Congress Could Get Millions of People Off of SNAP by Raising the Minimum Wage, but It Hasn’t — for 16 Years
Source: tonyt4nv
Congress Could Get Millions of People Off of SNAP by Raising the Minimum Wage, but It Hasn’t — for 16 Years
Source: tonyt4nv
27 Comments
We have government – at all levels – that is captured by wealthy interests that compel our representatives to ignore the interests of working people.
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USA. Of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires. And when you raise a question, you become communist.
We could also increase wages by increasing taxes on businesses but no we have to keep trying Trickle Down.
But then their billionaire donors would be slightly less rich billionaires! 🙁
This is the longest period the US has gone without increasing the minimum wage. BTW, looking at national rent average and policies of need 3x rent to qualify, minimum wage should be about $21/hr.
Employers paying more isn’t the actual problem… If my rent wasnt $2000/mo, and my health insurance wasnt $1000/mo I could live pretty comfortably on minimum wage. Making employers pay more, when the problem is that people are charging too much only makes it worse.
Raising the minimum wage won’t work, not really. What you need is price control and anti-trust to break up the poly-opolies on goods and on employment. As well, government run businesses selling basic goods and services near cost in competition with massive multinationals. If you raise the minimum wage, people will just charge more. Those businesses closest to the red line (i.e. small business) won’t be able to afford the increase at all, and they’ll go under. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but raising the minimum wage is a time-honored way of actually strengthening monopolies.
Antitrust, in my opinion, is the better option.
I mean, at this point, even that ship has sailed for the most part.
If your business cannot operate while paying your full time employees a living wage, then *fuck your business*. I’d love to see the actual numbers on what this math would look like without multi-million dollar bonus packages, golden parachutes, and record-breaking dividends. Why is it your employee’s responsibility to sacrifice all prosperity simply to fund unprecedented prosperity for your c-suite? Why is it the taxpayer’s responsibility to give you bailouts concurrently to this behavior? Why shouldn’t we let you go out of business if you insist on personally taking the profits from your publicly-traded corporation? Better question, why don’t we shame you constantly for all of this? Because it’s fucking shameful.
If Senators pay was tied to the minimum wage, we would suddenly see some improvement. But until that happens, the millionaires in congress could give two fucks.
It’s not every day that a headline makes a point so elegantly that needs to be hammered into everybody’s heads every day.
OUR OWN TAXPAYER MONEY IS PAYING CORPORATIONS TO UNDERPAY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
Minimum wage is maximal poverty. It’s a neo liberal farce. Until we price cap all essentials ranging from foods to properly to transport to medicine we are screwed.
Minimum wage should increase automatically year over year.
I would love to see the minimum wage be locally tied to the average price of a one bedroom apartment in the city.
If you HAD to be able to afford a one bedroom apartment on <40% of your income at 40 hours per week, we would see wages skyrocket or housing prices plummet.
Either way, it would be a win for the average person.
I don’t know what minimum wage is in the US but in Canada we’ve got it at $17.50
but they are completely fine with raising their own pay plenty of times….
i’m not an economist, but I think it’s a mistake to focus on raising the minimum wage. rather, we should first focus on reducing housing scarcity. for one, it counts for a full third of inflation metrics just on its own. secondly, if we raise the min wage, that will just further inflate housing costs as people have more money to “bid” on the scarce housing.
after we address housing, yes, let’s raise the min wage. but if we raise min wage first, most of that money will just end up going to landlords and poor people won’t be better off.
Introduce a bill to require raising minimum wage whenever congress increases their own salaries.
Only 140,000 people earn the federal minimum wage, so this doesn’t math.
Whatever we are making now, deserves to be doubled.
Minimum wage needs to raised to equal the inflation rate of what it was a few years after minimum wage was first created. Enough time that it balanced out to a fair rate based on the needs of everyday people.
THEN it needs to be tied to inflation, so going forward the minimum of what people get paid is enough that they (at very least) can stop working a job every day and still be on the brink of financial ruin.
As much money as Walmart and Amazon make, they could raise their wages.
Over the entirety of its nearly 100-year history, the federal minimum wage has increased by a grand total of seven bucks.
Love to read more on this topic! IMO, everyone should have a wage that’s sufficient to live on. “Living wage”. Is Reich’s $26/hr a living wage?
>Here’s another way to look at it: Robert Reich, the economist and former U.S. secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, estimates that if the minimum wage had kept pace with worker productivity over the past several decades, it would currently sit at nearly $26 an hour.
Nope, he says that in the context of “minimum wage”. I can’t help but think there’s some wage-labor exploitation occurring.
Cause congress doesn’t care if you live or die. Neither of the party leaders do. Aren’t we all catching onto to this yet?
Less people on SNAP….. AND paying more income tax. Seems like a double win for the government honestly