What happens when you test progressive ideas in the real world to see if they are sound ideas? This is what happens:
When Washington [state] residents voted in 1998 to raise the state’s minimum wage and link it to the cost of living, opponents warned the measure would be a job-killer. The prediction hasn’t been borne out.
In the 15 years that followed, the state’s minimum wage climbed to $9.32 — the highest in the country. Meanwhile job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage point above the national rate. Payrolls at Washington’s restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. Poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years.
Raising the minimum wage is not a job-killer.
Next question?
Next question?
Why are Bob Casey and Chris Coons such assholes? Do they not realize everyone deserves good representation in court?
Don’t want to piss off Fraternal Order of Police.
Casey is a lily-livered chicken shyt from Pennsylvania.
The rest of them mofos…well….
You mean a constituency that probably hardly ever votes for them? What about every defendant having the right to competent and fair representation?
Your next question is better than mine was going to be on the same topic, which was:
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Sure, it’s not a job-killer in practice.
But it’s a job-killer in theory.
And if you treat macroeconomics as a species of moral theology, that’s what really matters.
I live in Washington. It is a bit more expensive to go to a restaurant here than it was in Arizona, my former home. Much of that has to do with the higher minimum wage. Those costs have to get passed on. But it’s totally worth it. Anyone here can get a job paying no less than $1600 per month gross for minimum wage work. This shows up in the community in so many ways. For my divorce clients, it means they can support themselves (if only barely). It means there’s more money and energy in the community. It feels like a healthy thing that those of us who can afford to eat out pay an extra few dollars, which in turn translates into a healthier, more dynamic community.
That’s happy news.
I keep wondering why all the efforts are being put into 10.10 – why aren’t we going for 15.15?
The $10.10 is a marketing and messaging number, a compromise between something memorable, and the exact figure needed to restore the purchasing power of the minimum wage back to what it was in 1968, which would be $10.70
See hare for details:
Raise the Minimum Wage.
It’s another pre-emptive compromise, aka “being realistic”.
If somehow you think the potential political coalition for raising it to, say $12.50-$15.00 an hour (typical rates for communities with living-wage ordinances) is actually larger than the coalition for raising it to a level where it has purchasing power to what it had in 1968, then yes, it’s a pre-emptive compromise.
Yep, it’s being realistic. We’ll get a raise to 10.10 far earlier that to 15.15, and as soon as we get 10.10 we get to keep pushing for 15.15, now with evidence from the economic benefits of 10.10 and increased political power from those who will have benefited. Most likely, pushing for 10.10 is going to get us to 15.15 faster than pushing for 15.15 directly.
Political change normally happens incrementally. Nobody’s going to promise not to go to 15.15 later to get 10.10 now.
Politics isn’t about policy.
It’s about self-expression.
And letting people know that you’re more progressive than they are.
Most likely, pushing for 10.10 is going to get us to 15.15 faster than pushing for 15.15 directly.
I disagree. Sometime this year, Seattle will enact a $15 minimum wage. Why? Because there was a $15/hr initiative on the ballot last year in a suburb here (that passed), and an underdog Seattle city council candidate who based her campaign on it (and won), and an initiative that’s ready to go (polling at 68% support) if city council doesn’t act in the next few months. So the pols are now following suit.
Turns out a lot more people get excited about and are willing to push for the $15/hr figure, because they can much more easily see what a difference it would make in their lives or the lives of people they know.
That kind of accountability to the grass roots is much harder to pull off nationally, of course. But incremental change is not always the best way to get to the long-term change you want. Sometimes, you just need to ask for what’s needed, not what’s “practical.” Nobody outside political wonks cares about what’s practical. But a lot more people can be inspired to care about what’s needed and what’s right.
Yep. What happens after we enact the $10.10 (if we ever do before 2020)?
“You want $15.00 now? We JUST raised it!”
A Federal minimum wage is federal.
Try your Seattle bill in the Rio Grande valley, or in Dothan, Alabama.
It’s a floor, not a ceiling.
You ask. Congress says no.
Now what’s the minimum wage?
Restaurants are cheaper in Seattle than they are in Boston. And the food’s a lot better, too. But a lot of that has to do with culture and proximity to a breadbasket region.
It also means more money available to pay their lawyer!
That’s not any kind of slam, but merely an example of trickle-up economics as opposed to the discredited trickle-down economics.
You’re absolutely right. Still, there’s less ability for people to retain attorneys in Bellingham, Washington than there was in Tucson, Arizona — probably because Tucson’s a larger city. The minimum wage differential makes up part of the differential but not all of it. Bellingham seems to not have quite the underclass that Tucson does.
It’s worth noting that the higher minimum wage impacts restaurant workers most of all because it applies to them too — even though they also receive tip income. In most states, including Arizona, they can be paid less than minimum wage.
I heard on the news that the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago, site of the original “CheeseburgerC cheeseburger Cheeseburger, no Coke – Pepsi” sells four thousand cheeseburgers a week. That’s one hundred per hour,assuming two flippers, a $2 an hour raise would increase cost four cents per burger. That’s not going to put anyone out of business. In a shop with lower volume, maybe 40 cents per burger, that might lose business IF the other shops didn’t have the same cost increase. IMHO, location and convenience and trendy reputation count for more than forty cents, otherwise Starbucks should be bankrupt.
Regarding bars and restaurants, the TOTAL minimum wage for one hour is equivalent to the cost of ONE mixed drink here in the Chicago Suburbs. Any owner who cut the number of servers to avoid paying eight bucks a day would be, to use an old expression, cutting off his nose to spite his face. Without adequate servers, patrons move to other establishments where they can get the waitperson’s/bartender’s attention. Sure they could go to automated servers, as neo-liberals keep telling us, but, I ask you, would YOU go to an automat for dinner and get your martini from a vending machine?
If “we” were ever the envy of the rest of the world, (and I believe we were in a limited sense after WW II) it was when we had a large and growing middle class. Beyond that there seemed to be a sense of community that is sorely absent today. Even the Professionals who had a higher standard of living than the rest of us seemed to know that “we are all in this together”. The gap was not so large that a middle class kid couldn’t aspire to get there when he grew up. Yupies were living proof one could elevate themselves economically. In my view, that’s the way it should be.
Of course it’s not a job killer. We already know this. The same “job-killer” arguments were trotted out for minimum wage legislation in the ’60s and ’70s, and subsequent studies showed that they had it exactly backwards; it creates jobs.
Nonetheless, the same argument has been trotted out ever since every time the topic comes up. And every time it changes, subsequent studies show the same thing – it’s a job creator. Moreover, consistently such measures are enormously popular with the public.
Fresh studies are always helpful. More helpful, though, would be a media that had the spine to debunk what are now, irrefutably, patently false claims.
Watch out that the new studies don’t come from the American Enterprise Institute.