This is how long the fight for 15 has been going on. We will finally get 15 when minimum wage should be 46 dollars

It's needs to be raised and indexed to inflation.

Raising it alone is not enough. We'll just spend another thirty years fighting for the next increase.

This is hiw businesses win this game. Whine about it to the point the amount you're asking isn't even enough, demand subsidies to increase wages and then give pretty much the same they paid a few years ago, pocketing the rest.

Sounds like even a minor general strike would get concessions pretty quick

Thats by design.

They took 10+ years to finally implement the 15 dollar minimum wage, explicitly so it would still be too low to live on by the time it was in, so they can turn around and go and lambast people for being "greedy" after getting what they wanted...while willfully obviating and distracting from the shit like rent and home prices that are getting furthe and further out of the average americans reach.

i think the last time i saw someone do the math, that by the time 15 is fully rollled out everwhere the minimum would need to be like 26-30 dollars an hour to keep up with ridiculous costs of everything.

Not bad, has a few problems though, I would never want to be a banker, even worse an investment banker, yet those fuckers earn way more than I want them to

Go cleaning staff! Also other slave like jobs. It's a little bit sad that to make money you'd need to actively make your life worse, but it's a great starting point. It would also make the story billionaires make up about working hard have a real point.

So voting? Too bad we never get to actually vote on these things. All handled by geriatrics that don't give a fuck about the current generations.

"The economy" is just money in motion. Like how electric charges moving create light, moving money carries and creates value in the exchange. When rich people soak up money from millions of people, they destroy all that value and the economy stagnates. When millions of people are given money and then spend it in millions of ways, the global economy improves.

We optimize our economy around stagnate money sitting in septic pools, when we should be trying to build an ocean of money that never stops flowing.

Studies have shown that when minimum wage increases you see increases all up the pay scale, and the closer to minimum wage the greater the increase is. The reason being why would I be an EMT for $17 an hour when I can go be a burger flipper for $15 and not have to get PTSD? So these lower middle class people making 20ish dollars an hour would see a pay bump for sure. Which brings me to my next point other people have pointed out, it should be a fight for 20-25 and hour.

It's like that cartoon of the guy with a whole pile of cookies telling the guy with one cookie "Look out! That immigrant wants to steal your cookie!" You can substitute any other demographic for the immigrant - socialist, burger-flipper, victim of medical extortion - and it still works.

Sure, I want a cookie too. I look out the window of my ground floor (first floor for the US) apartment at my neighbour watching a beautiful sunset through the wide glass front or his fancy first floor living room (second floor for the US) that seems to be about the size of my whole apartment, and I want that too. I see another guy move his Mercedes from the driveway so he can drive his BMW today instead, and I want a nice car too. I hear a colleague cursing the bureaucratic bullshit of having to do the property taxes for both his own parents and his in-laws on top of his own, and I can't help but feel a sting of envy at his luxury problems. I want property too. I want a nice cookie too.

But the critical word in all these examples here is too. My neighbour can have his apartment with the beautiful view, the other guy can have his cars (climate consciousness notwithstanding, we have bigger sinners to worry about), my colleague's parents and in-laws can have their houses too, and it's a wonderful thing that they have the support of someone helping them as they age and struggle with these things who also has experience from his own property. I don't want to take these things away. Hell, even when I see my landlady's constant vacation pictures that I know my rent is sponsoring, I don't begrudge her that vacation (though I do resent having to pay rent). They can all keep their cookies.

But if a corporate CEO gets a multi-million annual salary and another multi-million bonus while I got a "generous" thousand for an internship, he can well spare a cookie or a thousand. And even he pales next to private investors earning - whether through dividends or through their stock value increasing - just as much without even carrying any degree of responsibility. At least the CEO still does some work, even if it doesn't justify his salary.

To be clear, I still don't give a shit about the small-time middle-class pension fund investor. They participate in a fucked up system and I wish their pension would be funded differently, but if their investment pays my wages, I'll be content. Let them have their cookie. Hell, I'd even be content to let them have a second cookie, if that was the price for me and everyone else getting at least one.

I can cope with some level of inequality as a concession to the unfair and imperfect nature of humanity. It would still be better than having to pick up the crumbs off the table while watching as the big guy shovels another tray of cookies I baked onto his pile.

For anyone worried about their cookie: Let's work together. Let's topple the cookie-hoarders and distribute their cookies. Let's get you another cookie. And if I have a cookie of my own, you don't need to worry so much about me wanting to take yours. We all win.

Except the hoarders, but fuck them.

We have a locality pay scale BAKED IN to federal salaries. Federal salaries are established and updated yearly. Using this, we could get rid of a dedicated minimum wage number. All we need to do is set the minimum wage to the lowest amount a federal employee could be paid in that location, and you're all set. Federal minimum wage debate solved.

If the government can't find employees, then they need to raise the locality pay there, or bump up the payscale across the board. Same could be done for the minimum wage

Pinning it to the local cost of living and having it automatically adjust with inflation/rising rents/food prices/etc would be the rational way to do it, which is precisely why it's a non starter.

Because banning people you don't agree with from running for Congress is fascist, even if it's for what you believe is the right reasons. Everyone has a right to vote for who represents them, even if they're garbage.