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Damn Fox, you didn't have to turn me on more. (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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Is Fox news unironically the best place to learn about your new favorite social dem?

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[–] 245 points 1 year ago (73 children)

BTW $30 isn't like a crazy high number for minimum wage. The current number is well below the poverty line for families everywhere in the United States, and New York has a very high cost of living. Minimum wage is explicitly intended to provide "the wages of decent living." $30 per hour might actually be too low for New York City. $61,500 a year is barely going to pay the rent in the shittiest neighborhoods. https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/new-york-ny/

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm not good at math, but looking at the chart I think the average is dragged up but the huge spike of $5k+/mo units. You can find places for ~$2k/mo that don't look terrible, assuming the listings on zillow are real. That's still too expensive, but better than the $3700 average on that chart.

    "It could be worse!" is extremely small comfort, though.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    $2k a month is $24000 a year, almost 40% of your income. That's not sustainable, even if you can find low rent places.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I think the recommendation is 30% of income goes into shelter? Not sure if that's gross or net. You'd want to be making $80k i think, if it's gross.

    Anyway, this is all hair splitting. Basic costs are too high, yes.

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  • [–] 135 points 1 year ago* (14 children)

    If you give your whole life of working hours to a business, the compensation should be a bare minimum of all of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

    Period.

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  • [–] 41 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    I'd genuinely be interested to know how many human beings need to work a 40-hour week in order to produce and distribute enough food, medicine, clothing, shelter and education for all 8.2 billion humans, and how many of the rest of us are really just building follies purely just to keep everyone busy.

    If tech billionaires insist on continuing to make jobs like "taxi driver" and "checkout operator" obsolete via automation while also refusing to share the proceeds of that automation with the humans whose expertise was used to train said AI and then got replaced, then the question of "exactly how pointless do the new jobs (I mean, 'influencer'? Really?) need to be before we accept that money has ceased to make sense as the way we incentivize people to not have more kids than the global industrial output can sustain?".

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    I suppose first we should consider food. For that we look at what every human needs to consume (considering all necessary vitamins and minerals in addition to obvious calories) and then try to figure out what sources of those nutrients is currently the most efficient at producing them. Then there should be data somewhere on how much of that foodstuff is produced per year and how many people are employed in producing it. If not enough of that foodstuff is produced to meet the planet's needs for that nutrient, then move on to the second-most efficient source and so on until the need is met. Then the same again for the next vital nutrient, hopefully with overlap on sources of previous nutrients. And so on until all nutrients are accounted for, and that should provide a number for how many people are directly involved in the production of the food. That would be the primary list. THEN we would need to consider secondary elements for food production: everyone involved in producing the tools/resources used in direct production (tractors, combine harvesters, fuel, fertilizer, etc), but ONLY calculating for JUST enough to meet the demand represented by the primary list. Surplus manufacturing to be ignored. Keep going that way until you have it all the way down to raw materials (steel, silicon, rubber, etc). Finally, you look at the distribution network necessary to actually get all of these things where they're needed. This would, naturally, include workers employed at road maintenance, transport drivers (although billionaires seem fairly insistent that these jobs can be eliminated soon), etc. That would provide you with the BARE MINIMUM workers necessary for food production.

    Then you perform a similar process for the production of:

    • Housing

    • Clothing

    • Healthcare

    • Education

    Once you have the bare minimum, you can actually talk in concrete terms of just how much of humanity is employed in essential work and how much isn't. Most likely, when evaluating clothing, the "most efficient source" was sweat shops, so once you know that humanity has enough non-essential workers, you can make a compelling case that laws need to be passed to guarantee that more workers are diverted to clothing production, with an aim of providing better working conditions for all.

    We can't really have intelligent conversations about whether capitalism is or isn't a good way to allocate resources until we have the data on what the optiminal use would be. We all SAY that the world produces enough for everyone, but nobody really KNOWS.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I agree with your point, but I'll also say fuck the bare minimum. Any business that cannot afford to pay a living wage has no business being in business. Poverty is exploitation.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Almost all small local shops and restaurants did go bankrupt during Covid. The bailouts went disproportionately to the oligarchy. Some small businesses benefitted, but it would have been far more effective to bail out individuals.

    But I agree that a negative tax or UBI would be great, too, as long as it was tied to the cost of living and paid for by business taxes. It would effectively subsidize every business, creating a minimum wage paid to every person regardless of whether they work or not.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Not here in NL, most of the either went bankrupt after covid due to them needing to pay back the government loans or continued on. The government here did that to save a lot of people from losing their job. Bailing out individuals wouldn’t have worked, the entire situation was already rushed. It would have causes even more issues.

    The only issue with UBI is that there is a portion that will just refuse to work, we do not know how big thay portion is. We need to destroy the massive corporations and maybe work on a better way of promiting companies to do the right thing

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    In Zurich, Switzerland, the cost of living is insane. It's similar to NYC that way. The difference is that their minimum wage is 23.90 CHF / hour which is almost exactly $30 USD per hour.

    Because it's such a high cost city, people earning a minimum wage aren't living a luxurious life. But, they do live a pretty "normal" life. They can go skiing in the winter (getting to the slopes using trains and trams). They can go out to eat as a treat, or go to a club. They can buy healthy foods, and can easily afford their (mandatory) health insurance.

    It means a lot of things are more expensive, which basically means the middle class and rich are subsidizing the people earning the least. And this is despite Switzerland being an extremely right-wing country by European standards. You really see the affect of high minimum wages when you're paying for things where a big part of the cost is minimum wage labour. Like, if you order food for delivery, you might as well order something expensive and luxurious, because you're going to pay the equivalent of about $20 as a delivery fee.

    It's a system that seems to work a lot better than what NYC currently has. When even the lowest paid person is "comfortable", they have more pride in their job, and more confidence in their value. They know they're not as disposable. It also helps that Switzerland has much stronger unions than the US. 45% of all workers in Switzerland are covered by collective bargaining agreements, which is very low by European standards, but is way, way higher than the US rate of 12.1%.

    There are already parallels between Zurich and NYC because of the presence of some extremely highly paid people, especially finance bros. But, Zurich should be a model for NYC, and with a $30 minimum wage, they'd take a big step towards that.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    Switzerland does import a lot of its food, so expensive food is definitely part of the cost in restaurants. I don't know what the mix between food costs and labour is. But, high labour costs are part of the expense.

    I'm not sure what you're talking about with your minimum income. Are you saying that certain jobs deserve a higher minimum than other jobs? Which jobs are ones where the minimum wage is allowed to be lower? If restaurant minimum wage/income is higher, does that mean that say delivery drivers are paid less?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Minimum income aka, everybody will have their income at a max of say 3k a month. If you work for a boss and you earn 1k there than you get 2k from the government. If you earn 4k you get nothing from the government f.e.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Why not just get 3k a month from the boss? Why should the government subsidize your income so that your boss can pay you less?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    We already subsidize companies, but that doesn't always end up in the hand of the employees.

    Look, we have to accept that not every company can be profit driven and sustain itself. That can be an issue with wage costs or with other costs. Things like theatres often get money from the government to fill the gap. Companies with old historic buildings often get money from the government to keep those buildings in check. Startups also get helped by the NL government in the form of tax cuts etc.

    UBI would also help with edge cases. Or people who cannot work etc. Yes there are also issues with this.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    It's Switzerland, skiing is a normal sport, like swimming or bike riding. It's not something glamorous with champagne and caviar, it's what you do on the weekend with your buddies, going by train or carpooling and eating some sausage with French fries, or a packed sandwich.

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    This would assume that these same businesses wouldn't raise prices regardless, which is what they have already been doing, without the wage increase.

    A higher minimum wage is how you force companies to pay employees more. There's no real way to limit ceo pay that they won't find loopholes for, but you could try to tie the max to some upper percentage of employee median pay

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    I think especially in New York going after landlords, both housing and commercial, would do a great job at making it so smaller businesses (which New York has a ton of) don't have to raise prices and to make it so the minimum wage doesn't have to be as high. That's why I think his rent freeze policy and whatever else he is going to do against land lords will help a lot.

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Science and reality disagree with your feelings. Do not parrot the disingenuous spam from the oligarchs.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Do you also have a paper about the wage increase in things where the price of the employees is a bigger part of the total costs (restaurants, accountants, notaries, etc)?

    In a restaurant, the costs of the wages (plus social security and pension payments) are often as much as the costs of the food itself.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    We find that a 10% minimum wage hike translates into a 0.36% increase in the prices of grocery products. This magnitude is consistent with a full pass-through of cost increases into consumer prices.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Yeah, but note that if the supermarket pays its employees 25% more, that does not mean that the costs for the supermarket rise by 25% overall, since wages are only a small part of total expenses. The cost of products would rise way less than 25%.

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    You're not wrong that it can be inflationary, but the inflation has already happened. Besides, productivity is so high these business could afford to pay more with out a price increase, but they want to keep their margins.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Productivity is irrelevant if you sell hours, if a notary works 1 hour they invoice 1 hour most of the time f.e.

    The bigger companies and a lot of companies like tech companies will have the margin to increases prices without it hurting their bottom line. But what about the local restaurant around the corner? Or the mom and pop electronic store with a couple people working there. I don't have an answer to that to be fair.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    That's one argument against, but it's not proven true anywhere it's been tested. Shoppers at Walmart have a price point they expect. They can only raise prices so much before sales begin to falter, and their labor costs are not the most significant cost in their stores. Think about how few Walmart employees you see in their massive stores. Real estate, fixtures, even the utility bills are going to outpace the labor increases. Plus, the additional costs are typically offset by the additional sales that happen because everyone has a little more disposable income.

    Chain stores and restaurants charge roughly the same amounts regardless of the local labor rates. Things that do affect local prices are the things that affect unit costs, like tariffs, taxes, and transport costs.

    You are completely correct that corporations will use any excuse to raise prices, but they're going to raise prices as high as the market will bear regardless. That's not a reason to depress demand by keeping wages too low to survive.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Yeah it just sounds ridiculously high in low cost of living areas where Fox’s faithful all live.

    They really do hear this as “look at this outrageous tax on small business owners” instead of “oh look a living minimum wage - that would be good for Timmy when he graduates high school next year.”

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    It’s true that the minimum wage is a not a living wage. I don’t know when it ever was.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Fair point. Politicians have always been shitty.

    But also, inflation is only relevant to purchasing power, and does not represent the entire increase to the cost of living. Suvival itself has become more expensive because of new expenses that didn't exist in 1938. More young adults carry a significant debt cost from education, healthcare expenses, home purchases, car purchases, and general debt. Credit was harder to come by, and was structured to avoid long-term repayments. There are also transportation costs, heating and cooling utility costs, internet, cell service, not to mention the cost of food. Fewer people grow their own food, and you cannot survive a Mid-Atlantic summer without air-conditioning.

    $4.50 an hour might have been a poverty wage in 1938, but it would represent destitution today.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I make just over $30/hr plus some bonuses. I'm struggling in a midsize Midwest city. I'd need roommates in NYC to live.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Monica and Rachel seem to have a lot of room in their place, they might let you stay if you helped with the rent.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I live in NY, not NYC, and make $30/hr as a single guy. I live in someone's garage just so I can have a savings/retirement investment...

    Rent at a legitimate apartment complex would eat every remaining dollar I had after my other expenses. NY is definitely expensive...

    My dad joked that I need to find a wife with 2 jobs if I wanted a house and then paused for a second, doing the math and realizing that's actually true if we were all around the $30/hr mark...

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    need to find a wife with 2 jobs if I wanted a house

    Or you could split the difference and get two wives with one job each.

    Or you could get four wives with a part time job each.

    Or you get 8 wives with one job each and now you are making profit over the money you need to buy a house.

    My point is

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    It's accountability for the fact that cost of living has risen astronomically and for quite a while since the time that $7.25 or even $16.50 was a livable wage, especially in NYC

    Conservatives are going to scream about minimum wage not fixing the problem but the fact is cost of living is not going down even with their best efforts. It's time to go up, and that's not an unreasonable amount.

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