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Wage protesters move through downtown
By adamg on Tue, 11/10/2015 - 5:15pm
Beth Gavin captured protesters demanding a $15 minimum hourly wage outside the Old State House this evening.
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what a disgrace!
Minimum wage should be between $10 to $10.75 an hour. $15 an hour is ridiculous and would increase the price that we pay for everything. After time many businesses that hired people for $15 would be out of business or they would have to lay off a majority of their employees causing many people to be unemployed.
$10.75?
How did you pick that figure? Please provide citations and links.
Dontcha know?
Reasonable + $4.25 = Disgrace
Based on the rent that mommy charges him
Because everyone has parents to live with, right?
Should the salary a business
Should the salary a business pays an employee take into account that employee's circumstances? Workers with children should be paid more than those without for the exact same work? A college student with loan debt should be paid more than one without?
Impressive!
You are quite the mutitasker. It's amazing that you are able to be part of a protest for something that has nothing to do with you (we all know you have an extremely high wage and are almighty) and man each and every post on this blog. You are a true inspiration. Plus you went to Harvard I assume and not NU.
NU?
This is about living wage for people who work in all jobs, not just academic ones, dear.
But thanks for playing. Work being a four letter word to your ilk, unless you are berating your help about how unreasonable it is that they get paid for theirs! Or dare expect to live on it without a subsidy from high-rate taxpayers such as myself.
I understand it's a failing on my part but
smug jerks who say "thanks for playing" deserve an especially bad day in the rain.
Sadly, these students are
Sadly, these students are misguided. Neither the MBTA nor its riders control the pay of adjunct professors at Northeastern. They should be bringing disruption and protest to Aoun, the president of Northeastern, who makes over $3 million dollars per year making him one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States. Google it yourself!
Public relations
You think you'd get three news helicopters, a gaggle of photographers and Dan Hausle to show up for some protest on campus about adjunct professors (and low-wage workers; it wasn't just the professors)?
Yes, you've thought this through
I understand you'll ask for a citation, so I offer it first:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/buffalo-wild-wings-ceo-sally-smith-on-minimu...
Raising the minimum wage causes employers to seek automation for low skill level employment roles, thereby lowering the opportunities for entry level employment. Most low skilled employees need a minimum wage job to earn skills to cause them to move up the economic ladder. The main problem with teen employment in urban areas is the increased minimum wage requirements in those areas.
The minimum wage is supported most fervently by unions, whose members earn much more than the minimum wage. The reason for this is so they can exclude entrants to the labor market thereby protecting the (low skilled employment rackets) "jobs" they currently (extract unnecessary levels of income from) "protect".
Happy to debate this one all day!
How about
A minimum wage scale based on age.
Something like 6 or 7 for younger children,then maybe up to 8 or 9 for later height school students, and gradually up to the full 10 or 12 or whatever the reasonable number is for a working age adult.
Then again, if we got rid of minimum wage entirely and had something like a negative income tax on the low end, the same thing would happen naturally and the burden of paying that minimum would be more spread out over the tax base instead of being concentrated on the direct employers of low wage workers and their often equally poor customers.
And I swear I'm a Republican.
sure
If you'd like to tell the high school kid who is going to college next year he doesn't deserve the same pay as the 45 year old (who is being paid an artificially inflated wage) flipping burgers next to him, go right ahead. I'm guessing he/she won't appreciate your reasoning and will go somewhere that pays him more.
And there's a key part of the problem right there
People who talk about minimum wage as a stepping stone to help teens get into the workforce don't realize/don't care that a) the minimum wage was initially enacted to protect people actually supporting their families and b) Still seem to think it's 1965, when good jobs at good wages for almost everybody were still a reality, as opposed to 2015, when you're seeing a graying of the minimum-wage workforce because, no, we no longer have an economy where that's possible, and growing numbers of middle-aged people have no choice but to compete with the teenagers for those burger-flipping jobs.
There was a time
when a floor/shift manager in fast food, retail, and service industries did provide a living wage you could raise a family on. That’s no longer the case until you get up to store manager, and even then you’re expected to put in double time.
We live in the richest country in world, in the history of all of the world. The economic output of Cali alone is the 8th largest economy.
How we structure our macro economy is a choice, and we’ve chosen to (mostly through inaction) to pay people below the poverty line and funnel the savings to the top/shareholders for short term gains. They then ship it off overseas, waiting for the moment their buddy gets voted in and lets them repatriate it without charge.
Similarly, we could choose to pay people, rebuild the middle class, and have a large population able to, you know, demand goods and services without needing taxpayer subsidies. You know, focus on healthy demand from people able to spend their money and grow wealth.
When was this magical time
Where a shift manager at McDonalds ( who now make about $10/hr nationwide) was able to support a family on that salary? What was the pay?
Constant wage erosion
When I was in high school, minimum was $3.35.
That $3.35 would, scaled for increases in the cost of housing and food, be over $11 an hour now.
When I was in college, my "shit" job paid $6 an hour.
My son's "shit" job pays $9 an hour, thirty years later.
I had a number of classmates who lived in my trailer court and whose single parents made not much more than minimum, and they got by.
Well
What do you think the increase is in people over the age of 25 that now work for min wage vs. say, 2002 (when min wage was $5.15/hr)? if you guessed 3.4%, you're correct.
That would be age discrimination
Really? Have you actually thought this through?
I thought people were supposed to get equal pay for equal work. Theoretically, anyway.
Better chances
for those starting out to get some job than having to compete with everyone else in that wage bracket.
Equality only goes so far. We don't let kids drive or vote. We don't even let the under 25 crowd rent cars without charging extra. And who says it's equal work? My optimistic guess is that the lower wage jobs won't be the same as the higher bracket jobs. You're not going to pay a grown man or woman 15 an hour to sit around and fetch you coffee once in a while, but you might pay a high school kid 5 or 7 or whatever an hour in the summer to do that.
Besides, we already have this thing called an internship for what are nominally salaried positions where the pay is next to nothing for kids filling those slots, and for all the bitching about it, it still happens and there are always applicants aging into that pool and aging out of it. Why not legalize and formalize something like that for hourly positions, where a uniformly high minimum for all just makes it that much harder to start out?
Cue the socialist rants about everyone deserving free money for being their own unique selves.
Well, since you asked for it
You'll be happy to see one of our Founding Fathers proposed a similar idea to universal, unconditional basic income. GASP! Does that make our country SOCIALIST!? But, Thomas Paine lived even BEFORE Marx and Engels! *headsplode*
Hell, even some of those right wing, unique selves support the idea. Look for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Right-wing_view
I'd personally love to see something like this take off in my lifetime. The best part is that if you want to make more money, you can get yourself a job and just go ahead and do that. And that's plenty fair.
Not my comment above
But paying someone $10 HR already cost an employer, depending on the job more than $15 HR.
These people should be demanding that we become more competitive as a nation so businesses keep job in the US. Jobs which historically require job training and a skill set, not a microwave.
We need people to have better access to vocational training not a automatic pay raise. Because if you don't increase the value of ones labor, but increase their income the market will eventually correct itself and their purchasing power will return to where it previously was, equilibrium.
Translation
Translation: These people should be demanding that we accelerate our race to the bottom, and that they be paid less so that the rich can profit more and nominally "keep job in the US" while in practice offshoring all their profits so they don't pay any taxes.
okay so
$10 to $11 with yearly increases. Everyone should get a raise every year or so but let's be honest could you see McDonald's paying everyone $11 or $15? Look at the outlook for Walmart with there increases over the next couple of years. The Walmart stock sank in one day and more and more people are shopping online "Amazon". These businesses would eventually replace workers with machines or have less employees with more workloads, leaving less people employed and then what happends?
Why $15 and not $10, $10.25,
Why $15 and not $10, $10.25, $10.50, or $11? Most small businesses would never survive!!!!!!!
So, you're paying the tab?
So, you're cool with us all throwing out tax dollars to these businesses to keep them open and keep them supplied with cheap labor? Because that's what a lack of a living wage does. It's a government give away to private enterprise to keep labor costs low.
If someone can't afford to run a business without signing his employees up on our dime, that's a business that shouldn't be around.
I think we can afford then 20 cents more to provide a better wage and get people off the taxpayer dime. Currently, were making a choice to socialize wages and businesses, and that's not good policy.
Living wage
Room in a shared apartment in a cheap neighborhood, monthly public transportation pass or a cheap car and reasonably priced food does not require $15/hour anywhere but NYC or SF assuming no student loan debt, and I highly doubt any minimum wage drones went to college. Sure, this is just surviving, but last time I checked this is cut-throat capitalist US of A, not uniformly mediocre socialist USSR - no one gets a Ritz penthouse by flipping burgers.
Side step
You side steped the question.
The facts are that we currently subsidize the huge gap in wages with welfare. If we did not, there would be economic and social turmoil.
This is a choice we make, low wages and high rates of welfare, or stop subsidizing low wages and force businesses to skim some of their profits and pay their damn workers.
The idea that businesses can just pass on this cost to their customers doesn't align with how economics works. That is unless they colude or wield so much market share that they price fix. And in that case, game over; since that is NOT capitalism.
Off the Gov dime?
First, it's YOUR dime. And second, the threshold for benefit qualification will unquestionably increase. And overtime will be back to suare one.
You have SEIU pushing for this in an attempt to raise their membership. We need federal tax and trade reform were quality jobs and job training is a priority. Not a short term fix.
It's very similar to our current view regarding undocumented aliens. Say we creat a short term fix and grant every person in this country illegally, legal status today. Well, the next day we now have people in this country illigally.
Instead if having to revisit this issue in 5-10 years, fix the root cause, shit education and a uncompetitive global job market.
The TPP is probably the worst peice of legislation this admin has put forth so far.
I bet if you ask every fast food worker if they'd rather keep working a BK or have the opportunity to have a career in manufacturing, they'd pick the manufacturing. Not to mention it would help every American out by raising our GDP.
But ya, lets just give people $15 to make French fries, that'll work.
So a business should pay
So a business should pay single moms more is what you are saying? Why should business or the government subsidize a lifestyle.
Starvation
Is not a lifestyle.
It sure isn't
Not in this country.
Poor people are also the most obese in the USA
Data for that assertion?
And while you're looking that up, could you also Google "food deserts" for one possible reason why some poor people might make bad food decisions?
Easy answers
The Atlantic has a story last week that threw some cold water on that argument, Adam. Urban neighborhoods that got real food options didn't see a change in eating behaviors.
Speculate however you like on what the real answer is, but my money is on schools and culture. Hiking up someone's minimum wage won't teach them to start making better choices, even if the extra cash in their pockets might lower the actual or perceived barriers to doing so.
Real life being an exercise in limitations and money not growing on trees, if you want to redistribute wealth, out it into the schools, not into minimum wage. You can't do both, but one can help solve the other.
Would you kindly provide a link to the article you mention?
When an ailing Pittsburgh neighborhood got a supermarket after 30 years without one, people ate healthier—but for surprising reasons.
http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/11/when-a-supermarket-changes-how-a...
Being a single mother is a
Being a single mother is a lifestyle? Oh, like being a deadbeat dad? A single mother takes works hard to raise her children... do you have something derogatory to say about that?
Let me guess
You are one of those people who says "why don't abused women just leave their abusers", right anontroll?
Excuse me SwrrlyGirl!! I am
Excuse me SwrrlyGirl!! I am sticking up for working mothers. Reading comprehension: check yourself. Adam, I'm begging you please post this. I am sick and tired of the hateful attacks on single mothers. Enough!
Thank you.
We the taxpayers are already paying the price of subsidizing non-living wages. Better that these kinds of jobs pay a low but living wage than a below-poverty wage that tax payers have to then support.
We're all supporting deflated costs for these things for cheaper goods. Here's the thing: these jobs are needed: shelves need to get stocked, cash registers supervised. We have a lot of people out there who for a number of reasons and circumstances aren't interested or able to performed skilled labor. So we can either cut them a subsistence check or we can pay them a living wage for this kind of work because the living wage factory jobs that used to gap these options no longer exist for the most part. Clearly these companies are finding this work needed; they just want to shaft them to make goods cheaper, increase shareholder value AND deflate prices.
Andddd
What happens when the cost of goods increases? Do we just bump them up to $20/HR? The federal poverty index increased absorbing the same people who just to took out.
So again, the temporary fix becomes and issue.
Also what happens to investors when a rate of return is unsustainable, they move markets.
You're promoting a very liberal financial proposition without understanding how markets work.
GAAP != Wealth of Nations
The idea of Wealth Generation is that we grow wealth at a faster rate than price inflation. Inflation does eat into the pie, but the pie grows faster and thus there is still more.
So you either don't understand economcis or you think Capitalism is just a sham for the greediest to get theirs; and we have a major problem if that's the case.
$15 an hour would bankrupt
$15 an hour would bankrupt small businesses,
that is why you won't see minimum wage increases in the baystate!
Like it has elsewhere?
You might check on that - MA isn't the only state, and Boston isn't the only city considering this. It has already been enacted in other parts of the country.
Oh, and "protecting small business" must be why all the huge chains and corporations are fighting it. Altruism. Yes.
Why is $15 magical?
Would you say an increase over the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr would bankrupt a small business that relies on it being that low in order to stay open?
Because we actually have a $8/hr minimum wage here in MA. So, there must have been a huge loss of businesses when we broke free from the federal number and raised it ourselves to $8.
Oh, but I lied. We're actually at $9/hr since Jan 2015. I missed the article in January outlining all of the businesses that shuttered due to the $1/hr increase.
Well, no matter, forewarned is forearmed. When it goes up to $10/hr on 1/1/2016, we'll just have to keep an eye out for all the closures and the Globe article that details all the misery the extra $1/hr brings in 2016...or the $1/hr it goes up in 2017 to $11/hr and McDonalds finally says it's had enough and pulls completely out of the state of MA.
Or is there some magical "out of business" value between $8, $11, and $15/hr that we haven't reached yet that you're warning us about with your powers of prognosticism that seem unfettered with the finer details like...reality?
Walmart
Bumped their wages a bit, look at what's been happening to their stock price. And we all know Walmart is awful and all, but that's what you clowns have in your 401k, along with a whole lot of other low profit margin companies that will go down the crapper when their labor costs go up by 25-50% wit no increase in productivity. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't want to see my retirement savings wiped out because a bunch of burger flippers think they're somehow worth $15/hour.
Correlation != causation
That's not why, anon. Google "People Express". Many a corporation has created conditions that it could not itself survive when they were taken to their logical conclusions.
Google
P/E ratio. Then take a look at your 401k fund holdings and figure out what will happen to the P of all those WMTs, YUMs, MCDs, etc when E goes down.
I don't care about this. I
I don't care about this. I want people to be paid living wages, regardless. Plus, my 401k fund managers are professionals and will dump these stocks at the first sign of trouble.
Lastly, you'd better diversify your portfolio if you're only invested in companies that pay mostly minimum wage. Diversification of assets and industries is the key to stability. You might even consider investing in a fund that cares about social and environmental welfare. Shocking, I know, that capitalism and justice are able to play nice with each other. Contrary to your zero sum analysis.
this is really funny
You really think they're that smart?
Yeah, cause I chose the funds
Yeah, cause I chose the funds.
I've got news for you
You're not that smart either. Nothing personal - nobody is. Not you, not me, nobody.
Funds will underperform their benchmark by about the level of their fees. Over a long enough period of time 80-90% of funds (assuming they survive that long) will underperform. The performance of the remaining 10-20% is effectively randomness and the law of large numbers at work.
The last equities "superstar" manager, Bill Miller, blew up 15 years of work in about a year during the financial crisis. Local rockstar at Fidelity Contrafund Will Danoff has underperformed the S&P by about 0.25% over the last 5 years - and note that's a period where his growth style of investing has been in vogue. If value stocks come back - and they will - he's toast.
Buy a good mix of low cost index funds - when one becomes too small a piece of the portfolio - buy more. When one becomes too big - sell some. If you don't know how to do that part - hire someone to do it for you. If your average fund cost is over 0.5% you are doing something wrong. About 0.25% is your target (and if you are paying an advisor over 0.25% for any significant amount of assets, you are also getting ripped off).
I quite literally "wrote the book" on this.
I buy index funds.
I buy index funds. And then when I thought I forgot all about it, you pull me back in.
The only index fund I bought....
... in spring that it is NOT underwater is one dedicated solely to Japanese stocks.
$15 wage
These folks do realize that $15 per hours for a 40 hour week kicks them off benefits. Just ask the folks in Seattle. So be careful what you wish for.
What I wish for is for people to argue from facts
The "Welfare Cliff" is a Fox News fairy tale.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/07/23/fox-cites-misleading-anecdotes-a...
Do the right thing-Pay the rate!
It should be set at $15.00 and indexed to the cost of living every year for the Commonwealth. Everyone who is willing to work deserves to be respected with a decent wage that allows them to live appropriately. What are we a bunch of scrooges?
Bro you know what else is indexed
The cost if goods and the cost of living.
Yes
We, unlike you, work for a living. Also, we're already paying ridiculously high taxes that are subsidizing those who are flipping burgers instead of getting a real job - are you really naive enough to think taxes will go down if burger flippers start getting $15/hour instead of getting the $7-$10 that the market is currently dictating? Your taxes will remain the same, prices will go up, and your retirement account will take a big hit once retail and food service industry stocks tank due to shrinking profit margins and drag down the rest of the market with them. Is that what you want?
"Everyone deserves a decent wage"
It's a lovely notion but money doesn't grow on trees. There's no free lunch. With such a large increase in wage, businesses must raise prices, cut jobs, or both.
Can't touch
Those profits, right?
You can
But then the value of that funny thing called 401k will go poof. I know it doesn't matter much to the social justice heroes here who are patiently waiting for their daddy to keel over and leave them his $2.5M Newton mansion and $10M or so cash, but it does matter a lot to those of us without the above option.
Old State House?
First big shout out to the uncrowned Queen of Brighton for the picture.
Second, the Old State House really hasn't been a government building since about 1800. I hope the protesters didn't think the Bostonian Society has a great influence on wage levels in the area. Snark.
Look, you don't think Thomas
Look, you don't think Thomas Hutchinson cars about wage increases? :)
That intersection is one of the more important ones for the area and blocking it causes the most attention and chaos. They also were are Faneuil hall, but not inside
They should've worked P/T
They should've worked P/T from age 18-22 and gotten a finance degree at the same time. Boom, problem solved, they'd be making 70k now in the financial district.
I'm sorry to say but I don't
I'm sorry to say but I don't think someone working in fast food should be making $15/hour. I've been working for 18 years in a low salary field and make just a little over that. I've worked very hard to get to this point. I started with minimum wage and earned $ slowly. It seems a majority of people live outside their means. Obviously you can't afford to live in the city if you're working at McDonalds.
15 years ago I was living in
15 years ago I was living in Cambridge and watched these whiners (well, a previous generation of them) protesting at Harvard about a "living wage." They were earning $10.25 or $10.50 at the time and demanding a 25c/hr raise. They were marching and protesting and had all the nitwit trust-fund college kids on their side, making it look like it was some huge important social movement when it was over a bloody quarter an hour.
I was making $14/hr doing IT work at the time, putting half that in the bank, and living just fine (acceptable apartment in Cambridge, all bills paid with no trouble, monthly T pass, more than enough food, etc.) on the other half. IOW I was living on $7/hr.
I think you can figure out what I thought of idiots complaining $10-something wasn't enough to "live" on and an extra quarter would make all the difference.
Replace them with robots and be done with it.
Careful now
Outing yourself as a dangerous intellectual will get you thrown into a gulag up in New Hampshire when the revolution comes.
Your Annectdote Is Dated
15 years ago, at the time of your story, rents in the area were 1/2-2/3 what they are now. And that's not the only thing that is more expensive now. And just because you were underpaid does not mean everyone else should be to. You should have been making perhaps $20 an hour at that time.
The more money businesses pay workers, the more money workers make, the more money workers spend, the better businesses do.
Well....
Unless either one lives in subsidized housing, or they own their home(s) outright.
Adam I own two small business
One of which happens to be a pizza place (redacted for obvious reasons). Hypothetical, we live in Boston, obviously! Your kid wants to get a job and earn extra cash while in college. Why should I pay him $15 which really after taxes is $20, seeing he has no experience, he's still in his teens and has no value added. Because I'm a nice guy?
What do you pay your longterm employees?
The adults, the ones who are actually supporting their families, rather than kids looking for some extra spending money?
The problem is that there are a lot of people in that position these days, in a way that you never would have seen 30 years ago.
And?
Should small business owners who might end up with perhaps $70-80k a year for themselves while paying their burger flippers current market rate instead pay an artificially inflated rate and end up with $30k instead just because burger flippers thought they could raise a family flipping burgers? Do you think they'll just settle for $30k and leave everything as is, or will they raise prices, fire some of their employees, or perhaps simply close shop?
Why is the business owners responsibility
To pay someone with an adult, who hasn't advanced his/her set of skills past those of a high school student, a higher wage?
Yeah, fuck them poors and stupids!
Let's not pretend that same business will suddenly pay them better wages. No, the employee will leave for greener pastures and the employer will look for new subsidized low skill labor.
If there's a job, it should pay a living wage where taxpayers do not have to subsidize it with the EITC or welfare. It's really that simple.
While we're at it, why don't we lower the taxes on businesses with under 50 employees and repatriate all the corporate cash overseas and tax it at top rates.
The problem for small business isn't that paying a fair wage will kill them, its that big buissiness has so stacked the deck against them that need welfare to survive. Time to reshuffle the deck.
Uh huh
And what's gonna be your answer when that one-time money tree has been chopped down for firewood, comrade? Put all the bourgeois bankers and lawyers and engineers to work flipping burgers at minimum wage?
Yes
This is not USSR - businesses will pay $15 an hour to someone who brings in at least $15 worth of value to the company, and $8 an hour to those who bring in $8. Actually, had this been USSR, everyone would have been getting $8 regardless of their contribution. In the end, everyone is uniformly poor and uniformly mediocre.
So taxpayers should?
So taxpayers should foot the bill because they have a business that isn't doing enough business to pay their employees without paying a wage that puts them on the dole?
No
It's not the taxpayer who should foot the bill, nor should it be up to the business owner to pay inflated wages for a job that could be done by someone with zero skills. It's the responsibility of the worker to increase their skill set over the course of their life to make themselves more attractive to an employer and demand a higher wage.
We tried that
We tired that, it didn't work.
More adults have moved into low skill, low paying work then ever, even as productivity, profits have skyrocketed. All while education levels have increased as well.
To put it another way, you don’t need a Master degree to be a secretary because the job is demanding enough to warrant it. People used to do the same work with a HS diploma just fine. The work is relatively unchanged, and some might argue easier with advances in technology.
You now need a Masters to be a secretary because your employer can demand it in an environment where entry level wages are below the poverty line, driving down the wages of Master degree earners and everyone else not in the top 1%.
He said pizza place and not
He said pizza place and not State Strert Adam. With no education or skills 15.00 and hour is almost enough to make me quit my job I need a masters for to deliver pizzas or flip burgers...
The real question
Why are these adults flipping burgers or tossing pizzas for $9 an hour- a few examples
1) Friend of mine is a contractor advertising jobs from $30k with little/no skills up to $70k for trades - and can barely even get people to respond
2) There is a nationwide shortage of truck drivers - average salary about $41k and climbing
3) Talked to a RR industry lawyer a couple years back about a major company that was trying to hire thousands of people a year - willing to train - but couldn't find enough people that could pass the drug test
4) Globe article reports Tufts recently said they have tech spots going unfilled because they can't find people with the skills (apparently available through community college)
5) On Republican debate Rick Santorum brought up a stat (fact checkers go ahead) that there are 250,000 openings for welders making $50k-$100k. A guest of his in the audience that owned a manufacturing biz had a job opening in each department that he couldn't fill.
6) Another friend of mine owns a food biz locally. I guarantee you none of his employees make $9 an hour - they probably don't make $15 either - but with a roommate or two sharing expenses - I'd bet several of them have household income ranging from $50-$75k or more or 2-3 people.
$9 is a start or an extra job. It takes very little beyond some effort and perhaps some sacrifice (not easy to be a truck driver) to easily make double that.
1) Blame the people who think
1) Blame the people who think sanctuary cities are such a great idea. Why hire your friend when an illegal immigrant will do it for less?
*sigh*
Because it's a law the Commonwealth should enact, aimed at establishing a baseline of "If you work 40 hours a week, you should be entitled to live above the poverty line." Which the federal minimum wage does not even approach. If you can't pay your employees that much, then you're expecting the rest of us to pick up the bill for the difference, to which I respond "If you can't afford to pay your employees what they're worth, then you deserve to go out of business."
I have reason to suspect that you do not understand taxes, wages, or indeed any part of Econ 101.
We can legislate away poverty
We can legislate away poverty just like that? Why stop at just enough to get by? That's cruel. Let's pass a law that everyone who works 40 hours a week should be a millionaire!
Slippery slope need not apply
When has "why stop if the solution works" ever been the right response to anything? What happens if I ask you the same thing?
Well, hell, you're right! We *can't* just legislate poverty away by raising the minimum wage. So, why stop where it is now? Why not just get rid of the minimum wage and let the corporations decide how much payroll they want to pay. If people start getting trapped in some sort of dystopian company town scenario it's only because they weren't motivated enough to get out of their shitty situation in life...
Because his monthly cell bill is $80+ alone
How can fast food workers live without the latest $650 phone every year and gigs of data every month to watch videos, movies, shows, selfies, chat, facetime, Facebook, Tinder, Twitter, Uhub.... kicks, threads, shades, booze, and incidentals like food and shelter?
Ah, the old BUT THEY HAVE CELL PHONES cannard
I dare you to find a way to get a landline phone for less than $60 a month.
Then, find wireless (no cable) on top of that for less.
Cell phones are the cheapest way to have a phone and internet. Period.
Also consider that some of us wealthy people gift phones to less affluent relatives for birthdays and holidays and put them on our family plans for $20 a month. You can buy used 3G and 4G phones for a lot less than new now, and get pay as you go plans.
Funny how people who have plenty of money think that they are such experts on what being poor costs.
The way to have "plenty of money"
is by not spending it. I'm still using an Apple iPhone 3GS, my Q6600 (OC to 3 GHz) desktop is 7 years old, my Sony W900 monitor bought at bankruptcy auction was made in 1999 (and betters LCD at dynamic range). But when it came to driving safer at night, I recently spent the money for Zeiss DriveSafe eyeglass lenses/coatings.
[edit: I'll add that I still have not bought a tablet or replaced my broken laptop, or bought Night Vision goggles Army Rangers in Afghanistan have that Swirly expects all drivers to use to see pedestrians and cyclists at night dressed in all black with no lights or reflectors]
[edit 2: Microsoft: GET OFF MY LAWN. I don't want your free Windows 10 upgrade. I don't care if 110 Million people already did. W7 is just fine and I don't want to buy more RAM. ]
It's not "people with plenty
It's not "people with plenty of money." It's people of moderate means shocked at what "poor people" are able to afford for themselves. It makes those of us who do without to save money feel like schmucks because our tax money subsidizes that lifestyle.
You've never actually been poor, have you?
Cell phones are hardly markers for wealth these days, and not everybody who lives in those "poor" neighborhoods is actually poor.
Hey
I'm a girl, why do you make these unnecessarily gendered assumptions? I wouldn't want to work for someone like you who assumes anyone capable of working is a man.
I recently ate at the McDonald's
just out of that aerial photo. Those workers are already overpaid.
The one on Washington Street?
I ate there recently as well, and if anything, I'd bet they're underpaid, given what they have to put up with from the drug addicts who seem to congregate there.
So I take it everyone
So I take it everyone who is for a $15 per hour minimum wage is willing to pay 60% more for a cup of coffee, a sandwich or 60% more at a retail store? This of course includes those who are out there protesting for the increase in the wage... they will pay more for everything in the end. It will be like not getting a raise at all... Good luck.
60%
Only if you assume wages make up 100% of your average coffee shop's total expenses. I don't run a coffeehouse, but I suspect the percentage is a bit lower than that.
true but...
When I did my stint as a manager for a certain fast food chain years ago, labor cost was kept at roughly 30% that of daily/weekly sales. Judging by the increase in the prices at this chain over the years, it is clear that the 30% labor cost is still the norm.
Such a huge increase to the minimum wage will be passed on to the consumer if the business is expected to keep the same level of service - we will all pay more in the end and getting no where as a result.
Stop pulling numbers out of your ass
Look, why not just say the price of coffee would go up 2000% in order to support your opinion that you don't want the minimum wage to go up? I mean if numbers are meaningless, 2000% sounds a hell of a lot scarier than 60%...or were you trying to strike that middling ground of "scary, but still seemingly plausible enough that people will just accept what I say and agree that they don't want to pay 'more'"?
http://www.futurity.org/fast-food-minimum-wage-971132/?utm_source=Futuri...
Purdue University researchers found that a jump to $15/hr for fast food workers would equate to a FOUR PERCENT increase in restaurant prices. FOUR, not FORTY or SIXTY. And that's restaurant prices. A previous study found the same for food prices, but for overall prices the increase would be 0.4%...not even a single percent!
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/inequality/the-effects-...
And further to the point, more and more places are starting to realize that even in a shitty fast food job, there's institutional knowledge about how their particular location/clientele, etc. operate the best. Losing your workers because you pay them the bare minimum and then act as if they're completely interchangeable with anyone who comes in off the street tomorrow means losing that institutional knowledge and ultimately that's lost value as your new staff wastes even more time learning all the pitfalls your past staff already ran into and learned to avoid/workaround. So, keeping workers paid better so they don't seek other opportunities and even going further to letting them see some of the profits of their work through profit sharing or other equity type methodologies means they remain more invested in helping you make more money in the end (less wasted product/costs, less downtime on the job, less customer service complaints). You end up doing much better as a whole when everyone involved is well-compensated and invested in the team and not more worried about whether they can afford to buy bread that night or whether the landlord can wait a week for the rent.
Yes!
I would rather pay more for goods and services, and have the satisfaction of knowing that the people that manufacture my clothes, and pour my coffee, are treated well.
Let's reframe the discussion
Arguing about $10/hr or $15/hr makes it seem like we're arguing over pennies and let's people get away with suggesting stupidly low wages for people attempting to survive. Let's talk about survival and how much it costs to live in Boston.
Rent in Boston is high. On the *low* end, areas like Dorchester, Allston, Somerville are still averaging about $900-1000/mo/person (https://www.jumpshell.com/posts/average-rent-in-boston). That equates to $10,800-12,000 per year in rent alone. In other words, for $10,800 in rent for the year you have to make a minimum of $5.20/hr (2080 is 40 hrs/week for 52 weeks/year) JUST to rent a room somewhere close to where you work so you can take the T or walk or bike and not need to afford the extra costs a car requires.
It's recommended that you keep your rent/housing costs to 30% of your annual salary. In order to do that, we'd be at $17.33/hr or $36,000 in annual salary. But let's add in some of the basic necessities on our own to your $900/mo rent ($10,800 annual) rather than just assume the 30% number. Your utilities (nothing fancy) will run you about $75/mo if you want a phone (cell plan or otherwise), electricity, and maybe even cable/internet although that would probably be $50 on its own, but we'll get it in the $75/mo because of all the roommates you have to live with. It's another $75/mo for the MBTA LinkPass so you can use the train and bus since you don't have a car (or its expenses). Let's also say you live close enough to Shaw's or even Market Basket and are able to beat the average of $350/mo on food/groceries and stick to a tight $250/mo instead.
We've added $400/mo in groceries, utilities, and transit. So your expenses are now $1300/mo with rent too. That's $15,600 for the absolute bare minimum to eat, sleep, get to and from work and keep your lights on assuming heat is included in your rent. No kid, no taxes, no car, no difficult circumstances like an illness/medical bills/repair, no vacation/time-off, no entertainment, no clothing (used or new), no eating out, no internet, no retirement savings.
$10/hr is $20,800 per year. That's barely $5000 more for everything else in life over the entire year than that meager existence as laid out above where you are sharing a room, barely eating, and have absolutely zero complications in life otherwise. It's a fucking joke to suggest someone living in Boston could make due on $10/hr. It's a fucking insult to suggest someone living in Boston could actually break the cycle of poverty and achieve anything other than survival on $10/hr. Oh and until Jan 1, the minimum wage is $9/hour, or $18,720/yr. It goes up to $10/hr in the new year, or $20,800/yr. If rents go up another 4-5% next year as they've done steadily since 2009, then $600 of that $2080 increase in the minimum wage is already going into keeping pace with rent alone.
$15/hr, or $31,200/yr is completely reasonable as a *minimum* for survival in Boston. And that's assuming you find a job that pays an hourly wage and will pay you for 40 hours/week. Any reduction in hours for any reason will shrink that annual number...but the costs don't shrink.
Ok, let's work with you numbers
Out in the inner suburbs, like Arlington or the Belmont/Watertown line, it's possible to rent about 600-700 square feet for under 1500 (about five years ago it was under 1100), within walking distance of groceries, a bus to Cambridge, and everything you'd need to live without a car. Most of that housing stock is 3 deckers or "garden apartments" so it's entirely reasonable to have that split over 1 or 2 additional people so that you cost of the bare minimum housing drops from 1k a month to maybe 600.
So yes, it's getting harder to live within city limits on 10 or 7 an hour. But there are options for people to do so, and raising the min wage will just raise the prices, both because of passed on wage costs and because people will now be able to pay more.
It's been well documented that basic services cost more in absolute terms in urban ghettos than elsewhere, and raising min wages will not fix that.
Then work with MY numbers
Find me ONE example of a unit in Arlington for $600/person. If you do, great...now find 100,000 more, because everyone in the situation I described needs a place to live too. Oh, and when you're done with that, get started on where they can put the baby's room, etc. Because I was giving you the *rosiest* situation above and it was STILL not making any sense. The idea that you're going to have everyone living on minimum wage move to ends of the furthest bus routes just to make ends meet rather than raise the minimum wage a few bucks is ridiculous. And then how are they supposed to get to every minimum wage job in the city from Arlington? Take a bus to the red line to the orange line to a bus in some cases? A 1.5 hour commute for a minimum wage job? Come on...
100,000?
1. See my post below. I lived in a complex off Mass Ave in Arlington that had 1200 1br's and 1600 2brs, not far from one that had 900 1brs. Not ideal for two strangers to share a 1br, but for certain values of "desperation" more than adequate.
2. If half of the supposed 1/6 of the city of Boston that's living in Dickensian levels of poverty found housing outside of the city, prices within the city would drop. Yes, some of those units would get rebuilt and resold to rich young hipster types at inflated prices, but there really are only so many of those in the metro area, so that means housing in other places would get cheaper.
3. 1.5 hours is a subjective sacrifice. In my otherwise privileged youth, I did work a minimum wage job or two to pick up some quick cash alongside people for whom it was more of a necessity. To them, it was the cost of the commute, not necessarily the time of it, that made the decision.
4. Kids and such. OK, you've got me beat. If you're making min wage, a single parent, have no family to help take care of the kids, and spend 2 hours a day getting to your dead end job, I'll admit, it: you're up the shit creek and nothing I said helps you. My answer is that if you've got a finite amount of cash to spread around, spend it on preventative measures like education, policing, and tax incentives for not-big-box-retail business. Don't blow it all on a bandaid for those who need help today (but really needed it yesterday) at the expense of creating more need tomorrow.
But then again encouraging and enabling personal initiative and self-sufficiency will make it harder to buy their votes with token gestures the next time around, so there's that going against it.
Not sourced in reality
Well, I can't argue with bullshit like "2 strangers should share a 1 bedroom because they're desperate (rather than be paid enough to afford living a more dignified life)" and "the supposed 1/6 of the city of Boston that's living in Dickensian levels of poverty" (psst, I was rounding DOWN. About 20% of Boston lives below the poverty level: http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/01cef762-956d-... ) and "make it harder to buy their votes with token gestures" when we're talking about REAL numbers of people who can't afford childcare, clothing, or even the ability to leave the city for a week to do something other than slave away at their job let alone rent, food, and utilities on the lowest allowable paychecks! These people work the entire time the polls are open, they don't go vote!
You're entirely detached from reality! You think an increase in minimum wage would create appreciable votes?! For whom in MA? The Democrats?? Like they need to buy votes with minimum wage increases in this state??
You clearly aren't interested in rationality, so I guess we're done here.
And I can't argue
with a "right" to go on vacation somewhere far and a "right" to child care.
No one has a right to anything other than the air they breathe, words they say, and the thoughts they think.
Everything else is earned. If it's too hard to earn, the failure is on us for making it hard, and the onus is on us to remake the mechanisms of upward mobility that have existed in the past. That's different from patches and bandaids that steal from the 80% to give to the 20% by labeling burger flipping as a middle class vocation.
I don't want to see the next generation of burger flippers agitating for a 30/hr min wage. I want to see the next generation becoming welders and skilled machinists and computer programmers. You want to take my money for something, take it for that.
Slippery slope is a fallacy
Why would it be acceptable to argue for a $30/hr minimum wage? Does it cost $62,000 to live in Boston? No, it doesn't. Maybe in Monaco the burger flippers need $30/hr. I want to see the next generation do whatever they want. Setting the minimum wage at $15/hr doesn't somehow make more people aspire to the lowest paying jobs. It makes those that have them worry more about how to improve themselves to get out of those jobs than worrying about how they're going to even be able to afford the fast food they serve the rest of us.
You want the next generation to aspire and succeed to more? Great, then they need the breathing room to even CONTEMPLATE that! Right now, they're not even surviving without help. They can't even think about what life could be like if they could become a welder or how to focus on their kids' education so that kid can succeed at programming instead of screwing up in school because mom and dad are always cleaning floors and flipping burgers. You claim to want these goals but you stab yourself in the eye rather than look at the problem because you think that these are somehow greedy people rather than people so far in the hole you wouldn't even recognize what that life is like.
AND nobody's "taking your money" by raising minimum wage! If anything the ripple effect will likely mean more money for you too! Plus, with fewer people requiring medicaid and food subsidy benefits because they'll be able to afford to pay their own way, "taking your money" may even go down OR go to exactly the kinds of programs you're requesting since it won't have to go straight into their pockets to pay for ramen instead! If you seriously want people to do better, you have to make sure their minimum requirements are met for living first!
Interesting
You really do live on a different planet.
Our two bedroom in Arlington, which was a ten minute walk from a bus and had one car parking, was up to $1200 a month when we left.
In 1998.
Even then, moving to a smaller place would still have cost us over $900 a month. The last time I spoke with my old landlord, two years ago, he was getting $2100 for the 800 square foot unit.
Look a little further from the heights
All of one year ago I lived in a place (by the bike path!) that had started out under 1200 and gradually worked its way up to about 1400. With parking, minutes from two bus routes, and in a complex of about 100+ other units like that.
The same company owned another (shabbier-quality) smaller complex a few blocks away and advertised it for 900 for 1br with parking. In 2011.
Years before that, when I was looking in Belmont, I found the top attic of a 3-decker for something like 900 because it didn't have a full-sized stove in the kitchen, but also with a parking space, and steps away from the bus.
I didn't end up living there, but it existed. It did take me a month of trolling Craiglist to find it, but it existed.
You're not paying attention
$900/mo in 2011 will run about $1100/mo in 2016. The Boston area has seen rent increases on the order of 5% annually since 2009.
Also, your anecdotal nonsense isn't what we base our policy decision on. Random Belmont apartments don't a housing policy make! Everyone making less than $30k/yr can't live in your anecdote...but hey, maybe there's a market for you finding poor people housing! You should start your own business. I'm sure with all their spare cash from you finding them cheap rent, they can make you a millionaire in no time!
OK
so the latest census numbers I could find show that about 500,000-600k people in the Boston area are in under 30k households, and you're right, they aren't going to cram into a pair of (really about a hundred or so) cheap apartments in a few towns.
So where do they live now? The census numbers seem to have stayed fairly steady over the past couple of years. There aren't 500k homeless in the region. From which I conclude that there is, in fact, plenty of housing on the low end there will be so long as there's 500k paying customers ready.
Now this "business" you speak of. Both the federal and MA governments run one like it. Maybe you should be agitating at them for doing a better job of connecting low income people with low-priced but still "market rate" housing instead of pushing for policies that will make it that much harder to employ those 500k when the cost of doing so goes up.
Check out French policy. There, the unemployment is at 20% because of similar worker protection statutes that make it practically impossible to fire anyone, so few people are given the chance to try out. If memory serves, Sarkozy incurred untold wrath when he tried to push through a "trial period" policy where you could be fired within the first year of employment. Didn't happen. Unemployment still high. Be careful what you wish for.
Where do you pull these numbers from?
French unemployment is just over 10% and that's close to the record ( http://www.dw.com/en/french-unemployment-rising-to-record-high/a-18491158 ). Sarkozy hasn't been relevant since Mitt Romney was running for president. We aren't France. We don't have France's economy. We don't have France's payroll tax (over 40% to our 5%). Something like 25% of their workforce works for some level of government...we have LESS THAN TWO percent!
None of that has anything to do with minimum wage either and going to $15/hr doesn't somehow put us on a collision course for France's situation.
Going back to the poverty numbers, where are you getting 500,000-600,000 in poverty? Are you talking about the Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT Combined Statistical Area?? That includes cities like Lawrence, Fall River, Worcester...
And the state has a poverty rate closer to 12%. Boston proper is the one around 20%. And Boston proper only has about 600,000 people *total*. The link I gave you from the BRA tells you which neighborhoods the 100,000-120,000 people living below poverty are living in. And basically they're living in subsidized housing. 74% of Bostonians below the poverty line are using a federal, state, or local housing subsidy to be able to afford to live ( https://www.tbf.org/~/media/TBFOrg/Files/Reports/2014%20-%202015%20Housi... ). And look, it's not hard to find and read this data, but you have to look for it instead of spouting bullshit.
$525 for a room in Arlington
in a shared house with 4 other people AND off-street parking near the center. Sure, with heat and utilities, that's about $600/month. There are not many of these in Arlington, but they do indeed exist. Waltham has them, probably more, along with Watertown. Better yet, long-time shared houses are usually already furnished with left behind or shared items. These are where the deals are because landlords are happy to keep such stable tenants rather than jack up the rent and risk having a place go empty for a month, wiping out any potential gain.
not quite, at least a couple years ago
Number one, I completely agree that businesses should not pay a barely acceptable wage, and expect taxpayer funded social services to cover the rest. It costs more to live in Boston, it should cost more to buy in Boston, and we and our employers need to just deal with it.
That said, before I moved in with my then-fiance-now-wife, I paid $540 a month in my bropad in Allston. With her, we chose to pay more, about $750 each for a 1br, because we could afford it with the two of us. This was two years ago. The 900-1000 rent number is not realistic for a single person for sure.
Keyword
Is federal - no one is arguing that it would be difficult (though definitely not impossible) to survive on under $15/hour in a place like NYC, but are you telling me Flippy McBurger in Bumfuck, MO where a house can be bought for under $50,000 should be making $15/hour as well?
Small business can't afford this...
Small retail businesses don't compete with the guy down the street, they compete with Amazon. Small retail businesses will be disproportionately impacted by minimum wage hikes than Amazon and other online retailers.
If you want to shut down your local retail stores and have all your goods delivered by drones to your doorstep, then raise the minimum wage.
Witness City Sports closing down and all those local jobs gone!
City Sports failed to provide any value
City Sports sold other people's brands, like Amazon does. However, they provided no value in doing so. They are exactly the kind of business that's going to fail to an online retailer and that's not a bad thing. Companies should go out of business if they provide the consumer little to no value over a competing (and better value/cost solution). They also expanded into a lot of locations even though those areas had no idea what they were or what value they added. The answer came back none and the decision to go up and down the East Coast combined with zero value proposition is what doomed City Sports.
Businesses make bad decisions all the time and some of them are going to be fatal to the business. We can't example every company that's gone out of business and say "if only wages were kept abnormally low, they could have soldiered on". No, they couldn't. They weren't failing due to employee wages. Bad example.
In fact, I wonder if you can actually find any example where someone went out of business due to payroll and not poor business decisions or lack of keeping pace with competitor improvements/innovation.
Adam Smith on workers and wages
The (supposed) icon of capitalists everywhere did not favor making workers toil for less than a living wage. Some quotes:
"A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation."
"A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost."
"Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low.."
Smith also looked with favor on government action to improve the condition of workers:
"Whenever the legislative attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in the favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it sometime is otherwise when in favor of the masters."