LogFAQs > #942260419

Revelation34 posted...

No it is not minimum wage's fault. Blame the companies for arbitrarily inflating all their prices instead.

BlackScythe0 posted...

There has been no observed substantial increases in cost of living with previous minimum wage increases.

We need minimum wage increases because keeping wages stagnant is not preventing prices from going up. You would need an unconstitutional assault on corporations to address this in any manner besides a minimum wage.

Never in US history has min wage raised as quickly as it has in the last 5 years or so. Not fed min wage mind you, but min wage in many states/cities etc. The results have been bad, universally. This isn't an isolated incident, and the same has NOT happened in places where the min wage did not increase.

Therefore, it makes logical sense that even though it's actually the companies and landlords that are raising the prices, the basic underlying cause of the increased cost of living, was the extremely rapid increase in minimum wage.

This was exaggerated by the fact that many people who made more than min wage, did not get a wage increase as well. Not only did it actually become harder for people making min wage (the new one) to make enough to live semi-comfortably (IE rent a 1 bedroom, have money for transportation/communication and food, and maybe a bit for entertainmnet with a 40 hour a week job), but it put tons of people who used to be above minimum wage in the same boat (Which was a worse boat then people making min wage before the increases happened were in).

Lets look at simple numbers in Olympia for instance.

I moved to Olympia in 2015, at which point Min wage was $10 an hour. A 1 bedroom apartment at that point was $600 on average and a 2 bedroom apartment could be had for about $100-$150 more. My house.....the huge one......which had 5 bedrooms, 2 living rooms, a dining rooms, a very nice kitchen, a laundry room, a pantry, a basement and a gorgeous view of the pugent sound (along with 2 fireplaces, a nice yard etc), rented for only $1800 total (we rented it before we moved in).

Someone making $10 an hour back then would net about $1600 a month with a 40 hour job, could have their own apartment for 600$ and even after taxes, have a good 800 left over for other expenses. In addition TONS of jobs payed between 11-15$ which gave people doing all those jobs significantly more (15$ baically mean $1500 or so after taxes and rent.

Fast forward just freaking 4 years......in just 4 years Min wage jumped to $13.50, but now you can't get a 1 bedroom for less than $1000 and in general you'll pay at least $1200, meanwhile food has increased drastically (more then doubled for some things like meats etc (although alot of that is very recent due to the virus, it already had significantly jumped before that).

Now someone working 40 hours at 13.50 can barely afford to pay rent + utilities, with no money left for food, most people working min wage have to rent rooms, and the number of people living with roomates or renting rooms has skyrocketed.

Literally if you search for apartments for rent your lucky to find any under $1200 and most of the decent places are $1300-$1500. Yeah you make a bit more per month, but you pay taxes on all of that (Even if its' only 10%), and again in this state the sales tax is 11% so when you double the cost of things, you double the tax on em as well.

Thank god we don't pay taxes on rent.

The basic point is, rapid increases in minimum wage doesn't help anyone, because rentals are in demand, so thelandlords jack up the prices, this increases the property value, so they jack em up even more. This causes rentals for buisinesses to go up, so they boost the cost of everything they sell, also, they have to pay employees more now, so they boost prices even more.

The net result is everything increases over all more than 35% in cost, compared to before, while ONLY those making min wage increased how much they made by 35%. It's bad for everyone, but worse for those who didn't make near min wage before.

---

Agatha "Your naked and they are nuns, it's not your eyes they're not looking at."
Glowing Elephant "Stonehedge was a sex thing."