minimum wage should be almost 12 dollars

Author: linate

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#31
Christen
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@dustryder
Since I live in New York State, I went to the website that you linked and chose "Living Wage Calculation for Queens County, New York" and got this: http://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36081

Assuming that "their calculations" are correct, and that no errors were made, if you look at the "1 Adult 3 Children" column on the "Living Wage" row, it is showing that 1 adult with 3 children requires a minimum wage of at least 54 dollars and 98 cents, and that is the highest wage number on that list.

We have 3 options to try and address this problem. We can raise the minimum wage to 54 dollars and 98 cents in order to accommodate for that 1-adult-3-children group and also have enough to cover everyone else.
The second option would be for these people to simply get better educations and/or better-paying jobs so that they can earn enough. I know people who are "single adults" with 3 children who have jobs that pay far more than 54 dollars and 98 cents per hour, which allows them to afford this.
The third option is that we can simply teach people to make better life choices and NOT have that many kids so that we wouldn't need to artificially force the minimum wage up in the first place.

The problem with the first option is that, whenever you raise the minimum wage, especially by that much, businesses that can't afford to pay that much will have to either fire employees to compensate, raise prices and push the wage increase to the consumers, or go out of business. Makes me wonder why people are fighting for only 15 dollars an hour. Why stop at 15 when they're actually going to need a lot more money than that anyways, especially if you look at "1 Adult 1 Child" and "1 Adult 2 Children" which require a minimum of $31.99 and $41.54, respectively? Not to mention you risk hurting the very people that an increase in minimum wage are supposed to help, since they could lose their jobs outright, and have no money.

The second and third options seem like the best ones to me. In fact, it looks like you can save the most money by having just "2 Adults" with no children, based on what their data, on Queens New York, shows.

Living wages can and do change, based on the decisions that we make. If I am an adult with no kids, then my living wage, according to the data, will be 17 dollars and 46 cents. If I then make the decision to get married, it will go down to 12 dollars and 10 cents. If I then have a kid, it will change back up to 31 dollars and 99 cents. You also have to take into the account the number of hours that I work and how many days off I take for vacations and whatnot. Those too can affect my living wage and/or cause it to change. If living wages do not change, then shouldn't it stay at 17 dollars regardless if I have kids or not, or regardless what decisions I make?

This document that I found on google lists the 5 main "basic necessities" as Food, Shelter, Clothing, Health Care, and Education. https://humanityparty.com/assets/five_basic_necessities_of_life.pdf

If you have these 5 main basic necessities, then you have the basic necessities that you need. The only problem is that a lot of people can't really fully agree on what all of the basic necessities consist of. For example, some people may say that having a car or a smart phone should also be included in the list of things that count as basic necessities while others may very well find having just enough money to be "living in a box" and having just a ramen noodle every day to be a living wage. Any one of them could be right or wrong. I want to say that "basic necessities" are subjective, but aren't at the same time.
#32
zedvictor4
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@Alec
Communism and Capitalism both rely on hierarchy and subjugation.

Though one system tends to function with more subtlety than the other.
#33
dustryder
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@Christen
The problem with the first option is that, whenever you raise the minimum wage, especially by that much, businesses that can't afford to pay that much will have to either fire employees to compensate, raise prices and push the wage increase to the consumers, or go out of business. Makes me wonder why people are fighting for only 15 dollars an hour. Why stop at 15 when they're actually going to need a lot more money than that anyways, especially if you look at "1 Adult 1 Child" and "1 Adult 2 Children" which require a minimum of $31.99 and $41.54, respectively? Not to mention you risk hurting the very people that an increase in minimum wage are supposed to help, since they could lose their jobs outright, and have no money.

The second and third options seem like the best ones to me. In fact, it looks like you can save the most money by having just "2 Adults" with no children, based on what their data, on Queens New York, shows.
The first option is best when you carefully examine what is a reasonable increase to the minimum wage. It results in an immediate increase to an income that, while not pushing such families up to the living wage, is far better than nothing.
The second and third options aren't options. You have a single mother with three kids who is on welfare and is working far more hours than is ordinary to meet the needs of the family. Obviously she doesn't have time/energy/money to study. And telling her that she shouldn't've had so many kids does absolutely nothing.

Moreover you've focused on the most extreme example. Even typical situations such as 1/2 working adults have incomes that fall short of the living wage. Clearly children aren't the problem in these cases.


Living wages can and do change, based on the decisions that we make. If I am an adult with no kids, then my living wage, according to the data, will be 17 dollars and 46 cents. If I then make the decision to get married, it will go down to 12 dollars and 10 cents. If I then have a kid, it will change back up to 31 dollars and 99 cents. You also have to take into the account the number of hours that I work and how many days off I take for vacations and whatnot. Those too can affect my living wage and/or cause it to change. If living wages do not change, then shouldn't it stay at 17 dollars regardless if I have kids or not, or regardless what decisions I make?
Obviously a living wage will change with respect to the size of a family. However it does not change with respect to things that fall outside of the definition of a living wage such as the examples you gave before. Accordingly, the number of hours you work are completely irrelevant to what a given living wage is because a living wage is by definition calculated with a set amount of hours.


#34
Nemiroff
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The most important factor in minimum wage should be the cost of living. $15 may not be enough in a big city even if you are single and frugal. However $12 in rural west virginia will allow a sizable family to live like kings.

The quanitity of consumers,  and increase in spending, can make a large minimum wage functional in a city, but it will absolutely destroy small rural economies. Its also conpletely unnecessary in those low cost regions.

While i wholeheartedly support a minimum wage, a flat 15 nation wide, or even 12, is silly, and hopefully just an oversimplified talking point.

#35
Christen
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@dustryder
@Nemiroff
The quanitity of consumers,  and increase in spending, can make a large minimum wage functional in a city,
There are 2 major flaws with this whole idea that we should increase the minimum wage so that poor people can have more money to spend and boost the economy.

Firstly, poor people who start to gain more money should save their money, not simply spend it away carelessly. If a poor person gets an increase in their income, that's great, but why spend away that extra money carelessly for the sake of "boosting the economy"?
Just because you CAN now afford that new expensive exotic wristwatch at the pawn shop, or those fancy brand new 780-dollar shoes due to your wage going up doesn't mean you SHOULD just spend it away on them, even if your wage went up or if it would lead to "boosting your economy". I would instead save that extra 780 dollars to pay off a student loan, pay off a rent, a bill, some taxes that I owe, or something else that may need to be paid off very soon. Poor people seem to have such a hard time understanding this.

If you're poor, then your priority should be YOU, not whatever "economy" that is out there. When I say your priority should be you, what I mean is that, even if you are starting to rise up and out of poverty due to a wage increase, spending away your extra earnings instead of saving them and being more responsible with them would simply push you back down into poverty. Trying to escape poverty, while also making these same bad choices that got you into poverty in the first place, is counter-productive. It's self-defeating. It defeats the purpose of giving a poor decision-maker more money, because they will make the poor decision to spend it away on something that isn't important, or to have a child or two or whatever. Then they will go outdoors, carrying and holding up their signs with "We Work, We Sweat, Put $15 on Our Check!" written on them, and "fight" for higher and higher wages, as if that's going to fix it. When it doesn't, they simply bring out more signs, recruit more protesters, and keep "fighting" for more higher wages, and so on. https://fightfor15.org/2020-candidates-stand-with-workers/

When I often hear that an increase in minimum wage results in an increase in consumer spending, the reality is that there should be an increase in consumer SAVING, not an increase in reckless consumer spending! It's a different story if your rich and/or can easily afford various expensive commodities without risking descending back into the poverty that you escaped from, though.

Another thing that I do not understand is that, if increasing the minimum wage to 15 is supposed to be such a great thing to do, then, why wait until 2025 to do it?

Wouldn't it make more sense to raise it right now, if it's supposed to help people? Why delay it that long? Why keep people poor for several more years before you finally rescue them from the depths of poverty with this wage increase? What if I am so poor/malnourished that I cannot afford to wait that long for my wage to go up?

Why is it that people are still poor, even though we've BEEN increasing the minimum wage for many years now. Why haven't people escaped poverty yet despite minimum wages going up? Why are so many people still homeless to this day? The reason is because it takes MORE than just a wage/income increase to get out of poverty, which is another thing that poor people, as well as 15-dollar-minimum-wage advocates like Bernie Sanders, don't seem to understand. If all it took was just a wage increase, then people would have been out of poverty long ago, but that's not all it takes. It also takes SMART DECISION-MAKING which is what so many poor people are lacking. Here are 2 youtube videos talking about the various bad choices that poor people make compared to the smarter choices that the rich make.

Furthermore, why stop at 15? Dustryder's data already shows that the minimum wage would have to be at least around like 54 dollars an hour to get everyone in New York out of poverty, and, again, even if you did do that and raise the minimum wage to that amount, those people whose wages went up would likely fall right back into poverty anyways if they don't make better life choices.

The second major flaw has to do with this statement made by dustryder:

The first option is best when you carefully examine what is a reasonable increase to the minimum wage. It results in an immediate increase to an income
While it can result "in an immediate increase to an income" it doesn't ALWAYS result in that. It can also, just as easily, result in your hours being reduced to compensate for the wage increase, your prices going up, and/or you getting fired from your job since your employer is now unable to afford to pay you the new wage without going out of business. When that happens, you won't HAVE any extra money to boost the economy with, since you will just have no money and/or no job.

Even if children aren't the problem, it still doesn't make sense to have children when you can barely afford to take care of yourself. They still cost money to raise, to feed, etc. It's bad enough that a person doesn't make a "living wage" even with 2 adults and no kids, so why make matters worse by having children which will cost you dearly, and which you can't really afford?
#36
Nemiroff
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@Christen
Most poor people arent buying gold chains. Thats music videos. Ideally they would save for retirement, but most often then have spendings they need to make now. Paying off any debt, fixing the car, air conditioning, medication, school supplies, household maintenance. They have current needs that are themselves investments far more valuable then a 401k. Certainly people must think for/of themselves, but as a society we have to make sure our economy is sustainable. I dont understand your issue with that.

Being poor has many difficulties. Long travel times for low wage work means most of their day is killed with minimal gain. They are short on time, and short on money, making every minor decision a triage prioritization scenario. Being under constant stress and forced to constantly make decisions based on massively low resources leads to decision fatigue and bad choices. Its hard to claim personal failing in a situation where most people would fail as well.

54 dollars an hour is mathematically ridiculously unnecessary, especially assuming 2 income household. Even in the big cities. Regardless, if your a business, if more customers are walking through the door there is no way in heck you are cutting back on staff or hours. 
#37
dustryder
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@Christen
While it can result "in an immediate increase to an income" it doesn't ALWAYS result in that. It can also, just as easily, result in your hours being reduced to compensate for the wage increase, your prices going up, and/or you getting fired from your job since your employer is now unable to afford to pay you the new wage without going out of business. When that happens, you won't HAVE any extra money to boost the economy with, since you will just have no money and/or no job.
This isn't really a major flaw. Any major policy decision is bound to have a couple of negative consequences.

It becomes a flaw if those negative consequences overall outweigh the positives in society