Living today in the US on a 15 hour wage per hour is not a life but just pure survival. And we are talking about a 7.25 dollar statutory federal minimum wage here. In Georgia you can even get away with paying 5.15, ouch. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.st...01/the-countries-with-the-best-minimum-wages/
But what is the cost of living in these areas? How prudent would it be to force Joe's Hardware it West Virginia or Mississippi to pay their employees a $15 an hour wage when the owners themselves barely make that while taking all the risk of owning the business? The government isnt known for being prudent when it comes to spending other people's money or even doing a job in a cost efficient manner, yet here they are dictating that Steve in California and Danny in Podunk Mississippi will both be making $15 an hour, an arbitrary number that has magically been pulled out of thin air. I made $800 a month living on my own in 1998 working at Wendys. That's equal to $1,365 now. Did it suck? Yes. But there is absolutely no way the federal government can make a blanket wage high enough to cover the richest state because the poorest state small businesses would not be able to afford it, and small businesses are the #1 employer in America.
That is just your claim that the owner of Joe's hardware store hardly makes a dime. To start with such small micro businesses hardly employ any external workers. They are usually run as a family business where the profits are all retained by the family. And if such business cannot survive with one external employee earning 15 and hour then perhaps it's must prudent to force such people who enter different businesses or seek employment. We are, however, talking about the bulk of the workers in most smaller businesses. Those that toil for the Starbucks and Tim Hortons and other franchise businesses who employ hundreds of thousands across all of North America. The greedy business model where the corporations retain an unreasonable percentage for merely supplying a brand name and some basic consulting but offload all the property risk and operational risk to franchisees and where those franchisees often drive unheard sports cars and own properties because they make unheard profit margins. Guess how much it costs to make a coffee or black tea? Dimes.yet they sell them for 2 3 or 4 dollars a piece. Those are the ones who really move the needle and who can easily be highly profitable while still paying their employees 15 and hour. Any business who can't do that are either greedy beyond belief or have no idea about how to run a profitable business. It's much better for the bottom line of society to raise minimum wages to 15 an hour and in turn let the few businesses go under that can't survive. And if the small business sustainability on 15 hour wages is such a drama then perhaps the minimum wage can be structured differently as function of the size of employees such business has. Bottom line is that this third world wage structure is destroying the belly of America. There is a high correlation between living near the poverty line and mental sicknesses, crimes, low educational standards, welfare applications, and drug abuse. The statistics are crystal clear when comparing those metrics among western developed nations.
So because a business cant afford to pay a lone employee the arbitrary number that liberals have pulled out of thin air they shouldn't be allowed to have the business? Who is forcing these employees to work at these jobs they say they cant afford to pay their bills? You refer to Corporate jobs whose profit margins are derived from being able to buy or produce in bulk, thereby reducing their overhead costs, but you completely negated the small mom and pops and basically said if they cant afford to pay us this magical number we've pulled out of thin air then maybe they shouldn't have a business. Or, maybe employees can not work for these companies and use the free market to their advantage, forcing companies to either raise wages or do the job themselves. Nobody is forcing these employees to work these jobs. There's a reason the $15 minimum couldn't even get their Democrat party to vote for it. They grasp basic economics. People make excuses because they are lazy. I've said it on here plenty of times, if I can do it then anyone can. I have a GED only. A felony record and 4 years prison from my teens. I got an entry level job making shit. I've sacrificed, scrimped, and saved to get where I am. The problem is most of these new generations, post Gen X, are just fucking lazy entitled bums who want life handed to them. The thing they will have to learn is they can cry about how they deserve this or that, and nobody is gonna give a fuck. It's why it never passes in Congress even though the politicians keep blowing smoke up their ass.
You make it about politics. It's about the majority of people. You are shedding tears for the handful of business owners who can't pay a 15 dollar per hour wage that still results in the worker ending up below the poverty line but ignore the millions of those who depends on a livable wage. That's what I call gross bias. I get your point. If I was a business owner who could not survive paying 15 dollar wages then I would not like any policies that advocated for higher minimum wages. But as a society we need to focus what is best for a majority of people not best for a minority. If I can make 5 peoples' life worth living at the expense of one then as a leader my obligation is ALWAYS to make decisions to benefit more than less people.
Hate to burst your bubble, but according to Wikipedia and Forbes, that percentage of Americans living below the poverty line in 2020 was 11%, and 13% in 2021. That is not a majority, and that is statistical data. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrew...overty-rate-by-state-in-2021/?sh=4b82e4aa1b38 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pov...sessment,smaller response during the pandemic).
Many of the post Gen-X folks are shits that have zero work ethic. It is disgusting. Hell, there are plenty of Boomers who leaned in that direction, but in a "dignified" form. But at least we did the jobs we did when asked of us, and did not whine. That is key. We didn't bitch about it publicly. We just grumped to ourselves.
How soon we forget. Remember what the older generation thought of us in the 70's. I think I remember. They say if you can remember the 70's you probably weren't there.
People paid an hourly wage in America is a majority in direct comparison with small business owners who pretend they can't pay a 15 dollar per hour wage. Even those earning such low hourly wage that they end up under the poverty line still account for a multifold more than the few business owners you seem so concerned about. It seems humans for you have a different worth and right for existence, the good guys who run businesses and the leeches who demand but don't perform. Hate to break it you, but the world is not black and white. Everything is relative. I think you precisely get my point but pretend you don't and introduce entirely different talking points.