I’m a skilled worker at a tiny business that would collapse without me and I hate it here. I make $30/hr, full time, and the company refuses to give me health insurance.
In the event (extremely unlikely, let’s face it, this country is hell) such a bill passed, I would leave this hole THAT DAY with joy in my heart and absolutely NO notice.
I think you’re getting the point a lot of Americans miss. Raising the minimum wage helps everybody and gives you the freedom to leave a job you hate. It also gives you more bargaining power. If you can leave your job for a minimum wage job and your take home pay barely changes, they’re gonna have to figure out a way to pay you more to keep you
Alternative for you, stay on keep coming in but stop working, actually spend that time at work applying to new jobs. Do this until you are confronted. Then tell them you need your pay doubled to continue working. They will probably fire you but you will get paid time for all of your job applications and a chance to fuck with the owner. 🤷
I don’t know if I’ll do that, but knowing someone thinks I’m worth something is appreciated. Hope you have a fantastic weekend.
Thanks Comrade! regardless of what you do, I hope your work situation improves for you. Enjoy your weekend🙂
Damn if Satan was anticapitalist it would be you
Me suggesting someone take advantage of a business that’s taken advantage of them for years lol
What does that shirt say?
ASK ME
APE OUT
SEXUALISM( ͡ᵔ ͜ʖ ͡ᵔ )
Living wage, tied to gdp and inflation, otherwise quit wasting everyone’s time. We all know an employer will pay the least legally possible if they can get away with it.
“Bill introduced in Senate that will definitely fail, but makes people feel good” is classic election bait.
introduced by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) on Thursday, in a bid to enthuse the working-class voters who have abandoned the Democratic Party.
Admittedly, this is the Bezos Home Journal running these stories, so it’s going to be the worst spin you can imagine. Also, it’s $25/hr by 2039 (+$5/hr the first year and +$1/hr after that), which is probably better than linking it to GDP/Inflation in an economy that’s on the brink of an ugly recession but only marginally so.
We all know an employer will pay the least legally possible if they can get away with it.
There’s already something of a soft wage floor in the US that’s been created by the high cost of living. You can’t find people who will work for $7/hr, because where would they even live? How would they feed themselves? That’s sub-poverty wages.
The issue with labor right now isn’t legal allotment but availability and talent. Boomers are exiting the labor pool, immigrants are shut out of the labor market, and the Millennials/GenAs aren’t sufficient to close the gap. Tariffs are closing off the possibility of cheap imports and rising energy prices make bulk transportation increasingly expensive. AI continues to be a pipe dream.
Employers are being backed into a corner. Which means the only path out is… prison labor. Not coincidentally, the US is investing extensively in detention camps and police batallions.
The issue with labor right now isn’t legal allotment but availability and talent. Boomers are exiting the labor pool, immigrants are shut out of the labor market, and the Millennials/GenAs aren’t sufficient to close the gap.
What is this pro-corporate drivel?
If companies need talent they need to train people.
If companies need talent they need to train people.
Sure. And they’ve outsourced that process very successfully through the privatized college system.
But college isn’t the bottleneck. We have plenty of diploma mills and overflowing lecture halls.
What we lack, more often than not, is low income service sector workers. Janitors, retail employees, bus boys and line cooks. We’re in short supply of agriculture hands, which is why prison labor is becoming incredibly popular.
Buddy is simping for corporations your hobby?
low income service sector workers
This is you saying there’s a “shortage” of people willing to work for unlivable wages and then explaining that’s what makes “prison labor” AKA slave labor incredibly popular.
We get it bud. Corporations love human slaves. This comes as a surprise to nobody. You talking about it like this is a problem with workers instead of the horrifying reality of corporate greed is just gross.
There is no shortage of people willing to do any kind of work for good wages. What we have way too much of are greedy billionaires and corporations.
This is you saying there’s a “shortage” of people willing to work for unlivable wages
The work has value that far exceeds the wages being paid
Yes. And that’s a problem.
“Bill introduced in Senate that will definitely fail, but makes people feel good” is classic election bait.
Maybe, but it’s not a bad thing to make people go on record about these things.
That and I feel like it should also have some tie to each business. Like the top salary+benefits in your company can only be 10x the lowest or some ratio. 1,000,000,000 : 1 is WILD that we all just keep going along with that and it’s like, well yeah, the CEO works harder than you so he earns more.
He works a MILLION times harder than me? He works a BILLION times harder than me? Are you sure about that!? By what metrics?
For 401k there’s some sort of requirement preventing them from being too biased toward the most well off. I don’t know the details but it seems like a great place to start: apply similar to all forms of compensation and benefits
Would that be the $ cap of what you can contribute each year? I think it is like $5k per year now maybe? Something like that. I think it went up recently. 7k?
I’m curious as to how or why that would actually help though, because I think you can open multiple 401ks, right? So you could just open 10 of them.
But yes, any MATH that makes it so you can’t just exploit the hell out of the system by virtue of just having lots of money already.
The big issue is that there are tons of loopholes and exploitable things in all our systems (many are intentionally put in for the rich to use). Whatever laws or regulations or systems you don’t has to be fair and all that.
One glaring issue is that the billionaire class is so wealthy they aren’t even playing the same game as us anymore. They don’t pay taxes because they can stop “earning income” in the traditional sense and it’s all sorts of leveraged forecast market value stock and asset bullshit. I mean, “money” is made up too, but they are outside “money” and deal with “theoretical money” and thus escape all forms of taxes and fair share stuff.
I’ve always wondered if the answer is doing away with “income tax” entirely (it’s a racket anyway) and having a much higher “sales tax” on everything.
Let them have billions, but they pay the tax when they buy something like the rest of us do.
I dunno. I’m tired of overthinking it. Maybe the better option is to eat them.
I’ve always wondered if the answer is doing away with “income tax” entirely (it’s a racket anyway) and having a much higher “sales tax” on everything.
Counterexample is Elon musk. He’s the biggest example of wealth inequity, yet he’s not ostentatious. His sales tax would be small
The real answer is treating other forms of wealth and income the same as we do salary income. Why do they get to call some of their income as “not income” and pay less. If we have to pay a property tax on the assessed value of our house even when we haven’t”realized” any gains, why are they not paying any tax on stock or company’s, their “property”
That part. Exactly. We pay for estimated value, they should.
1 trillion net worth (even if all made up) should pay the taxes on that full amount just like we do.
If I earn 100k dollars, half that goes to taxes. How come Peelon can earn 100billion and gets all the benefits thereof and doesn’t pay half in taxes?
In theory 50k from my taxes should be in the tax bank and 50 billion from his. Instead I payed 50k and he paid maybe 5k.
The limit on 401k contributions is quite a bit higher than that, and it’s an overall limit enforced by the IRs. Each employer can provide plans, but can balance rules on vesting and matching contributions. There are tests and audits to ensure it doesn’t primarily benefit higher paid individuals, and fines on them if it does.
For example, matching contributions are a good tool to encourage more lower paid employees,
But yeah, this is irrelevant to the actual wealthy
Yaaaay a bill that’ll go nowhere and die on the floor, just so the dems can claim they’re trying to help to proles.
Write the bills ahead of time, so that when a favourable Congress is formed you don’t have to spend more time putting it together from scratch.
Min wage should also be attached to inflation. Also, “bills going nowhere” didn’t stop Project 2025, Heritage Foundation fascists and Republican abortion ban projects from persistently marching forward.
Because Democrats are on the same team as Republicans, and it’s not ours. And we’re just as ineffective, consumed by inertia.
So we should be sad and do nothing and shame anyone who tries something doomed to fail anyway.
No we should be organizing on a much grander scale.
Goddamn lemmy eats up that both sides bullshit so hard.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Yes yes we all know you’re an accelerationist. Your input is useless as always.
Was talking about social media, but my fault for not being more clear.
Ok that’s fair.
Yes, people are generally in touch with reality on this topic.
Y’all ain’t even have a basic understanding of civics much less reality.
Who is “you”? I don’t think the democrats are here. They don’t give a shit.
Congress, campaigns, non-profits and advocacy organizations.
Less minimum wage should be tied to inflation, more minimum wage should be tied to congressional salary. (Some multiplier, because they do need to live in two places)
The minimum wage and congressional salary should be the same thing.
I’d prefer tying the salary (including bonuses, assets, and everything) to the lowest paid wages in the nation. The greater the difference, the lower the public salary; the smaller the difference, the higher.
Or ditch the minimum wage and implement a Universal Basic Income (UBI) at the Federal level (or State level!!). If there’s UBI, the minimum wage doesn’t have to be there which technically could make labor more competitive in general, plus you don’t have to rely on your job to get your basic needs met.
Well, I’d prefer they do something just to say they’re trying than the usual tactic of not even trying because they’ve already decided they don’t have enough votes.
PR to get votes.
Exactly the reason that this is the perfect time to introduce this bill! Let’s go Democrats! /s
Any minimum wage bill not pegged to inflation is a stop gap at best.
We need a maximum wage.
This! No one should make more than 10x the companies lowest paid employee.
Also trying to claim “they’re not employees if US. They’re contractors” should mean you forfeit all your wealth and get banned from leadership positions for life.
It could maybe be written so it counts employees, part time and full, salary and hourly, contractors and even the contract itself, so you can’t just fire the employees, make them contractors. And even clauses where you can’t just give your buddy a no-bid contract for 14.7million (random number completely out of the air) for a shitty half-assed job nowhere near that price. (I don’t know for sure, I don’t do contract work for theoretical contracts like in my completely made up example.)
Same with shareholders and dividends and bonuses and stock and bonds and crypto and any other such bs. Any and every way a company could pay someone for any product or service. Whatever that max and min are. Or the average or something. Use that to cap the max or the max to force the min, whatever.
And a maximum wealth, in a way that prevents breaking it up yet still being accessible to a single person
Good luck
wont help in if you are stuck in HCOL, or maybe MCOl. helps more in LCOL states which are almost always GOP controlled.
In all honesty, while $25/hr would help so many people, it’s a HUGE trap!!! I’m all for a fed wage bump, but bear with me.
- Trying to lure Democratic votes back… They’re just as corrupt of a party, so letting them keep power, they still come out ahead.
- All the wealthy politicians and anyone tech-industry who owns a lot of stock as a compensation package, would hugely benefit and the stock prices would go up making then even more wealthy.
- Many goods, services, products, etc, would disproportionately go up, affecting what little middle class Americans have.
- They (the ultra wealthy) would find a way to evade increased taxes while a lot of that new $25/hr income would be taxed, aka offset what the wealthy SHOULD BE CONTRIBUTING already via the current proposed wealth tax bills. This basically is a way around them having to give up a little money.
I’m not falling for this, this is obviously some sort of game that now all the sudden is a good idea??! Its been 17 fucking years, 12 of which were Democratic! Fucking scammers!
EDIT: You guys can down vote all you like, there is ABSOLUTELY evil intentions behind this scheme! Look at the bill that was just introduced to supposedly reduce big corporations from buying houses, is full of language that basically let’s companies his behind shell companies to obtain even more houses!!! Then the bill adds language to “start building more houses more aggressively” but ask that does is show those companies to buy even more!!
We need to be free of the 2 party system!! Mark my words! Go independent, Green party, or Forward Party. That’s going to disrupt their plans the most!
When the minimum wage has increased in the past, prices have not disproportionately increased. There have sometimes been small, short-term increases on some luxury goods, but that’s about it. The vast majority of prices remain stable.
The idea that increasing the minimum wage will cause sudden, massive price increases is a myth unsupported by fact, and pushed by those who don’t want to increase the minimum wage.
No you’re not listening. Small increases are fine and less disruptive. You’re talking about 19 States and 1 territory going from $7.25/hr to $25/hr.
If you look at 2007 – 2009, we had jumps of $.70 each year. Let’s be real, we had 12 years of Democrats in office during that time and 7 years of Republican, so neither are really “fighting” for us. Why do we still have a federal minimum wage of $7.25? Let’s look at inflation since 2009 (hint: 53.9%). Check the calculator, too. Sure, several states do in fact utilize a higher stat level minimum wage, but according to the NCSL, 20 states still rely on the federal minimum. If you keep the $.70 rate going, we could be at $19.15/hour, and let’s just say at a minimum we raised it $.50/year on average which puts us at $15.75. So, averaging out to $17.45. Really, I’d aim for $17.50/hr. It’s easier, more consistent, and honestly, probably still a little low. But also, why now do dems push this, and why so much of an increase?! Isn’t that the slightest bit suspicious???
Remember after Covid, inflation was getting out of hand and the whole “nobody wants to work” bullshit?? Well, wages increased in a lot of places to lure employees, but it hurt small businesses really bad because their margins are smaller so prices raised more to compensate. The 3% convenience fee also became popular in card transactions to avoid eating those costs too. So, in a society where using plastic has become king for the middle and lower classes, we’re punished with higher prices unless we switch back to cash? Prices will ABSOLUTELY soar. Businesses, especially smaller ones will ABSOLUTELY close due to being unable to stay profitable. This IS NOT good.
Again, I’m all for being in the 18/hr range, but step it up over a couple years, not just instantly. It’s never been done, I can only imagine the shit storm of lies that follow from businesses/big tech about costs going up.
When I said that it’s a myth unsupported by fact, throwing out a bunch of superfluous other facts that don’t support the myth in response isn’t going to confuse me because I’m not stupid. This is a very old and well-worn argument. And unless you can directly link inflation over the years, you’ve discussed to wage increases - which you can’t because nobody can - then all you’re doing is perpetuating a myth that has no factual support.
And for the fools who refused to listen to facts, and are still afraid of some sort of systemic shock, the wage increase can be spread across two or three years; it doesn’t have to happen overnight. (7.25 > 15 > 25)
But I repeat: it’s a myth, unsupported by fact.… Unless, after that diatribe of yours, you were hiding the fact for some sort of epic, forthcoming reply…
OK, so you’re hell bent on just accepting a new minimum wage, regardless of how it gets there, because you just see the dollar signs going higher, not thinking about the reasoning behind why now all the sudden some rich politician wants to raise the wage 3.5x the current rate for so us normal folk… Got it.
Instead of asking the real questions or using critical thinking, just because there’s “no direct proof” means it’s OK. Well, I’m sure that’s what everyone’s (who’s very wealthy) counting on. Nobody doing the math or working out the numbers.
How come you didn’t talk to any of my points? Seems ironic timing at the very least a new wealth tax is discussed for the ultra wealthy getting taxed on net worth, AND NOW all the sudden they want to raise wages?!?! Seems like a distraction and you’re falling for it.
OK I did a little digging to get the bill info and name to look into it, not much available right now do take with a grain of salt.
LLM breakdown:
I’ve looked into H.R. 8555, the Living Wage For All Act. Based on what’s publicly available, here’s my breakdown of the key provisions and areas worth examining carefully:
Core Provisions
Main Goals:
- Raises federal minimum wage to $25/hour through a phased-in schedule (roughly 5-year compliance timeline)
- Ties future minimum wage automatically to two-thirds of the national median hourly wage
- Ends all sub-minimum wage categories (tipped workers, youth wages, disability certificates)
- Requires “large, highly-profitable corporations” to implement the higher wage first
Corporate Threshold Definition: A company qualifies as a “large, highly-profitable corporation” subject to accelerated implementation if it has:
- Annual gross revenue of at least $1 billion, AND
- Net profit margin of 10% or higher
Smaller businesses below either threshold get extended transition time.
Areas That Could Benefit Wealthy Interests or Have Uneven Impacts
Based on business group critiques and policy analysis, here are several provisions that warrant scrutiny:
1. “Large Corporation” Loophole Risk
The dual threshold (revenue + profitability) could incentivize corporate restructuring:
- Companies might split operations across multiple smaller entities to fall below the $1B threshold
- Profit-shifting strategies could artificially depress reported margins below 10%
- This could effectively shield ultra-wealthy owners while burdening mid-sized competitors who can’t access similar accounting flexibility
2. Small Business Protection Creates Competitive Advantages
Businesses exempt from accelerated schedules could theoretically gain short-term advantage—but this cuts both ways. Critics note this might push work toward subcontracting arrangements where oversight weakens, potentially exploiting gig workers who don’t fit traditional employment categories well.
3. Regional Cost Variations Not Accounted For
The nationwide formula doesn’t adjust for geographic differences in living costs. A $25 minimum makes very different economic sense in rural Mississippi versus San Francisco. If passed through uniformly:
- High-cost regions might see expected benefits
- Lower-cost regions could face disproportionate job displacement that hurts working-class workers most—ultimately concentrating purchasing power elsewhere
4. Price Pass-Through Consequences
Research cited by critics suggests companies will likely pass increased labor costs to consumers through price hikes. Higher prices disproportionately hurt lower-income households who spend larger portions of income on basics, creating a regressive effect even as nominal wages rise.
5. Automation Acceleration
Several economic analyses warn that forcing rapid wage increases could incentivize faster automation investment. Capital-intensive solutions benefit those with access to capital (typically wealthier investors/owners) while reducing opportunities for low-skilled workers.
What Appears Transparent vs. Less Clear
Aspect Clarity Level Notes Dollar target ($25/hr) Explicit Clearly stated goal Corporate definitions Explicit thresholds But invites structural gaming Phased timeline Partially explicit Exact yearly increments unclear from public materials Enforcement mechanisms Mentioned generally Dept. of Labor responsibility noted but penalty structures unclear Automation/job loss protections Not visible No apparent safeguards against workforce displacement
Bottom Line
This isn’t obviously pro-wealthy in its surface language—the bill explicitly targets large profitable corporations. However, the structural design contains features that sophisticated actors could exploit:
- Corporate structuring around thresholds favors those with legal/accounting resources
- Indirect effects (automation, price increases, regional mismatches) may offset intended gains for some working-class populations
- The gap between formal requirements and practical enforcement remains uncertain without seeing the complete legislative text
For a truly definitive answer about hidden provisions favoring wealthy interests, you’d want the actual Section-by-Section Congressional Budget Office scoring, which should detail distributional impacts by income quintile. That analysis would reveal more precisely how benefits and burdens distribute across the population.
not much available right now do take with a grain of salt.
yeah, I’m going to wait until the facts are in rather than speculating based on an AI summary that, itself, says:
The gap between formal requirements and practical enforcement remains uncertain without seeing the complete legislative text
and, furthermore, the only real arguments presented against it are through “research” presented by opponents to the bill, and such research has little credibility considering that every time it’s been done before, the apocalyptic effects it portends haven’t happened– especially considering such allowances as the 5-year phase in, small business protections, etc.
Democrats can not be trusted
