• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Fetterman on backing $15 minimum wage: 'That's a hill I would die on'

Burgers hardly cost more in European countries with similar wages.

Business will always tell you that forcing them to do anything will kill jobs. The GOP dutifully repeats this and its base parrots. Pay line workers more? Jobs. Don't poison the water? Jobs. Don't poison the air? Jobs. Install something that stops that car from blowing up? Jobs. They find fertile ground in people happy to say that all regulation is bad and government shouldn't tell them what to do. Whaddya get when it's a public safety issue? You get libertarian-right Texans shocked that power generators didn't bother weatherizing out of the goodness of their golden hearts. Idiots. Sometimes, things better for everyone in general and over time are worth 'jobs', assuming they cost them.

It's not even a categorical rule. There are many situations in which business passes costs on to consumers, but it can't pass them all on: at a certain point, people simply don't want to buy the thing.

There's slack to be drawn in. In the last several decades the average CEO:worker pay increased something like 15:1 to 475:1. Executive pay jumped. Add-ons like options and stock drove it through the roof. But modern corporations are not that much more profitable, efficient, productive - they haven't increased in any measure or set of measures commensurate with that executive:worker increase. And all along, rich-heavy GOP policies further drive the wage gap.

Trickle-down is a lie. It has mostly been repeated by people who do not understand or seek to understand anything about economics. In fact, they're happy to vote against their interest as long as someone says "guns, gays, abortion" to them.
 
Hmm... is losing (to automation or off-shoring) more of those entry level employment opportunities now a good thing?

You're still not grasping the concept. Let's try a different angle.

Why did Amazon, Walmart, Bank of America, etc... raise their minimum hourly wage well above the federal and state floors? Hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with inflation or losing entry level employment opportunities.
 
Which will cause wages to rise. This is a good thing!



I understand your position. Do you understand my position?

Causing most US wages to rise is not a good thing for those no longer in the workforce or for producers of exports. Those consumers likely lack the ability to “absorb” the resulting price increases in goods/services.
 
True stimulus is trickle-up. Give the money to people who will have to spend it - people who in this case are on the safety net - and they spend it. Giving a tax cut to the upper crust in the "best economy ever" doesn't do shit. If you have money to spare, you don't spend money just because you got a little more. You don't even have to be rich for this to kick in. My wife and I didn't do anything different with the stimulus we got. But someone who has to spend it will. And when they do, it'll be the consumers of those MW businesses paying it, not every single taxpayer.

I don't own a yacht. GOP stimulus is mostly aimed at those who do. If I'm not going to blow $1200 just because I got it, why in hell would a dude with a yacht? People invest because they think they can make more money, true regardless of tax rate. They do not invest because you didn't tax them. But back to MW.

Which brings me to an important question: why do you, MW opponent, want the taxpayers to make up for everything MW employers don't pay? You've got all these people working two full time, maybe two full and one half time, jobs. They still don't bring in enough. Maybe they live in a city. Maybe they cannot commute 4h each way so they can live where they can afford. Places like McDonalds even advised workers to take all available benefits.



This isn't a question of morality. It's a question of pragmatism. **** your personal opinions about what a MW should be, what a person should do, how a person should live. **** all that.

Here is the situation: those safety net programs are here to stay.
Here is your question: do you want us all, taxpayers, to pay for what MW companies don't pay? Or do you want those companies and their customers to pay?

Those are your real choices. So how about you open your eyes for once and realize that when McDonalds tells you they're gonna fire people if you raise the MW, they're lying. The picture is much more complex. And the only way a raise in the MW means job loss is if we assume that no matter how many time the floor is raised for the upper crust, it can never be lowered. It's got to stay where it is. And you, the taxpayer, are on the hook for the difference every time it raises.




It's ridiculous. You think you're saving yourself fifty cents off that Big Mac you shouldn't be eating anyway by opposing MW increases, but you're not. You're paying it in taxes.

Stop being stupidly greedy and so easily used. The people selling you the talking points you repeat do not give one single molecule of a dog-regurgitated turd about you. They don't.
 
You're still not grasping the concept. Let's try a different angle.

Why did Amazon, Walmart, Bank of America, etc... raise their minimum hourly wage well above the federal and state floors? Hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with inflation or losing entry level employment opportunities.

They can do so because labor costs for larger employers represent a smaller percentage of their total cost of sales and they can much more easily afford the initial investment in more automation. Larger employers also offer greater opportunity for promotion and more in the form of fringe benefits (e.g. vacation pay, sick/personal paid leave, pension fund matching and medical care insurance subsidies).
 
the interim will hurt pretty badly for a lot of people who are currently making fifteen bucks an hour when the minimum wage is $7.25.

This claim doesn't follow. Nobody is harmed when less than 3% of the labor force gets a raise.

we can't make entry level jobs pay a comfortable wage.

Fifteen dollars per one hour worked in 2025 doesn't sound all that comfortable to me. Nominal median weekly earnings are about $1k/week.

we can help people out of those jobs and make sure that the floor wage lifts with inflation.

Sure. At the same time, we can also raise that wage floor as a remedy for 30 + years of stagnating wage increases. So... if median wages have barely kept up with inflation, it's a sign that something is broken. The high cost of education cannot be blamed. So what exactly can you do to help people out of those jobs?

now that i've explained this another time, i will assume that anyone who is still confused wants to be.

I'm not confused at all. I just disagree with your assessment and find it unrealistic.
 
the interim will hurt pretty badly for a lot of people who are currently making fifteen bucks an hour when the minimum wage is $7.25. we can't make entry level jobs pay a comfortable wage. we can help people out of those jobs and make sure that the floor wage lifts with inflation. now that i've explained this another time, i will assume that anyone who is still confused wants to be.

Most of Europe does this stuff without issues.

We're already paying for it one way or another, as it is. Besides, business always claims that anything you require them to do will be cost-prohibitive. What has chasing the dragon in the other direction accomplished, other than concentrating more of the wealth in the hands of the fewest?
 
They can do so because labor costs for larger employers represent a smaller percentage of their total cost of sales and they can much more easily afford the initial investment in more automation.

Ahh! So now the argument shifts to it hurts small business.

At least you've abandoned the it's just not fair to seniors argument.

FWIW:

106399063-158215049222720200219_min_wage_small_biz_all.png
 
Most of Europe does this stuff without issues.

We're already paying for it one way or another, as it is. Besides, business always claims that anything you require them to do will be cost-prohibitive. What has chasing the dragon in the other direction accomplished, other than concentrating more of the wealth in the hands of the fewest?

in a wage depressed state, someone can work for decades with a college education just to get to the mid 20s per hour. trying to make up for twenty or thirty years of inflation might raise the floor to fifteen bucks an hour, but people making that wage already or ten or fifteen bucks above it will just get a significant pay cut as inflation rises accordingly. however, i guess it's tough to understand if you haven't worked in a state like that for your whole career.
 
in a wage depressed state, someone can work for decades with a college education just to get to the mid 20s per hour. trying to make up for twenty or thirty years of inflation might raise the floor to fifteen bucks an hour, but people making that wage already or ten or fifteen bucks above it will just get a significant pay cut as inflation rises accordingly. however, i guess it's tough to understand if you haven't worked in a state like that for your whole career.

It's more that it actually doesn't happen, and that every last argument deployed to fight MW wage increases has its mirror in supply-side economic policies that never did anything but blow up the deficits to benefit the upper crust.

If we had our heads screwed on correctly, we'd do stuff like raise the MW wage, maintain the safety net for the few people (much much fewer than the doom & gloom predictions companies always put out) who might have reduced hours, and keep going in that direction. Instead, we've done the opposite. The end result is an ever-increasing wealth gap. And regardless of right and wrong, increasing gaps like that have always lead to social unrest in human history.

For every proposal for American policy that is called catastrophic socialism that will kill all the jobs, there are multiple European countries that make it work just dandy.




I'm worried about the pragmatics first and last. Raising MW is pragmatic.
 
Causing most US wages to rise is not a good thing for those no longer in the workforce or for producers of exports.

Do you have any examples? Better yet... do you really believe i am unable to provide some recent and relevant real life examples of minimum wage increases and employment that followed? ;)
 
Ideally we would have global federations of trade unions in place of the minimum wage as the Scandinavians do which has been successful in achieving even greater wage floors than the $15 / HR being proposed today; min wage is effectively a govt mandated stop gap in the absence of such labour empowerment.

Naturally, if you gave corporations a fixed choice between 15 / min wage and no minimum wage but global unions, they'd be leaping on the former in a heartbeat.
 
Do you have any examples? Better yet... do you really believe i am unable to provide some recent and relevant real life examples of minimum wage increases and employment that followed? ;)

OK, how about a real life example of a federal MW increase of over 100% in 4 years.
 
Republicans opposing Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus bill is the dumbest idea in the world.

Republicans are voting against money for vaccines, tests, schools, small businesses, and the unemployed.

Schools just got $54b in December's bill. $13b in March of 2020. So $67b for Covid to fix things in 2020. I don't know about you but sounds pretty close to the ANNUAL Federal budget on Education for just Covid.
 
it isn't incorrect. someone currently making sixteen bucks an hour now will now be making a buck an hour above minimum wage.

It's absolutely incorrect!

First and foremost, I've already presented the minimum wage schedule proposed in the RTWA... so there shouldn't be any confusion. A person earning $16/ now who stays at $16/he until 2025 has far greater problems than their gradually shrinking wage gap from the wage floor.

I can explain this in greater detail if need be... But sadly I don't believe you want to lean anything. You already know it all.

i've explained this enough, so i'll assume that you don't want to understand.

No... No You haven't. You've just repeated broken reasoning. Nobody is harmed because a co-worker gets a raise. Jobs don't decline, wages don't fall, and inflation doesn't ensue.
 
OK, how about a real life example of a federal MW increase of over 100% in 4 years.

You're being dishonest once again. The minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. Seriously... You're a smart guy... you should know better.

Those living in Seattle, WA will very likely change their economic behavior based on such a large MW increase - I would expect lots of just out of town businesses will boom while many in town businesses will suffer greatly.

;)
 
Burgers hardly cost more in European countries with similar wages.

Oh you are crazy if you believe that. Just go to NYC vs Cleveland, Philly, Columbus, Louisville and so on.. in the US alone there is a huge gap in costs just getting a burger. This is the average cost of a home cooked burger per state. Getting a Big Ma meal in NYC costs $10.00 before taxes. In Columbus, It's $6.00. $4 difference.
 
You're being dishonest once again. The minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. Seriously... You're a smart guy... you should know better.



;)

$7.25 in 2009, adjusted for CPI inflation, would be about $9 now.
 
$7.25 in 2009, adjusted for CPI inflation, would be about $9 now.

So??? Inflation has been just as stagnant as wage growth.

You have no point other than you disagree.
 

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is running for the Senate, said Wednesday that supporting a $15 per hour federal minimum wage is “a hill I would die on.”

Fetterman, who is seeking retiring Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R-Pa.) seat, told Hill.TV’s “Rising” that he would promote a higher minimum wage as a senator, calling it “a fundamental issue of our time.”

“That’s a hill I would die on,” he said. “It's a lie that has been in our society for generations that you can do anything closely resembling getting by on the minimum wage. It is reprehensible.”
===========================================================
I'm very impressed with my future Senator. But converting his future Senate to buy in to this remains to be seen.
I thought there was a systematic way to adjust the minimum wage. I worked for $1.25/hour in 1961. But a dollar then was worth a lot more than today.
JacksinPA, the federal minimum wage rate has never been among the primary drivers of U.S. dollar’s inflation which occurs when the minimum rate is or is not increased.
Minimum rate affects product prices to extents that portions of products’ price increases are attributed to the increased costs of direct and/or indirect low wage-rate labor contributes to the product’s production and distribution costs. The minimum wage affects only wages within the low wage-rate bracket of wage rates.

Since the Congressional House’s passage of the “Raise the Wage” bill, every House passed minimum wage rate bill would gradually increase the rate to a predetermined targeted value, thereafter monitoring and annually adjusting the rate to retain its purchasing power. Respectfully, Supposn
 
Back
Top Bottom