Originally published at http://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/16/together-we-fight-together-we-will-win-workers-strike-nationwide-demand-15-minimum
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Power to the people! And a great shame on our dear leaders for forcing us to constantly fight for the right to feed, clothe and house ourselves while they gorge themselves on pandemic profits. They should be lucky we are asking for only $15/hr and not the $20-25/hr that minimum wage should be, had it kept up with inflation.
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62 million people making under $15------how much support do these people need from the government ??? We will hear the same BS that this will cost jobs-----fake fox news---------
So as we talk about TRUTH??? Maybe the government should release real data so people can understand the real economy???
Raising the Min to $15 will grow the economy—it should have happened 10 yrs ago.
And if you do single payer we might have a 1/2 decent economy----but this should have happened 70 yrs ago.
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News flash! If you pay people $15/hr., They will SPEND IT, ASAP!
Thereby boosting the economy.
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It might have, but we kept voting for democrats and republicans.
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Even Henry Ford realized people needed to be able to earn enough money to buy a car or he wouldn’t be able to sell as many as he could make and made business decision to pay his workers more than he could get away with because if he wanted to get richer he could not afford not too. How did that work out? All those that drive or ride in an automobile, relate your answer to that.
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Want change? Apply leverage, nothing comes without demands and action. Good luck, those workers deserve everything and more they are asking for.
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Perhaps they need to be reminded that McDonalds workers in Denmark earn $22+, and still a Big Mac is only 80 cents more than here in the US.
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It depends on how you calculate inflation. When I was making minimum wage at $1.50/hr you could buy 30 Hershey Bars for an hours work or 10 NY subway tokens. You could rent a 2 bedroom apartment in Berkeley for 70 hours of work at minimum wage. That same apartment 60 years older rents for $2,200 or more. By those standards minimum wage would have to be $30/hr. Tuition at Cal was zero. Student Association fees were $60/year. Tuition is now $14.500. Minimum wage would have to be $363/hr to pay for classes that could have been paid with 40hrs of work. Even $30 per hour minimum wage is not enough to live like my generation did 60 years ago without having to fight.
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the reality is that $15/hr is totally inadequate to meet the needs of the people NOW–not being even close to a living wage and will become more inadequate by the time 2025 rolls around when they are actually going to be paid the $15/hr instead of the incremental improvements between now and then—this is a pathetic shit sandwich the corporate tools who are our so called “leaders” want you to have–their purpose is to keep you as the wage slaves of that corporate greed–
a living wage is closer to $22/hr–even more in some of our cities–the politicians of both parties are proving once again that they could care less if the people live or die as long as they get the money—this is just one more massive gas light that even if passed will NEVER bring the relief to the people they deserve–$15/hr is better than the stale shit sandwich we have been served for decades while the wealthy corporations stuff their bank accounts–but still a shit sandwich(note the last time the Democrats COULD have raised the minimum wage–they DIDN"T)
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Congressional Budget Office Not Competent to Assess Economics of Minimum Wage
by[James K. Galbraith
What will happen to jobs when the minimum wage goes up? The truth is that CBO does not know. Its estimates are a hotchpotch of guesses, entirely without serious basis in either fact or theory. They were crafted, one may credibly suspect, to conform to an irrelevant body of textbook doctrine, so as to minimize criticism from people who write and read textbooks, and political figures who pretend to believe them. One can understand this impulse without sympathizing with it.
Because income would shift toward lower-income families, CBO also predicts that total demand for goods and services would increase for several years, overall real output. In other words, raising the minimum wage is good for the economic growth rate! But if nominal GDP is constant while real GDP is higher, it is mathematically necessary that the rate of inflation must be falling under these projections, relative to the CBO baseline. So we have the following predictions all bundled together: higher wage costs, higher interest rates, more economic growth, but fewer jobs and lower price increases. The CBO story makes no sense at all.
Next up a bunch of idiot Conservatives claiming the CBO report demands that the minimum wage not be increased.
~https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/james-k-galbraith-says-cbo-not-competent-to-assess-economics-of-minimum-wage
Just like how the AMA works against M4A. They don’t want to kill their cash cows. Robber barons.
That’s right. The 5 year phase in is ridiculous. The $15 wage should start immediately and we should then begin to push for increases annually. Leave it to the politicians to slip in the 5 year phase in. They suck so bad I wish the insurrectionists had gotten to them so we could start over with new people.
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and don’t forget that we subsidy thhe low wage workers thru housing credits, food stamps, healthcare and corporate america makes HUGE GLUTONEOUS WAGES.
Stop the Steal!!!
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It is probably to protect these business but let them pull it out of their millions/billions.
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