
Beth Gavin captured protesters demanding a $15 minimum hourly wage outside the Old State House this evening.
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What do you pay your longterm employees?
By adamg
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 10:20pm
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?
By anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 10:49pm
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
By bosguy22
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:39am
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!
By anon²
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 9:19am
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
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 3:01pm
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
By anon
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 3:33pm
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?
By anon²
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 9:00am
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
By bosguy22
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 9:14am
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
By anon²
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 2:56pm
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
By anon
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:16am
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
By Stevil
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:57am
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
By anon
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 10:51am
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*
By erik g
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 11:06pm
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
By anon
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 6:13am
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
By Kaz
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 10:54am
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
By Markk02474
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 11:33pm
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
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 11:40pm
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"
By Markk02474
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 6:49pm
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
By anon
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:01am
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?
By adamg
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:13am
Cell phones are hardly markers for wealth these days, and not everybody who lives in those "poor" neighborhoods is actually poor.
Hey
By Greta
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 5:30pm
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
By aging cynic
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 7:39am
just out of that aerial photo. Those workers are already overpaid.
The one on Washington Street?
By adamg
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:15am
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
By Matt
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:36am
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%
By adamg
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:40am
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...
By Matt
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:51am
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
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 12:10pm
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-971...
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/i...
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!
By Felicity
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 7:01pm
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
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:54am
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-bo...). 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
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 3:25pm
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
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 4:32pm
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?
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 6:38pm
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
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:29pm
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/getatt... ) 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
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:29pm
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
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:51pm
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
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 4:53pm
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
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 6:05pm
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
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:35pm
$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
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:22pm
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?
By Kaz
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 12:21am
French unemployment is just over 10% and that's close to the record ( http://www.dw.com/en/french-unemployment-rising-to... ). 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/2... ). 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
By Markk02474
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 12:07am
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
By cornbread
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 4:38pm
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
By anon
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 12:15am
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...
By Teecee
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:56am
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
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 1:42pm
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
By Michael Kerpan
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 5:27pm
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."
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