Because we've spent all this time clamoring for 15 dollars, but apparently, we don't think that's enough, so shouldn't we pick a number that actually is enough and clamor for that?

I would imagine it would vary from region to region depending cost of living.

Like ski industry in CO trying to pay the service folks a crap wage when you can't live in places like Aspen on that much money.

I am sure that is repeated over and over in this country.

I remember seeing story about some woman in Hawaii, she had a full time well above minimum wage job and she was still living in a camper.

Why call for a federal minimum if an employer who pays it is accused of paying "starvation wages"?

Thanks for playing.

But as to the Constitution: Article I, Section 8:

SECTION 8
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

If what you are saying is true then there should only be one fed income tax rate.

And I am not arguing that each state should have one, I suppose they could, but why have one minimum wage for Oroville CA and San Francisco? Different cost of living index, different min wage, so that people can afford rent and utilities and food no matter the cost of living where they reside.

The Constitution would not allow what you propose. I see you couldn't show me a federal law which has different standards for different states --- a dream of the state's rights crowd.

Section 8.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

Yes, we call it the commerce clause. So what?

not post the correct part. Look at their reply to you.
You made a mistake. No clue why you reply to me like you did.

Cheers

And no one can give an example where a federal law has different standards for different states. I guess our Congress and Executive for the past 230 years is not as smart as certain posters.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 3

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8

Section 8.

see http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wage-chart.aspx#Table

States are free to have a minimum above the federal level. However the federal government can't have different minimums in one state or area than in other states. So if $15 at the federal level is a "starvation wage" or a "dirt job wage" as posters have said what is an adequate federal minimum? So far no one has said what it is. How about you?

would be just under $29,000 per year before taxes. That would put a single, childless person decently inside the edge of a decent living. Most families here have two wage earners and the median annual income per Black household is around $39,000 and White around $50,000. Rents here are roughly one half or less of what rents are in Seattle, San Francisco or LA, or even Orlando Florida. Food prices are about the same, gas is less expensive, as is stuff like haircuts, laundering, yardcare.

I read that most or all of the Nordic countries don't even have minimum wages, obviously their people are not made slaves.

I think the key cornerstones for workers at the lower wage end and for retirees are childcare, housing, transportation, low cost nutritious food, adequate healthcare. There are ways that governments can provide that type of social balance, but unfortunately governments too often ghettoize such programs by mixing people that are hardened criminals in with poor that are just poor and struggling. I believe that if governments did a better job and rich people gave up some of their gains, the whole of society would be better.

I have thought about rich people directly backing housing providers (landlords) and daycare providers, with the rich people partially funding those things to keep rents down and give cash strapped parents professional, safe daycare options. But I realized that opens a person up for frivolous lawsuits by miscreants out for a quick buck. So government raising taxes and providing those services is the only option, because governments have indemnity benefits that individuals don't have.

If $15 is as bad as people claim now that Amazon, Target, etc. are paying it, why the hell are we pushing for it?

so that they have more shifts for their employees?

schedules to people who want to work FT. Walmart has double the PT workers as the retail industry average.

Just not healthcare or a place to live lmao.

billionaire owners w/ tons of employees getting food stamps etc.

Eventually jumps on the tRump train to be able to bash Amazon and the failing Washington post fake news right?

You can have legitimate concerns over a company not paying their employees a living wage while not jumping aboard an idiot's ranting about a news source that doesn't kiss his ass. Those are two very different things.

I disagree with AOC's characterization of "starvation wages" but the criticism is valid. Bezos' fortune is the result of paying employees wages, that while not the lowest, are still not a living wage, looking for loopholes on taxes, offering but not paying full benefits to employees (again, through loopholes), and engaging in business practices that are not altogether ethical.

Most of the Nordic countries supposedly DON'T have a minimum wage requirement at all, nor do they have laws against companies firing people at will. Yet, they have better functioning societies than we have.

So, is a socalled "living wage" adequate if rents rise, or daycare costs rise? My guess it would not be, because the focus was on the wrong thing(s) to begin with.

If you started your working life making a buck and a quarter an hour, $15 an hour sounds like a princely sum. Spoiler alert: It isn't. It's about $31,000 a year, and in the localities where Amazon does business, that's not enough money to live on, let alone get ahead on. Whatever Bezos' net worth is, a portion of it has made its way into his pocket by being filched from his employees and from taxpayers, who have to subsidize those employees through SNAP benefits.

For a media that can somehow stovepipe the cost of abortion into being taxpayer funded, they sure can't seem to draw a straight line between low-wage employees receiving taxpayer-funded benefits and the enrichment of the overclass which doesn't pay its employees a living wage.

were going to have an average pay of $150,000/year

Sort of like the phony "average" bonus of WallStreeters.

If they used percentile means, that would give a truer picture, but that would also blow up the bullshit image they want to foist.

just to fill the desks.

was going to take 10 years to roll out all the jobs, whilst some of the billions in tax breaks kicked in right away.

The key is average, not median. The median pay overall at Amazon is around 28K per year. If 6000, 8000 or so of those NYC HQ jobs were very high end 200,000 USD, 250K USD senior type placements, that dramatically skews that 150K average upward. Thousands of those other jobs will pay MUCH less.

Also the whole 15 USD thing that Amazon trumpeted was a bit disingenuous in regards to NYC, as that is now the minimum wage there for firms with more than 11 employees. Also, the rents in Queen would have went up, up, up, there would have been an even worse shortage of flats, and the infrastructure, such as subways would have been placed under further stress. Bezos even forced both places to help him build helipads.


http://fortune.com/2018/11/21/amazon-new-headquarters-long-island-city-crystal-tech-jobs-half/

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hq2-hiring-lic-arlington-new-jobs-2018-11?r=US&IR=T

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hq2-will-have-helipads-in-new-york-city-virginia-2018-11?r=US&IR=T

The $28K mean comes from the warehouse jobs, which aren't happening at HQ2.

You're going to have trouble hiring administrative assistants for much less than that in NoVa, anyways; that's mostly just what the market is dictating right now.

to keep rents down, childcare costs down, health insurance costs down. If we don't have the right mechanisms in place (we absolutely DON'T now), wages will just keep chasing spiraling costs of things like rent, food, healthcare, ect).

And if housing is going to be an investment it has to increase in price faster than inflation, which means it can't be affordable.

Child care can't be affordable because we want the childcare worker to have a living wage.

If that does not happen, we are headed for chaos.

Unfortunately, we can't kick the South out of the Union, so we won't get it. More and more I think we need to leave the Red states to burn and develop our agenda on the state level.

If you look at most southern states, the big cities are blue except in states like Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi. Even in Texas now the big cities are almost uniformly blue. So the issue is rural southerners, BUT if you look at any other place in any part of the country, it is the rurals that are backward - it is just in those places the big city populations totally swamp the rest.

Other factors also contribute to his billionaire status; but underpaying labor is almost always a component to rapid wealth accumulation among entrepreneurs.

That is what everyone has been calling for. You mean everyone is calling for "dirt wages" to be paid?

Try living in the suburbs of any major city, even in the Midwest (Dallas, Kansas City, Minneapolis, etc.), on $15/hr and see how painful life is. Now trying living on that wage in an east coast or west coast city.

Yeah, you might be able to live on $15/hr in some small town in Mississippi. You will fail miserably if you try that in modern, urban America.

What is now the correct minimum wage?

It's one of those you have to walk before you can run types of scenarios.

For the same complaint being played over and over. We need to think about running our society like Scandinavia, where most countries are said to not have wage laws at all.

the Scandinavian societies.

They start from an assumption that everyone deserves a decent life. They have strong unions. They have a comprehensive social welfare system that makes the basic necessities of life a right.

Either let things continue as they are, or move consistently toward overhauling our system to make it better. I view the situation as simple as that. We can complain then either don't vote or vote stupid, but in such a situation, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the outcomes.

thread that we don’t even need a min wage because Sweden doesn’t need it is nonsense.

Sweden has a global economic plan for all of it's citizen and it works pretty well. Unless a minimum wage increase comes with net frozen housing, childcare, medical, transportation costs, then raising the wage accomplishes nothing. We need to as a society figure out how to make housing, childcare, medical care and transportation costs cheaper for lower paid citizens, as a nation we have done a poor job of that.

What is? Since people are starving to death...

I live in a Florida city of around 60,000. Not large, but certainly not some backwater either. A $15 per hour, 40 hour workweek wage would allow a person to buy a starter home here where I live, and the person can eat out a few times per week.

I don't know WHAT method is fair for paying wages. It depends upon where a person lives and that person's personal choices (like whether to have children).

in most cities.

Even where I live.

I have began to gravitate toward the view that becoming a parent is a choice that people make, choices bring certain consequences with them. I know that isn't a popular view here, but it is a simple fact of life nevertheless. A person making a low wage should think long and hard about whether he or she should become a parent. Childless people that see a messed up world should think long and hard about becoming a parent, regardless of their economic circumstances.

It's not like it's all cash that came from personally taking profits that could otherwise have gone to people's wages.

I think one needs to separate Bezos' paper wealth from Amazon's profitability. They are linked, but they are not the same thing.

Granted, Amazon was not a profitable company for many years; but it’s stock price soared due to the anticipation that it would be. Holding down labor costs is a huge (but not the only) driver in reaching profitability.

It is just a popular mantra that people have latched on to. I believe that keeping rents, childcare, public transportation and healthcare at reasonable costs are much more important that what the minimum wage is.

It is not the Amazon employees making the money.

Companies get to carry forward losses for years then write them off against profits. Regular taxpayers don't get that benefit, nor income averaging that farmers get (so, if you are a sole business owner or professional with varying annual income, buy yourself 10 goats, pay someone a few bucks to take care of them, then call yourself a farmer), lots of wellpaid, variable income people where I live use that scam.

.

The fucks at Amazon plan to automate their facilities, including the one in the Bronx, and they were hoping to get to massive tax incentives for hiring people, only to turn around and reveal that they're planning on fully automating that facility and hoped to sell vans to employees so they could perform the final segment delivery, making them glorified Uber drivers for their packages.

.

it's really hard to find anything to buy except congresscritters and wage slaves. You can only own so many islands, homes, cars, planes, boats and bullshit that it all becomes a waste of time working so hard to keep those wage slaves happy.

Wow, $15.00 dollars an hour, wower yet, you don't get paid for standing in line waiting to be wanded to insure you aren't skipping out with skippies' stuff.

btw, in 1980 I was making $15 an hour plus working as a carpenter, hell, in 1976 I was making enough to buy a row house in Pennsylvania and it wasn't near $15/hr.

AOC speaks truth to power. But that's just my opinion. me

I just did. Many of the lowest wages are $13 ~ $14 per hour, but they could be older reports. They do have full benefits that start on day 1.

The lower paying jobs are strenuous (somebody has to run around the warehouse putting an order together) and it won't be easy living in a large urban area on that wage, but Amazon pays more than your local bank teller or barista.

workers are mostly distribution centre workers, it is less than HALF the national US average ($31/hr) for that type of labour.

http://fortune.com/2019/04/11/bezos-amazon-minimum-wage/

yourself out.

Since Amazon won't be setting up there.

$15 is an OK wage for someone without kids, but unsustainable for someone with kids.

Should parents make more than non-parents?

and no, to answer it, children should not mean you are paid more

you know what will happen

hello vast increase in the childless-only workforce hiring outcomes

We can either make a minimum wage enough to support a family, in which case single people will price families out of the housing market, or we can make it enough to support a single person in which case families will need significant public housing support and that will need to be normal and readily accessible. That's the two-income trap: our households are too small and atomized for our housing stock.

families out of the housing market?

Particularly since he'll have much lower overall expenses than the family of 3.

Unless you know a way to require he only rent "as much apartment as he needs", he's going to be bringing a lot more spare money to the housing market than the family being supported by the same wage will.

I would posit in advance that I would say there are very few single people with no flatmates making 15 USD to say 20 USD per hour (as we are talking about that level of remuneration) who are going around renting up 3 or 4 bdrm flats just for themselves, especially in higher priced cities. If a 'single' person is living in a 3 or 4 BDRM they will (the vast majority of the time I wager) have flatmates to defer the costs.

I certainly feel very confident in regards to this being the case in my 4 main places of habitation throughout my short (23 years) life. There is basically zero chance (unless they have an inside hookup) that a single person making the FOREX-adjusted equivalent of 15 to 20 USD can afford to let a 3 or 4 BDRM flat in London (especially my area I was raised in), Los Angeles (my stateside city of birth and a few years (including part-time at present) as an adult), Stockholm (to get a 3 or 4 BDRM första hand (meaning you are on the lease as the primary holder) would take a 10 to 30 year wait on the lista depending on the neighbourhood and a person would never be able to qualify anyway with one income at that level). Then lastly, Hong Kong (100% of 15 to 20 USD per hour equivalent (so 24K to 32K or so USD per year after tax) would NEVER be enough to rent a 3 or 4 bdrm, zero chance, even in a semi shit area. Try double or triple.

So $15 is not enough for a single parent of 2.

Whatever is enough to rent a 3BR (let's say $30 just to use a number), if it's the minimum wage, would mean a single person can afford a 3BR.

The problem is we have one wage scale whether you're supporting just yourself or a family.

than they were a generation ago. Again, this is exactly what Elizabeth Warren's first book was about. The mean household size in the US has plummeted, but the median square footage of housing stock has doubled, over the past 40 years.

There's a reason studio apartments exist.

Also roommates/housemates.

Minimum wage should be enough to keep someone out of poverty. Not necessarily support his/her family in a multi bedroom apartment.

Because the only way that's happening is people with families.

He can't afford to move to Alabama. That's not where he is making money. He chases the population bases and tries to move goods into their centers as cheaply as possible.

Transportation, the cost thereof and timeliness all matter a great deal to his business model.

It's about logistics.

Red is the new poor

Minimum Wage Rates for 2019 Listed by State

Alabama: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
Alaska: $9.89 (Annual indexing has begun)
Arizona: $11.00
Arkansas: $9.25
California: $12 (employers with 26 or more employees, otherwise $11)
Colorado: $11.10
Connecticut: $10.10
Delaware: $8.75
District of Columbia: $14.00 (as of 7/1/19)
Florida: $8.46
Georgia: $7.25 ($5.15 if not covered by federal regulations)
Guam: $8.25
Hawaii: $10.10
Idaho: $7.25
Illinois: $8.25
Indiana: $7.25
Iowa: $7.25
Kansas: $7.25
Kentucky: $7.25
Louisiana: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
Maine: $11
Maryland: $10.10
Massachusetts: $12
Michigan: $9.45 (Effective in late March 2019)
Minnesota: Large employers are required to pay workers $9.86/hour and small employers (less than 500k in annual sales) $8.04
Mississippi: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
Missouri: $8.60
Montana: $8.50 ($4 for businesses with gross annual sales of $110,000 or less) (Annual indexing has begun)
Nebraska: $9
Nevada: $8.25
New Hampshire: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage)
New Jersey: $8.85
New Mexico: $7.50
New York: $11.10
North Carolina: $7.25
North Dakota: $7.25
Ohio: $8.55
Oklahoma: $7.25
Oregon: $11.25 (7/1/19)
Pennsylvania: $7.25
Puerto Rico: ($7.25 Employers covered by the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act)
Rhode Island: $10.50
South Carolina: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
South Dakota: $9.10
Tennessee: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
Texas: $7.25
Utah: $7.25
Vermont: $10.78
U.S. Virgin Islands: $10.50
Virginia: $7.25
Washington: $12.00
West Virginia: $8.75
Wisconsin: $7.25
Wyoming: $7.25 ($5.15 if federal regulations do not apply)

Alabama: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
Alaska: $9.89 (Annual indexing has begun)
Arizona: $11.00
Arkansas: $9.25
California: $12 (employers with 26 or more employees, otherwise $11)
Colorado: $11.10
Connecticut: $10.10
Delaware: $8.75
District of Columbia: $14.00 (as of 7/1/19)
Florida: $8.46
Georgia: $7.25 ($5.15 if not covered by federal regulations)
Guam: $8.25
Hawaii: $10.10
Idaho: $7.25
Illinois: $8.25
Indiana: $7.25
Iowa: $7.25
Kansas: $7.25
Kentucky: $7.25
Louisiana: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
Maine: $11
Maryland: $10.10
Massachusetts: $12
Michigan: $9.45 (Effective in late March 2019)
Minnesota: Large employers are required to pay workers $9.86/hour and small employers (less than 500k in annual sales) $8.04
Mississippi: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
Missouri: $8.60
Montana: $8.50 ($4 for businesses with gross annual sales of $110,000 or less) (Annual indexing has begun)
Nebraska: $9
Nevada: $8.25
New Hampshire: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage)
New Jersey: $8.85
New Mexico: $7.50
New York: $11.10
North Carolina: $7.25
North Dakota: $7.25
Ohio: $8.55
Oklahoma: $7.25
Oregon: $11.25 (7/1/19)
Pennsylvania: $7.25
Puerto Rico: ($7.25 Employers covered by the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act)
Rhode Island: $10.50
South Carolina: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
South Dakota: $9.10
Tennessee: $7.25 (Federal Minimum Wage, no state minimum)
Texas: $7.25
Utah: $7.25
Vermont: $10.78
U.S. Virgin Islands: $10.50
Virginia: $7.25
Washington: $12.00
West Virginia: $8.75
Wisconsin: $7.25
Wyoming: $7.25 ($5.15 if federal regulations do not apply)

Amazon $15.00 w/full benefits and with no state or federal mandate (the highest on your entire list)

type of work.

I don't know that advocates appreciate what a shock going to $15 as a minimum would be to the state's economy. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, just that no existing business will be able to continue as-is.

They can always apply for SNAP benefits, fucking whingers.

to make people willing to work for them.

Nothing more.

They're the awful kid the family has to tie a pork chop around the neck of to get the dog to play with them.

most of it's workers or if they use a 3rd party, like a temp service. Do they hire mainly full-time or part-time in the warehouses? You can claim $15 an hour and benefits and be only talking about full-time employees.

This is especially true in any kind of retail operation or where the business is seasonal (i.e. Christmas).

Amazon uses these agencies, but is actually scaling back quite a bit to the extent that it's negatively impacting the stock price of such agencies.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazons-declining-use-of-temps-hurts-staffing-company-trueblue/

rent for a 1-bedroom apartment averages $1100. Gross income at $15/hr is $2400/month. Most landlords here will not accept you if your rent is more than 30% of your pay.

When I applied to Amazon last October, they offered me $12/hr.

I don't know what minimum wage should be. But Amazon is not paying a living wage to its typical workers.

and shop locally (preferably at small businesses and not Best Buy, Home Depot, etc.) where they can help create better paying jobs even if it means paying more for their merchandise?

People love to demand workers be paid more, but when asked to put their own skin in the game, they balk.

Working class people need access to 'inexpensive goods' because they don't make the same salaries as the billionaire owners who won't pay the wages necessary to buy anything but the 'inexpensive goods'

It's not our responsibility. Working class people can attempt to save money while simultaneously bitching that working class people don't make enough money

Surely you don't think only working class people shop on Amazon?

Unless you meant to ask all the billionaires on DU if they were willing to stop shopping at Amazon

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

If they work a 40 hour week.

But they probably aren't working a 40 hour week. If they have no dependents, even on a 20 hour week they don't qualify for SNAP.

I'm not sure what to do about that. Are we saying we want Amazon to have a lot more business, so they have more shifts to give to this worker?

Amazon? lol come on.

You bring X people into the warehouse exactly when you need X people. They want as few people on their payroll to begin with as possible, and to give them as few hours as possible. But it's cheaper to bring a given part-timer up to 40 hours than it is to hire another part-timer. So more business for Amazon means more shifts for their warehouse employees.

They don't have fulfillment centers there because they can't staff a warehouse at $15/hour there.

And all of their exploitative bullshit.

By government fiat? By the market? By lottery?

and individual states can adjust that upwards as they see fit. That is the current system. The only thing I would change is to make it automatically cola so it stops being a political football. That and set it to 15 now.

try running an actual economy that way .... I don't know, sounds like a recipe for collapse.

The inflation index is an objective measure of market forces. We’ve run our economy with a minimum wage for 80 years, we just don’t adjust it gradually as inflation erodes it’s value, we adjust it to regain parity with inflation sporadically based on political dynamics. So yes indeed an objective automatic re-indexing would make the min wage more predictable and businesses would be better able to plan for the future.

my ENTIRE Social Security payment to the IRS in quarterly taxes so fucking Jeff Bezos doesn't have to pay any.