Truth is, we should ALL be paid much more, probably around 15%-20% more, considering how much ceo salaries have risen and the prices of everything.
But nope, let the one sided hoarding continue
This is it right here. $20/hr wouldn’t even seem too outrageous if compensation had kept pace with productivity and profit margins. If anything, it’d be on the lower end and you wouldn’t be able to sustain a decent living without splitting the cost up with someone else.
Iirc it should be around 25 bucks if minimum wage keeps up with inflation.
We should thrive, not just survive. Yall have no idea how much has been stolen from us. Me neither. Who knows what could have been if we weren’t just complete shitters 24/7.
15-20%
Oh honey, no. Right direction, but no. Very very dew people get even half the value they create for their masters in the rare slivers where they’re allowed to do real work.
Surplus labor value. Wouldn’t be a big deal if we all equally owned all the businesses we work for. That surplus labor value would still flow to the workers.
But while we suffer a capitalist waynof life, those funds are siphoned upwards to the 1%, who then use the money stolen from us to purchase the government over time.
This is why end stage capitalism is not preventable with reforms. You just delay the inevitable. The early 20th century labor movements only bought us a little bit of time. All of those people who fought, lost, suffered, died… it was all for just a fuckin delay?
What a waste.
Agree. But also remember its literally ending the world too.
April Fools! California is going back to fed minimum of $7.25
How is it that legislatures can pass tax law which use %s that automatically scale with income/sales/property values, but they can’t figure out a way to pass wage laws that use %s to automatically scale with COL/inflation? Imagine hardcoding a taxable $ amount, and then not updating it for 30 years…
We tie a lot of things to Poverty Level.
This is why Poverty Level hasn’t changed to match anything close to resembling reality in decades.
We would just do the same thing. I wish he didn’t but we already changed how Inflation is measured in the 1970s to remove Housing, Allow Canned Chicken instead of actual chicken. It’s all a big pissing game from on high.
Gaslighting. Its called gaslighting.
That’s part of how it gets passed. The problem with setting it with an auto-increase is that it creates a situation where we might not ever pass another law about it because if we get it wrong on the high side Democrats will block any change and if we get it wrong on the low side Republicans will block any change.
A few years ago when the Fight for Fifteen was at its height, Mitt Romney proposed a minimum wage that auto-increased with inflation and he put the starting rate at…$10. And included some crazy cuts to Social Security and stuff so it was never going to happen but that’s what I mean about the numbers being so far apart. $10/hr is so low that the left flank of the Democrats would reject it, which means you need more Republicans, and you’ll just never get enough Republicans for a minimum wage increase.
Almost like that says something about… Something?
"Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
* Panera not included
Edit: gtfo with your article text and citations, I watched a random youtube video while drunk a few days ago, and that’s all the proof I need!
From the article:
At first, it appeared the bread exemption applied to Panera Bread restaurants. Bloomberg News reported the change would benefit Greg Flynn, a wealthy campaign donor to Newsom. But the Newsom administration said the wage increase law does apply to Panera Bread because the restaurant does not make dough on-site. Also, Flynn has announced he would pay his workers at least $20 per hour.
And in the next week there will be mass layoff bc fast food restaurants prefer to install robot equipment rather than paying $20
Over the past decade, California has doubled its minimum wage for most workers to $16 per hour. A big concern over that time was whether the increase would cause some workers to lose their jobs as employers’ expenses increased.
Instead, data showed wages went up and employment did not fall, said Michael Reich, a labor economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
“I was surprised at how little, or how difficult it was to find disemployment effects. If anything, we find positive employment effects,” Reich said.
Quoted from the article and emphasis added for those with reading comprehension difficulties.
Wages got decoupled from profits many years ago. These sorts of increases are about bringing them back in line.Well that’s very interesting plot twist, I’m almost concerned about as long as minimum wage grows higher and higher company tend to mass layoff it’s worker & replace the worker with robot equipment
But your explanation give glimpse of hope for everyone, maybe increase minimum wage it’s not bad at allBut let’s see how long it will last bc you know… companies only care about profits and profits
Well that’s very interesting plot twist, I’m almost concerned about as long as minimum wage grows higher and higher company tend to mass layoff it’s worker & replace the worker with robot equipment
Not really. This same saw about minimum wage increases leading to inflation and unemployment gets pulled out every time the discussion comes up. And while I am sure there is a point of diminishing returns, the doom and gloom has failed to materialize time and again. I’m old enough that I was working through several US Federal Minimum Wage hikes and have heard the same claims every time. And while there will be some marginal rise in prices, it will be nothing like the rise caused by actual inflation and is really just businesses using the opportunity to adjust prices up while having a convenient excuse.
Worker replacement with automation also isn’t new. The industrial revolution was devastating for many sectors. Weaving used to be an actual cottage industry, with people renting time on looms or making cloth at home. Now, we all buy mass manufactured textiles made in massive, highly automated factories. Sure, it sucked for people dedicated to weaving at the time, but it’s been a long term good for society. People and markets eventually adjusted, and people now benefit from cheaper textiles. It’s a cycle we’ve run through with many products and we’ll run through it again with many more. The real test of a society isn’t in that society trying to hold back progress, it’s in how we protect the dignity and well-being of the affected workers as the shift happens. We’ll need strong social services to support workers whose jobs are automated away. Holding down wages doesn’t do that, it only enriches the already wealthy by allowing them to capture more profit at the expense of the workers.
Let them do it. If they could they already would have.
Rightwingers are completely incapable of thinking, huh?
The problem is that when minimum wage increases, that same percentage increase does not happen to ALL incomes. So businesses passing on the cost are fighting over a pot of disposable income that isn’t keeping up.
We can’t keep raising wages at the bottom unless the rest of the workers can afford the increase in prices. Otherwise it leads to cutbacks in non-essential spending and that will cause job losses as businesses tighten their belts on diminishing sales.
It’s also causing businesses to reevaluate the consequences of replacing workers with machines. The McDonalds in my rural town just did away with ordering at the cash register inside the restaurant. You now have to use a kiosk to place the order. That’s one job gone.
Kiosks are not new. Fast food places have been dabbling with that system for almost a decade now, and not even as a response to rising minimum wage. Even if you turn back the clock on minimum wage increases, any advances in automation are here to stay. Big corporations are going to continue to find ways to replace workers with robots as soon as it becomes economically viable regardless.
The problem is that when minimum wage increases, that same percentage increase does not happen to ALL incomes.
Likewise, the cost increases will not be felt by all consumers, because not everyone eats fast food.
So businesses passing on the cost are fighting over a pot of disposable income that isn’t keeping up.
Then they should introduce more efficiencies that allow them to lower cost so they can be competitive again. This is capitalism at its best.
The McDonalds in my rural town just did away with ordering at the cash register inside the restaurant. You now have to use a kiosk to place the order. That’s one job gone.
If a job cannot pay a living wage, it should not exist. Being replaced by robots is a good thing. There’s another job in a factory creating these kiosks, or as a service tech repairing them.
Well I guess the Pizza Hut restaurants will be investing in drone delivery then, because their delivery drivers hit the unemployment line. They are part of the cuts. They don’t have the training to be a technician, and aren’t likely to get it in 6 months of unemployment.
Fast food has spent millions making the operation as efficient as is humanly possible. The only place left to cut is the humans. That’s what’s happening. It’s not difficult to make a fast food machine. It might even make better quality food. But the machine won’t be made in the US. The workers won’t be retrained to service them - that task will get outsourced, just like fixing the existing machines is outsourced in the current restaurants.
It’s easy to talk about “capitalism at it’s best” if you’re not the one holding the pink slip, wondering how you’re paying the bills on half an income from unemployment. Thankfully, we have subsidized healthcare in California. But that money comes out of everyone’s pockets, whether they eat fast food or not.
Unemployment in California (and the US) is quite low. There’s no shortage of jobs. And there are lots of job training programs, though we could always use more.
We didn’t lament the loss of farrier jobs when we switched from horse drawn carriages to automobiles. Progress is good.
Well, let’s see how loudly folks start screaming when AI actually gets good enough to replace the skilled workers. But they can be retrained, right? You want to convince me that progress is good, show me legislation that requires retraining as a condition of replacement. If they won’t make it a law, it won’t happen without a lot of pain and suffering for the displaced worker.
Workforce training is not the place of companies, it’s the place of institutions. Specifically government funded ones. Currently around half of all community college students in California pay nothing due to various grants and programs.
Requiring companies to pay for their workers retraining would be an unreasonable financial burden on them. But paying via taxes is a totally fair requirement, and one that California is continuously expanding.
It’s 50 miles from where I live to the nearest community college. So if a laid off FF worker needs to retrain via an institution, they will spend at least $20 each day in gas, assuming they can afford a car. If they attend 3 days a week, there goes $240 of their unemployment each month (gas is $5.50/gal and there is no public transit option). I don’t know what they do when unemployment runs out in six months. Maybe join the homeless? That seems to be a popular option these days.
Don’t buy into the “workforce training is not the place of companies, it’s the place of institutions” lie. If it had not been for my internship at a company prior to graduation, I would have struggled to get a job out of college. It took my friend almost a year to find a job for less than I was making. Job experience is king, and you won’t get it from an institution. School teaches the basics, and the rest is on-the-job experience.
Sorry, I got banned and then let the conversation lapse.
It’s 50 miles from where I live to the nearest community college. So if a laid off FF worker needs to retrain via an institution, they will spend at least $20 each day in gas, assuming they can afford a car. If they attend 3 days a week, there goes $240 of their unemployment each month (gas is $5.50/gal and there is no public transit option). I don’t know what they do when unemployment runs out in six months. Maybe join the homeless? That seems to be a popular option these days.
This is what I would call a failure of institutions. Government should be ameliorating all of these problems.
It’s not really a company’s concern. They exist to profit. Government exists to improve people’s lives.
