Minimum wage

When companies have to pay their employees more they raise the prices of everything and no one really wins because they're put in the same position they were already in.

@piyushbhatia1 The issue is a lot of the places that don't pay their workers livable wages are places that could afford to. Instead of cutting costs at the top, they start at the bottom. I understand some places but not everywhere. We do focus so much on "they deserve a living wage" and not enough about how that's probably not going to happen but instead put us in a deeper financial hole because people like the elderly don't get a big enough increase to offset the increase in things like rent and food.

@sissy15 Everyone is concerned about earning no one cares about expenses

@sissy15 Although l am not totally against raising the minimum wage. There are some cases we really need to raise it since the minimum is really not livable already to the times already. That is why we should always classify and weigh things.

It also drives some small mom and pop places out of business because they can't afford to pay all of their employees a higher minimum wage and some people say then they shouldn't be in business at all then I feel that's a bit harsh because a lot of the time they don't have a ton of workers just a few and those workers already knew what they were signing up for. Now places like McDonald's and Walmart that's a different story. Ultimately they drive up minimum wage and once again it's the same issue and nothing is really solved.

@rsa101 I don't disagree in some cases but when people here want to raise minimum wage by four or five dollars an hour that isn't going to help.

It's a bit different here. Each state has different minimum wages and the inflation typically happens after the increase due to other inflation it's a cycle. It's not that it automatically happens but within time eventually, places start to inflate prices to keep up with having to pay workers more. There are people who worked years to get to a top pay only to suddenly have everyone making as much as them and they themselves don't get a raise. They were ahead and will eventually be behind again. It varies from state to state some places are more affordable than others. The US works a lot differently than a lot of countries. We have federal minimum wage and state minimum. Federal means that each state has to pay at least that amount and state is the lowest amount for that state and that varies. Federal I believe is 7.25 and Ohio just had another slight increase and is 8.70 an hour. When my mom was working in a factory when I was younger she was making 8 something an hour and back then the minimum wage was 4.25 an hour. She was making better pay. I don't know all of the facts of the economy all I know is whenever the minimum wage went up I'd notice the price of other things slowly go up like our rent would increase, I started seeing prices at restaurants and stores increase. Places that have a higher cost of living like New York and California do have higher minimum wages but they still can't survive on them. Originally there was a time when a family could afford to live on it but that's not how it works now.

@topffer @topffer I've found the vast majority of European countries are more expensive than most places in the US but you also have programs we don't. For instance, almost all of Europe has universal healthcare where in the US there are a ton of people living without it. Your taxes pay for certain things that benefit the country as a whole and therefore you typically have higher taxes and things but it's worth it. We definitely do things differently in the US. Our medical care here out of pocket is insane and our insurance often is overpriced. A lot of places don't have affordable insurance. Even with insurance medical expenses can be insane. Yes, you pay more for things but you also get more benefits than we do here. Our wages often don't meet the need for standard living. For being a first world country the US is behind in a lot of ways.

@sissy15 In France the minimum wage is at 10.15 Euros ($11.88) this year for all the country. Switzerland has a system with local minimum wages by canton/state. For Geneva it will be 23.37 Swiss Francs ($25.53) on November 1st, but quite everything is more expensive in Switzerland than in France.

Yup, exactly.

Honestly, I'm not even sure when it stopped being a living wage just that it did. We can vote all we want but until we get someone in that will actually do something about it nothing is going to change. The issue is a lot of the candidates aren't going to do anything about it. Even if we get a few good ones in they can't do anything about it alone. There are so many factors when it comes to changing things and we need to rebuild the whole system and simply voting doesn't replace the fact that others will vote against you or that there aren't decent enough candidates to change those policies.