5% is not a statistic of unemployment it's those who are on benefits or in the system.

15$ an hour IS much for the effort and prerequisites putting on stage. Increasing minimum wage only creates automation and less jobs. Which increases the issue of unemployment.

Additionally, what good is a job if the job doesn't actually pay you enough to live off of it?

Obviously a lot of good to a lot of people, since around 23 million or 18% of all workers are currently on minimum wage jobs.

I assume your solution is that anyone with a job at McDonalds should get a second job and work 80 hours a week.

There are 24 hours in a day. It's not too much to ask that you work 8-16 of these five days a week to get enough money to live if you need to do that.

Yeah, no, fuck that. Every job needs to pay a living wage.

This is a pretty bogus thing to say. Some work just isn't worth very much money, and forcing companies to pay $600 a week for work that they're currently paying $290 a week for will definitely cause most of that work (which now costs more than twice as much) to simply disappear.

Also, it isn't even necessarily true that all minimum wage workers need a living wage. Most of the people making minimum wage are actually teenagers or young adults who are likely still living with their parents.

Edited 7/28/2016 19:15:05

Well considering 42% of the working population makes 15$ or under I think it'll affect more than McDonalds.

Edited 7/28/2016 18:15:50

Yeah, because the current ~5% unemployment is so bad

Unemployment for blacks is 9.2%

The real unemployment rate (adults without jobs that aren't looking for one) is 37.4 percent

I mean this with the least offence to those who uphold minimal wage...but you can't inforce minimal wage, what are you talking about? Minimal wage will always be 0$/hour for doing nothing. Furthemore, 15$ each hour is very high for a "living wage"...working 3 hours a day gets you the average wage in Belarus.

Edited 7/28/2016 19:10:17

"and forcing companies to pay $600 a week for work that they're currently paying $290 a week for will definitely cause most of that work (which now costs more than twice as much) to simply disappear."

yeah there is no fast food in my contry, fuck the idea of a living wage for one job

Tsh, there's 28 McDonalds in your country, and there's 181 in Colorado, which is a state with around the same number of folk.

"Furthemore, 15$ each hour is very high for a "living wage"...working 3 hours a day gets you the average wage in Belarus."

This is super fucking relevant to compare wages somewhere average rent is $790 a month as opposed to $240.

So working 3 hours is more akin to working 10 hours. So hey work 10 hours, at $15 a hour, for a similar wage to what you're claiming in Belarus. Except of course said people aren't making $15 a hour, they're making more like $9 a hour, so what you're actually asking is that people work 16.5 hours a day.

"Obviously a lot of good to a lot of people, since around 23 million or 18% of all workers are currently on minimum wage jobs."

Said workers are getting supplementary support from the government. ie. Taxes, ie. Me, and all the other American citizens.

Here's a novel idea, I could not have my tax money go to you, your employer could just pay you better instead, and taxes could be reduced. Sure, maybe prices will increase at businesses who now have to pay their workers reasonable salaries, but once I'm no longer paying those peoples salaries instead I now have more money to spend at such businesses.

Edited 7/28/2016 19:42:39

yeah precisely it's a better society there are more mcdonalds´s, even though the facts you have stated are not even close to correct

Said workers are getting supplementary support from the government. ie. Taxes, ie. Me, and all the other American citizens.

There's no reason to believe that raising the minimum wage magically gets people off of welfare. The minimum wage has been pretty much constantly going up (I believe it was something like A dollar in 1950 compared to $7.25 today), as has the number of people on welfare.

Here's a novel idea, I could not have my tax money go to you, your employer could just pay you better instead, and taxes could be reduced.

Again, there's no reason to think that employers will be willing to pay more than twice what they currently are for what is essentially very low value work, and honestly probably isn't even worth $600 a week.

Edited 7/28/2016 19:57:55

i do not know if you are aware of this, but you could buy more stuff for the same amount of money in the past. The minimum was at its highest in the 1960's, back when everyone was unemployed apparently

I am aware that inflation changes the actual buying power of your money, but it's not particularly relevant here since the minimum wage is a fixed number and isn't contigent upon any sort of economic condition.

If the dollar was to halve in value then the $7.25 would indeed be worth only half as much, but the minimum wage would still remain at $7.25 rather than automatically doubling to $14.50 in order to reflect the new economic conditions.

Edited 7/28/2016 20:38:51

Increasing minimum wage doesn't increase automation. Automation will happen anyway.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415569/minimum-wage-laws-ruinous-compassion-thomas-sowell

Also 2/3rds of folk in minimum wage positions receive a wage raise within a year.

kind of relevant as this mean that the minimum wage has not risen but insted has fallen. Mening that

"There's no reason to believe that raising the minimum wage magically gets people off of welfare. The minimum wage has been pretty much constantly going up (I believe it was something like A dollar in 1950 compared to $7.25 today), as has the number of people on welfare." really doesn't mean anything since it describes an historical development that did not occur

No, it isn't relevant. Nobody is actually advocating for an increase in the buying power of the minimum wage, only in the actual number. Thus, the only relevant statistic is that the actual number has consistently gone up, not anything about the buying power of the number.

15$ an hour IS much for the effort and prerequisites putting on stage. Increasing minimum wage only creates automation and less jobs. Which increases the issue of unemployment.

History debunks these assumptions.

Minimum wage rise increases consumer spending power which in turn boosts consumption and uterly the economy, creating the facto more jobs. Fordism was exactly about that, Ford raised his workers wage, which uterly offered them the means to buy his cars; as a matter of fact his "doctrine" made America become the first world's economy, surpassing the British Empire that covered a third of the planet and had a fourth of it's population by 1913.

And automatation and technological progress have also always created more jobs and improved life quality since the beginning of times. I can't afirm for sure it will happen now, but history is pretty much cyclic, so let's hope it keeps workin the way it did before.


@Imperator

No one actually claims or defend that the minumum wage will increase from one day to the other. That'd be too dumb (for obvious reasons). The wage raising that already happened hasnt been like that, but gradual, it's doubtful that a federal raise wouldnt be gradual too.

The wage raising that already happened hasnt been like that, but gradual, it's doubtful that a federal raise wouldnt be gradual too.

The number that's being thrown around in this thread is $15/hr (Which iirc came from the Democratic party platform), which is more than double the current minimum wage and not exactly a gradual increase.