It’s personality issue other than policy issue. Trump has a very bad case of narcissistic personality dissorder. This means he has no empathy or sense of conscience, which makes him very dangerous. He wanted to circumvent a democratic election. He tried to break every rule possible. Indulged in corruption, yes they all do, but he broke the emulumants act in doing so, which I don’t think other presidents have done. He’s either dog whistled racism or said overtly racist things. He’s verbally abused
As much Republicans like to paint Dems as ‘Communist Socialists’, there’s actually very little political difference between the 2 parties.
The Dems are basically a center right party in most European countries.
People like AOC and Bernie get a lot of press because right wingers are afraid of them and see them as a useful scare tactic but Biden’s not all that left. Hell, the Senate is being ground to a halt by two Dem senators who oppose, for different reasons, raising the minimum wage to $15/hr.
Biden/Harris could force it through anyway with the powers they have but choose not to. So Biden is essentially purposely blocking it while play acting that he wants it.
Putting through a $15 minimum wage would give a big econimc boost because most people getting paid that much spend all of their pay packet.
No European countries would ever spend the percentage of GDP on the military that the US does. They’d cut in 10 and spend it on other essential services. The reason you spend so much is because of arms companies essentially bribing all your senators. Same reason why any of the government gives 2 shits about gun legislation to protect it’s population
Also The Republicans claim for ‘small government’ is nonsense when they advocate having such a large military spend. You don’t actually have low taxes when you consider what the government offers as basic rights for it’s citizens. Did you know the United States spend the same per capita as Britain on health care as Britain. Yet Britain covers healthcare for all citizens and the US is nowhere near. I think I read as a country you spend about 30% of your GDP on healthcare. Pure insanity, while loads of people go bankrupt just because they’ve needed medical attention.
I actually think the only solution for the everyday man/woman’s healthcare is a cooperative charitable organisation operating as a charity.
I’m not a Senate rules expert but idk how Biden/Harris could force it through?
They can’t pass a $15/hr wage with 60 votes in the Senate because Republicans don’t want it.
They can pass it with 50 votes but can’t afford to lose any Dem senators. Two Dem senators oppose the inclusion of the hike in the COVID bill. One because they think it’s inappropriate to include in the COVID bill, whatever that means. The other because they think $15/hr is too high. So as things stand it’s dead in the Senate.
What they should do is put all the public pressure on those two Senators. This matter is overwhelmingly popular and it’s still not really a living wage in most of the country! All those old as shit boomer Republicans talking about working part time in college to pay tuition burns me up. Yeah, dipshit, college was $1000 a semester in 1980. Rent was $800 split with roommates. A house was $90k. You can’t pay for anything on minimum wage now. And don’t even get me started on the whole “hurrr get a STEM degree and you won’t have this problem” Boomer idiots.
They aren’t bringing it to a 50% vote though Josh. They’re asking for a 60% agreement. I’m not sure but TYT and others have claimed they have powers to overrule if they manage to get 50% - skip to 2 minutes plus:
Going onto college is a new issue. But it’s back to an industry that’s profiteering and not offering any competition or value. My eldest daughter lives in Atlanta Georgia and I really need to plan out what to do about her education or career. I run my own company and it might be I help her develop her own company in a field she’s interested in rather than goto college. And the less said about college rapes in the US the better. I know you’re a Dad too mate, you’ll have to be thinking about these things in a few years
My understanding on that is the parliamentarian can be “overruled” but that’s not even the correct term since they only issue an advisory opinion. They could easily just put it in the bill anyway and say, tough shit we’re putting this through on a budget reconciliation vote which only requires 50 votes to pass.
That might secure Sinema’s (D-AZ) vote but IDK since she released a statement saying she didn’t think it was appropriate to include the 15/hr minimum wage in the COVID bill but if the parliamentarian allowed it, she’d be fine with it. I’m not sure that having the Dem leadership not go along with the parliamentarian would sway her opinion. Let’s pretend it would, though.
They’d still have to win over Manchin (Dickhead-WV) who doesn’t believe $15/hr is reasonable. I think he countered with $11. He’s awful. I’m not sure how you change his opinion. But let’s say he has some epiphany and agrees that $15/hr is reasonable.
Then, I believe, they could pass the $15/hr minimum wage. They can absolutely get it in the bill, but I don’t know that Biden/Harris know what buttons to push to get all 50 Dem senators on board. They will absolutely never get 60 votes for it. It’s a huge missed opportunity for them. The only reason they won the election was with the assistance of largely young voters who skew way more progressive and left. If they botch this, those voters absolutely stay home in 2022 and we wind up with a Republican Senate and House ready to jam up any other programs or policies Biden/Harris want to work on.
If I’m Justice Bryer I put my papers in right now and get the Dem senate to appoint someone young, left and with a clean bill of health.
They don’t. Plenty of people working jobs at WalMart qualify for SNAP or WIC programs. Basically tax payers subsidize corporations’ ability to pay low wages.
I don’t even know if $15/ hr is a true living wage. What does that come out to? $32k a year? That definitely isn’t enough to live on in Maryland. I’m sure in some square states in the middle of the country it goes further.
There is no such thing as a living wage, and who wants to pay someone stacking shelves at $30k… it’s called low skilled work for a reason. Btw the amount of job losses that will come after the $15hr is implemented will be sight to see, short sighted people don’t think long term and just run on emotions.
From someone who’s studied economics I don’t believe mass job losses to be expected because of an increase in the minimum wage. You can maybe streamline and make some redundencies somewhat or have machines taking a person’s role. But generally most of the jobs will still need to be done in order for businesses and organisations to function. Some of those businesses, especially labour heavy businesses would need to raise their prices. I suppose some companies could take those jobs overseas but the companies able to do that have probably already done it.
The other thing that would happen is that the people who have higher wages will spend pretty much all that extra money. Extra money in the lower would cause an increase of consumer spending. This would cause economic growth and potentially inflation.
The other question is what effect this would have on other jobs currently between $15-$20 an hour? You’d imagine people in these roles would push for higher wages or take an easier more chilled out role. So you’d expect wage inflation in those roles and possibly up the whole spectrum.
Jobs will be consolidated and streamlined meaning there will be job losses, especially in the low jobs market; things like janitors, checkouts will be gone as this can be done by less people and machines. You just have to look at McDonald’s hardly any servers just machines you tabulate your order.
Higher wages will need to be off set by higher prices, so effectively raising the cost living. $15-20 will effectively destroy the lower jobs market rather than help while making things more expensive. Yes raising salaries for middle earners increases consumer spending, however this is not the same for lower earners as these companies work on a tight margins.
Also supermarket jobs, fast food jobs, being a waiter, none of these jobs are careers these jobs usually have high turnover because jobs are meant to be temporary for experience and long term.
Generally speaking, this is the issue with leftist/social ideals and policy. They may be well meaning but ultimately in using government power to apply corrective measures they prove to deal more damage to wider areas in society in their quest for equity and “Justice”.
We have real life examples of this in many cities and states on the west coast which are essential operated solely by left leaning/social democrats who are high tax and go beyond federal minimums in many areas. These places aren’t social utopias and rank amongst the worse places to live if you’re middle or working class.
Generally, minimum wage was never intended to provide a “liveable” income, in forcing it at Federal level all you do is kill SME nationwide and allow monopolies to take a greater market share. Socialists hate Amazon, Walmart other big business yet inadvertently create an artificial environment where big business are the only entities who can weather the increased overhead.
Is it 15$ minimum wage across the country?
Surely not every part of US is as expensive to need that sort of wages.
Can definitely see people not hiring enough people in rural America
Yes, let’s blame the left wing initiatives trying to solve the issues presented by a right wing economic model that sees millions work their fingers to the bone for a wage that isn’t enough to cover the cost of living. If someone works full time and still can’t make ends meet, afford appropriate shelter, food etc, thats a failing of a system that allows employers to exploit working people, not a personal failing of the individual, and it also isn’t a failure of left wing politics.
A minimum wage wouldn’t be necessary if it wasn’t for the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism, the reason people seek to implement one is because you simply cannot trust these companies not to be exploitative, greedy bastards.
Do you think the introduction of a minimum wage in the UK has dealt more damage to a wider area of society in the quest for a measure of “equity and justice”? I really don’t think it has.
Minimum wage was introduced as a means to price blacks out of the market, it had nothing to do with exploitation just racism at its inception.
Before minimum wage laws, people without academic achievements could get an entry post and learn on the job before progressing, after minimum wage laws employers had no incentive to do so leading them to only higher high school/college and university graduates, who loses out? The poor, yet people still advocate for this till this day.
Yeah it has, the government made it so that people I think under 18 don’t have to be paid at minimum wage; why do think that is? Every time minimum wage went up younger inexperienced people get prices out of the jobs market, thus things had to be adjusted in order to allow to get jobs.
Lots of the reasons why minimum wages are bad. Barriers to entry for less skilled workers who are willing to work for less, less incentive for employers, inflation, favours the larger bigger corporations and disadvantages the smaller family run businesses etc… I’m going to link Thomas Sowell and the late Walter Williams as they do a much better job than I could ever describing it. Videos are a little long but if you guys have time it’s well worth the listen if for nothing but to get the opposite side of the argument.
Personally I prefer the collective agreements that the Nordic countries does over minimum wage. But we hate unions and people working together here (and by extension the U.S, to keep the topic relevant) so something like that ain’t happening. So minimum wage is what we have to work with.
