled labour, and is simply incapable of providing everybody with rewards that match their effort and merit - it is statistically certain that at every level of employment there will be people who busted a gut to get ahead and for whatever reason outwith their control didn't - if we insist on maintaining the fiction that neoliberal capitalism actually works, the least we can do as a society is make sure the people who must necessarily and by design fail to achieve their potential don't have to struggle to afford basic essentials.

 Hordini wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
And in the mean time, everyone else who was already making that level of pay gets shafted.

Anecdotal example. A relative of mine is taking a job where she is managing a pet kennel. A large one, capable of holding a couple hundred animals. Her pay (not including other benefits) will be starting at $15 an hour. She will be running a 1.5 million dollar business at that pay. This type of minimum wage hike? She'd have to pay the folks who do nothing more then clean the poop out of the stalls and wash towels the exact same.

So, someone whose responsible for managing payroll, scheduling, handling advertising, etc, will be drawing in the same dollar per hour that sprays gak out of a stall for 4 hours a day.

I fail to see what the problem is in this situation. The conservative ideology that dominates opposition to minimum wage laws is that the free market is always correct, and concepts like what people "deserve" to make are irrelevant.


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 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I think 10$ is perfect for what min wage is meant for. Teenagers and college students working for spending money.
It is not meant to support a 40 yr.
You want a job, go train for one. a guard card is 200 in california, and depending on the establishment, you could get 600 a night

It must be nice living in a fantasy world where everyone can get a job that pays better than minimum wage with a trivial amount of effort. Too bad that isn't the one we actually live in, where a lot of people don't have the same lives as middle-class college students.

You don't need to be a middle-class college student to get a restaurant job that pays more than minimum wage.

Considering that wait-staff is allowed, by law, to be paid less than minimum wage (the difference to be made up by tips) and that chefs in this area are often paid $12\hr (for having 5 years of culinary arts school and 10 years experience)... yeah, actually, that's pretty damned difficult.

I look forward to automation finally making a decent hamburger. Will the robot that takes my order be as incomprehensible over the speaker?


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That said, there's more to the situation [here] then the wage increase for why prices are rising. In general, the SF bay area is already one of the most expensive places to live in in the country, with the tech-boom it's just getting worse. Feels like every computer programmer and data analyst in the world is flocking here.

Austin is now bigger than San Fran.


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 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
So here's a thought. Assuming all the restaurants are raising their prices excessively to support the wage, and customers can't afford to dine out, even with the minimum wage increase, supply and demand suggests they will have to lower their prices, which won't be close to putting them out of business given a 5% price increase is all that is apparently needed to cover a $15 minimum wage.

Based on that, it'll be a mess for a couple years then steady out.

Or they go out of business. You can only lower your prices to the level of your expenses, assuming the same volume.

Its just under £7 here in the UK, so thats around $10 an hour. I honestly don't know how people live on that little money.
We get shafted for tax on everything, petrol prices are still a rip despite coming down a fair bit. Renting is ridiculous too. The monthly rent isnt too bad in the scheme of things (outside London anyway) but its all the the bits that the letting agencies screw you for that add up.
Doesn't help that our government are corrupt as all get out and everything is essentially run by the banks anyway.

That said, I've worked bloody hard to get where I am on what I consider to be a decent enough wage (ie enough so that I can have a holiday once a year and not worry about having takeout a couple of times a month, Im not rich by any stretch, I drive a Fiesta for gods sake) and it does feth me off that minimum wage is going up but due to my company "not doing as well as they thought" (ie the director has to stick with his 2014 Jag) there wont be a company wide pay increase this year.
Uh...I cant complain too much because I probably WILL get a promotion linked pay rise come June...

TL;DR: Minimum wage should be enough that people don't feel crushed/have to rely on state hand outs but no so much that people dont feel the need to drag themselves up.

Or something. Its not an easy one for a general leftist like me.

 Frazzled wrote:
Austin is now bigger than San Fran.

So I've heard. You guys have my condolences. lol


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 Frazzled wrote:
Austin is now bigger than San Fran.

So I've heard. You guys have my condolences. lol

Small businesses will suffer some from this, that's a given. I don't see this hurting $1.07 Billion dollar profit corporations like McDonald's though...

 Ouze wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
her pay (not including other benefits) will be starting at $15 an hour. She will be running a 1.5 million dollar business at that pay. This type of minimum wage hike? She'd have to pay the folks who do nothing more then clean the poop out of the stalls and wash towels the exact same.

Sounds like your relative isn't getting paid enough.

Yeah, I feel like Djones heard that anecdote and maybe took away the wrong conclusion. Sounds like a lot of work and responsibility for a lousy $30k a year.

Reminds me of a joke:

Spoiler:

My boss bought a new sports car and parked it on his space while I was walking by him. I congratulated him to his newest purchase. He said: "Well, if you work hard, set yourself goals, do overtime and work with determination, I will be able to buy an even better one next year."

I was sitting at the negotiation table when the deal was made. As I said in the part you quoted, there were other benefits involved. To include pay raises, and even eventual ownership of the business. You'll never sell me on the idea that her employees are worth paying 30k a year though for the work that they do.

As for Peregrines quote (I'm lousy at multi-quoting), the conservative ideology also leads to the belief that you pay someone for the work that they do. If all your job entails is feeding dogs, and spraying gak, you aren't exactly busting your ass and "earning" a significant wage.

 Pete Melvin wrote:


TL;DR: Minimum wage should be enough that people don't feel crushed/have to rely on state hand outs but no so much that people dont feel the need to drag themselves up.

Or something. Its not an easy one for a general leftist like me.

Honestly I'm not convinced by the "make life crap enough and people will be more motivated to succeed" idea. Quite apart from what I mentioned above(capitalism requires more people to fail than strict merit allows for, so there will always be people stuck in crappy jobs on crappy pay who should be doing better, and punishing them for being born into a society run for the benefit of a wealthy few is bordering on monstrous), all the various trials of and research into the Basic Income concept that I've seen indicate that until they earn enough that they essentially no longer have to care about money(ie all essentials are taken care of, they're secure in the knowledge that will continue to be so in the future, and they have enough to afford reasonable access to luxuries without having to stress about it or go into debt) people have a desire to work to improve their lot regardless of whether they're struggling to afford basic necessities or only just short of aforementioned goal; and that further, once that goal is achieved, giving people more and more money as they move into middle and upper management is actually likely to decrease innovation, productivity, and even basic competence - giving people more time off on the same salary, more flexible working hours, and more autonomy in the workplace generates better results than obscene salaries and cash bonuses.

The problem is that economics isn't a science, it's a collection of cults, of ideologies. Basic Income, shorter working weeks, more equitable income distribution and so forth would make the capitalist system function more productively on an individual, company, and system-wide level, but neoliberals won't even countenance such things because actually advancing towards their stated aims is less important than remaining within their own dogma. By the same token, replacing most existing forms of taxation with a system like Land Value Rating would achieve a lot of the more agreeable principles espoused by traditionally right-wing economic ideologies(you should keep what you earn, businesses shouldn't have their growth limited by essentially arbitrary tax rates etc) while also reducing inequality and eliminating any real possibility of avoidance and evasion, but because it's not progressive income tax combined with punitive corporation tax and because we're conditioned to see politics and economics as a zero-sum game a lot of folk on the left won't even consider it.

 Lord Scythican wrote:
Small businesses will suffer some from this, that's a given. I don't see this hurting $1.07 Billion dollar profit corporations like McDonald's though...

If anything, it may actually HELP companies like McD's or Walmart