Is the Republicans' fight against $15 an hour really to help small business ?

Their theory is that lower minimum wages will keep small business afloat.

Reality is that if they can’t pay a living wage to their employees, they are going to fail anyway.

That is indeed their talking point, but I don’t think it’s the truth.
And as you said if they can’t afford the wage then they most likely will fail.
It’s not up to the low end worker to work for a wage they can’t possibly live from just to keep the workplace from failing.

It’s in keeping with their general theory that the more difficult it is for working people to survive, the more prosperous and successful will be the country. It’s the overall resistance to ANYTHING beneficial to people who work. It doesn’t matter the topic—child care, universal healthcare, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, affordable housing—the answer is always “we can’t afford it, the billionaires are overtaxed”.

The average Republican? They believe it will hurt small business and will mean some people will lose their jobs. I don’t think Republicans are trying to be malicious. They believe people should fight for what they think they are worth and leave it between the employer and employee and the free market.

@SQUEEKY2 The issue is purely economics.

We the people have been under constant threat of more RIF’s, no raises, budget freezes and watched half our friends get fired since 2008. Thats our reality.

Its easy to just pick low lying fruit and believe we wouldnt want healthcare and childcare for all but who wouldn’t? Duh.

Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge American corporations will and must always choose profit over the employee cannot be reasoned with.

You must understand that throughout history slavery wasn’t about people who wanted to just be mean, it was for profit. And still is with modern day employees.

@KNOWITALL There can be both. Employees can be treated well and there can still be a profit. That’s the problem I see. Employers (some employers) will push employees like slaves. That is not only counterproductive in the end, but it is also immoral, and flies in the face of the golden rule.

Republicans (some Republicans) seem to not understand the backlash that awaits. It will be either unions, government regulation, or the masses voting against the interest of those in high places. The backlash eventually comes back in equal or greater force.

It is not just a question of profit, but how much profit. How much profit is really necessary, and should we not care about our neighbor and a balance in society that benefits us all, including the business owner.

Capitalism works best when it is done with integrity. Otherwise, you get big highs and low lows. The plantation owners, if they had never brought in slaves would have worked the fields more themselves and people would have shared in the work and the profit and there never would have been such a crisis. So much death, so much division. So much sorrow. Still playing out even today. It is exhausting.

@JLeslie Yes, but they are safe with their greed, protected by most of our government who feeds at the Big Bus teats.
The irony has always been party politics, so seeing people buy into that is painful to watch. Until we the people unite, they will continue to win.

Very true @JLeslie ,sad that a lot of big business only care for profit at all costs, it’s nice when you see some corporations actually get it you can be successful still bring in a profit and pay people a living wage.

@KNOWITALL I agree about uniting and the politics. Do you agree with what you wrote, or are you just explaining how a lot of Republicans view the topic?

@SQUEEKY2 I do believe it is difficult to fix. Both sides, Democrats and Republicans seem to be looking for a simple answer, and believe their ideas are simple, but the matter is complicated. Living wage is different across the country and most people I know did not make a living wage when they worked in high school or even first out of college. I guess I could have lived on what I made out of college, but it would not be living in a place I would have felt safe or been happy in.

@JLeslie I believe that more than doubling the federal mimimum wage right now, post-Covid, would be a detriment to our economy, yes.

And you’re right, our local economies are very different than San Francisco or other areas. Median incomes are widely disparate.

Maybe if someone did the math, we could see it more clearly.

@KNOWITALL Do you agree with raising the federal minimum at all? I support $12. $10 by June 2021, and then $12 by June 2022. The effective nationwide minimum wage (the wage that the average minimum wage worker earns) is $11.80 as of May 2019. Source. So, $12 does not affect most employers very much, and the people getting paid the current federal minimum are being taken advantage of in most instances. They don’t have a voice unless they organize, and I personally prefer to not have unions. The government is supposed to protect it’s citizens, and especially those who cannot protect themselves.

The argument that the free market will take care of it, meaning employers will pay higher wages to compete for employees, only works in some circumstances. We have small towns with very few employers or one factory towns. We have businesses that can collude. We have time in our country when supply of workers is very large and employers can take advantage of that. People are predicting the labor market will get much worse as technology gets more and more advanced. We shall see. That will create another set of problems that it would be good to get ahead of.

A living wage per region rather than a $15 an hour minimum wage?
You probably can live on less in east nowhere Alabama than say California.

@SQUEEKY2 So you agree it should be less than $15?

It is an excellent excuse, and is correct, verbatim.

@JLeslie In SOME AREAS it could be less yes.
NOT ALL!!!!

@JLeslie I definately support helping the lower income brackets be more financially secure.

I would want more educated opinions than mine to prove a mandatory wage hike is the form it should take. Right now.
Obama did a lot to help with double tax breaks, environmental tax breaks for home improvements, etc… Eventually yes, $10 would be a great start to compromise.

@JLeslie Tech is already replacing humans. That’s what makes the constant RIF’s possible.
My guess is Big Bus will liquidate assets this year big time to show that required profit post-Covid.

@SQUEEKY2 Ok, so you are against the $15 minimum wage, I am surprised to hear you say that. I would have guessed you agreed with it.

@KNOWITALL Which assets? I’m just wondering exactly what you see happening in the near future.

What do you you think might solve the problem? Higher wages will not help the unemployed obviously. In the past I have proposed a shorter work week and a younger Medicare age so more people retire younger.

@JLeslie Where did you come up with that?
I said some areas could have a lower minimum wage,that’s all I do support a $15 hour minimum wage.

@SQUEEKY2 A federal minimum means the entire country would have a minimum of $15 or higher.

@JLeslie I’m guessing a ton of empty office spaces and real estate. Good time to buy low maybe.

I really like rent rebates, student loan deferment or no-interest for many. You know disabled people still have to pay it, and get no taxes back? It literally bankrupts people in bulk.
Lower income limits for food stamps.

@JLeslie And I am fine with that,I just stated some areas could provide a living wage on less.
Other areas $15 an hour would provide a living wage.
Other areas it would NOT provide a living wage but still better than what there is now.

@KNOWITALL I had an idea for a TV show. It would be about buying commercial space and turning it into residential. I have seen it done on some remodel shows, but usually it is a one off in the TV series, and not the main theme of the series.

Disabled people I see in a different category. Depends on the disability though. I am ok with the government helping the disabled. Those who are physically and mentally able to work, I think it is important they do, especially when they are young adults, and I think it is important that people who work hard, full time, be able to afford life, and be safe, because I think it helps the mental health of the individual and society. Being able to pay for life give people self esteem and also encourages them to consider life’s choices. It will never be perfect, but that is my basic feeling.

Now, changing course a little, where I live people live inexpensively (although that is changing) have a ton of services and activities, and a lot of people get paid very low wages here, and most of us volunteer. The low wages work out, because many of the people are already on social security. The other thing is everyone here is part of that system, so it works sort of like a cooperative. I teach zumba and I can also take free writing classes, free salsa classes, shoot at the air gun range for free, or learn Italian. What doesn’t work very well is the people who live in the surrounding areas need more money and a lot of them work here too. Many of them are not retired.

@SQUEEKY2 Either I do not understand what you are talking about, or you don’t understand that a federal minimum means some areas cannot provide a lower wage, they will be forced to pay the $15.

I know that @JLeslie so a Federal minimum wage will have to do.

@SQUEEKY2 Why not make the federal minimum $14? If you are saying some parts of the country are probably fine with a lower wage, why not go lower? Less shock to the system.

If bosses can’t pay workers enough to live on with dignity and comfort, then they suck and capitalism sucks.

If making bosses pay workers even the bare minimum to live on makes their business go under, then they suck and capitalism sucks.

It doesn’t matter if it’s small businesses or big businesses. In any case, either workers aren’t getting enough, or the capitalist whines about not being able to run their business.

For big business like Walmart and Amazon, the only explicable reason for not paying good wages is because they’re sadistic assholes who are essentially exerting social power over workers. and keeping them disciplined and desperate through poverty wages.

The conclusion is is that capitalism sucks and bosses—big or small—are greedy whiney assholes.

The solution, which has been theoretically known and understood since the 1800s, is to get rid of bosses, and have workers control and manage their workplaces.

@Kropotkin Are there large examples of that in any countries? Where the workers control and manage their work places? Or, large business’s that do it?

I just did the math. Fifteen dollars an hour for a 40 hour work week is roughly $31,000 a year. I doubt if there is any place in the country where that would allow you to live high on the hog and in places like NYC and San Fran, it wouldn’t allow you to live at all. I don’t see any reason to whittle it down when there are multi-millionaire and billionaire CEOs in the country.

Republicans seem to want to defy anything the democrats come up with, even if it’s a good idea. I don’t know how people live on minimum wage in NY and California, Portland Oregon and Seattle. I know some that say minimum wage was meant for high school kids working at McDonald’s. Bullshit. Not every one has a high school degree or college degree. Not everyone has the opportunities that others have. These are adults trying to make it with families. And usually it’s minorities that are shafted. We have housekeepers in the hospital I work in making 7.25 an hour. They work harder than most other people with desk jobs, including me, doing work I would not want to do.
Give them a raise!

@janbb The way I see it, CEO’s won’t be making less because the minimum is raised. When auto unions made very significant inroads for higher wages and better benefits, management still kept taking their high salaries and those sakaraies got bigger and bigger just like the rest of the marketplace. Eventually, the math could not work anymore and the industry hit a breaking point. Not just because of wages and benefits, but other bad decisions that were made as well.

San Francisco and NYC has nothing to do with the federal minimum wage in my opinion. Their minimum is higher. The federal minimum has to do with AL, MS, Southern IL, and WV that @chyna mentions, to name a few, and all the places taking advantage of low wage earners. I couldn’t agree more that housekeepers in hospitals should make at least $12. Paying them $7.25 is horrible.

We should address the sky high salaries of the c-level as a country, but the only way I see to do that is a cap on earnings or shame. Shame, meaning a cultural shift. That is hard to do. There are some companies, some owners, who gave up income to raise the salaries of the people earning the least in their companies, but those are private companies, it’s a tougher mountain to climb for public companies. Although, when COVID hit, my husband’s company is public, and very early on they made back up plans that senior management would take a 10% pay cut if necessary to ensure lower level staff who are necessary workers would be able to be kept in their jobs. They never had to do it, their businesses grew during covid.

A wise friend said if you take minimum wage from the late fifties to today and accounting only for inflation minimum wage should be$22 and hour and yet fright wingers are screaming the sky is falling at $15.
The low end worker hasn’t even kept up for inflation.

@JLeslie There are worker co-ops in most countries, including the US. Mondragon in Spain is a large example. They’re better, but still operate within the capitalist system as a whole.

Semco in Brazil is an odd and extremely rare capitalist example where the CEO largely allows workers to manage themselves, share profits and set wages. The company was near to going bust before this radical managerial change was made. It’s better, but it is still largely to gratify the ego of the CEO, and relying on the goodwill of individual owners to do the right thing isn’t realistic.

@SQUEEKY2 Some things are cheaper or flat over time adjusted for inflation. Clothing and gas prices are in that category, but housing, food, and college education are some that have gone up. Anyway, it’s a mixed bag.

@Kropotkin I’m aware of some in America, I just wasn’t sure if the model worked well when it’s basically a standard in a country. It doesn’t seem like there is an example that we can look to and say that country is doing amazing economically and balance of wealth for all citizens we should copy their model.

@JLeslie Cooperatives are never going to become the standard model of ownership within a capitalist economy. They don’t suit the class interests of capitalists.

There have been cases here where workers tried to buy out failing businesses in order to run them themselves, only for the liquidation of assets to be preferred, or sale to another capitalist boss.

The efficacy of the model is largely irrelevant to it ever becoming more common. Co-ops have usually required some sort of state intervention or active promotion to become more widespread.

@Kropotkin I was willing to entertain systems that are not capitalist as a source of research. It seems to me the larger a business gets the more likely levels of hierarchy develop within the business and things become more and more unequal.

Ben and Jerry’s ice cream started with a business model that they wouldn’t make more than 5 times the lowest paid worker in the company. It wasn’t a cooperative per se, but they very much valued every level of work and had ideals. As profits rolled in they gave huge bonuses to employees, it’s a very nice concept that I like a lot in theory. Eventually, as they grew in size they left the model and eventually they sold the business.

Israel tried Kibbutzes, but there are very few left now.

Where I live people cooperate more than any other community I have ever lived in, but the developer also makes multi-millions.

@JLeslie so some things haven’t been affected by inflation, is an excuse to keep minimum wage low?
And gas low??
everything has gone up and industry always (well in most cases ) hands that cost to the consumer, since the early eighties the top have seen their earning go up 400% while the bottom have seen theirs go up by just 4% and yet it always the greedy bottom that is going to bring the country down?

Fine, go forward the $15. All or none I guess.

^That sounds like a petulant brush off coming from someone living in one of the most expensive gated communities in the US.

$15 was the compromise years ago. It never was sufficient, and now that there’s pushback, we see that the push needs to be for $25/hr.

@JLeslie, go back and look at @janbb’s math.

@chyna Get your facts straight. We are a very reasonably priced community. It is not a gated a community, it is a community with gates. It’s all public roads and anyone can drive in. The gates slow traffic so golf carts can cross more safely. You can still buy mobile homes where I live. Houses start around $160k and there are thousands of houses in the $200k’s. The Villages is one of the least expensive of its kind. The maintenance fee is $150 a month and includes the activities, pools, tennis, golf…

@canidmajor Was Obama wrong to compromise to get the ACA? Clinton to get Don’t ask Don’t Tell? I was annoyed with both of them, but sometimes compromise paves a path. The Palestinians should have compromised years ago when they had a great deal in front of them.

^ For fuck’s sake.

“Includes activities like pool, tennis, golf…” Yeah that’s a reasonable neighborhood.

@JLeslie You do realize that the proposed act will gradually raise the minimum wage to $15/hour over 4 years, don’t you? Here’s a link:

https://edlabor.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2021-01-26%20Raise%20the%20Wage%20Act%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

What @hello321 said.
What @chyna said.
What @janbb said.

@janbb Yes I do. It is similar to Florida. I voted for the one in Florida.. I wish it had been through 2022 to $12. Just my preference. I still voted for the $15.

@chyna Reasonable prices for all that you get. People see The Villages and think it is a fortune because of all the activities, they assume it is like other places with $50K equity up front and $500 a month golf fees. We have none of that. The news you all watch and read makes The Villages sound like a wealthy White Supremacists community. Your loss. Very similar to where Auggie and I lived when we were young. The town just had really nice amenities. It was master planned similar to The Villages, but The Villages is even more planned and organized.

Villages is cheap compared to where one of my relatives lives in Las Vegas (gated community, multimillion dollar homes), and non-gated suburbs of NYC around here where a small house is 500k and up. Even in Florida, there are way more expensive gated communities (for example, the community on the former Burt Reynolds estate).

Nobody is living in The Villages on $31K a year.

@canidmajor One of my close friends lives on $35k with her husband. We were just talking about it recently. She just filed to start social security and was calculating her expenses.

I pay $1,000 a month for my, utilities, maintenance fees, lawn care, property taxes, and home insurance.

You would have to add car expenses, food, healthcare, and mortgage if you have one to get a complete picture. 50% of people here have no mortgage.

@canidmajor: I was referring to @chyna saying it is “one of the most expensive gated communities in the US.” No, it’s not.

@jca2 Why are you telling me that?

@JLeslie so, yeah, what I said was true.

Well, we’ve kind of drifted away from the main point which is that $31,000 is not much money to live on for most people in the USA

@canidmajor I’m telling you that because, unless I was mistaken, your comment after mine, where I said the Villages are not that expensive compared to some regions of the US, you made reference to living in The Villages on 31k a year, which was not what I was getting at, so I’m clarifying that I was commenting on Chyna’s comment.

@canidmajor No it’s not. She doesn’t live in the cheapest house here. Neither do I. You can live here for $31k. I just told you I pay $12k a year for basics. How much is food and car? Let’s say car and food $1,000 a month. That’s high in my opinion. $24k a year. Then some cushion of course for extras.

Edit: Here you go do a quick home search. Set the filter to max $250k or whatever you want. https://www.thevillages.com/homefinder/?new&preowned&homesites&lng=-81.99355979584547&lat=28.87421165371721&lvl=0

Why are you upset if you can live here reasonably? It’s a huge town/city. 70,000 houses. 25 miles by 7 miles.

Oh, ffs, @JLeslie, my point stands. How many people raising a couple of kids could live in The Villages? What about taxes? It was a mostly general statement and you are trying to turn it into some pitch for a retirement home. I appreciate that your grasp of reality as far as the lives of most Americans is tenuous, at best, but trying to sell us all on the idea of $12/hr as a living wage is just not gonna fly.

This is ridiculous. I’m out.

@canidmajor I NEVER said $12 is a living wage.

The Villages is a 55 and up active adult community, kids under 19 can’t live here. There are family communities and their homes are less expensive, people pay a premium to live in The Villages.

The family communities don’t pay The Villages maintenance fee and cannot use our amenities, except they can use the golf courses, but they have to pay. The golf courses are open to the public. Some of the family communities have their own amenities like a pool, playground, tennis court, some don’t. They can of course come to the town squares and listen to the live music or scooter the DJ any night of the week.

The Villages built a charter school, it’s part of the public school system. People who live in The Villages built family communities can send their kids to the schools and also people who work in The Villages at least 20 hours a week can send their kids there. Here is a link to the schools, the schools get very high marks, the high school has an AA program so kids can graduate with a 2 year degree. https://www.tvcs.org/

Most people in The Villages own homes that cost $300—$500 I’d say. The prices have gone up the last few years like almost everywhere in the US. But, the cheaper ones are available. There are some million dollar homes also.

@JLeslie: “I wish it had been through 2022 to $12. Just my preference.”

@JLeslie: “I NEVER said $12 is a living wage.”

Glad to see you admit that your preference is that people work for a non-living wage.

@hello321 What I said was I want SOMETHING to get passed. $12 by 2022 is basically the same as $15 by 2025. It can always be voted on again when people see the $12 had no negative impact.

Moreover, I don’t think everyone who works needs to make a living wage. The minimum in America has never been a living wage in my opinion.

If someone helps me file and make copies for a few hours I think $12 is fine. If they help bag groceries I think it’s fine. If they lift the gates for cars where I live I think it’s fine. If they scan gym passes I think it’s fine. If they raise it to $15 that’s ok with me too I guess it’s not that I insist it be lower.

What I am disgusted by is someone doing housekeeping in @chyna’s hospital making $7.25 an hour. Let’s do whatever it takes to at least get them the $12. Right now they still are at $7.25! Are the Democrats going to push for a separate bill to raise the minimum wage? What do you think the chances are they get the $15 passed through the House? Could happen.

What countries pay a living wage as a minimum? Just curious. Not that America has to do the same as other countries, but still curious. Are any at the equivalent of $15 US or higher?

Sorry for a second post. I found this link for minimum wage for countries around the world. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/minimum-wage-by-country I realize some of the exchange rates might have changed since the time of the article. Still interesting.

I do think anyone who works a full time job should earn enough to be able to have all the basics. Roof over their head, food, transportation. Someone hired for a single easy task for a few hours does not meet that. Not that I think an hourly wage should differ whether someone does the task part time or full time, I think equal pay for equal work, but also a regular employee has a different worth than a brief temporary employee depending on the specific task.

Someone working full time in housekeeping for any business, hospital, hotel, supermarket, school, office building, certainly should earn a living wage.