$15 Minimum Wage Dead for Now
The Senate parliamentarian has ruled against ramming it through in the COVID relief bill.
POLITICO (“Biden’s minimum wage increase runs afoul of budget rules“):
The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that President Joe Biden’s minimum wage hike violates arcane budget rules that could jeopardize the rest of his $1.9 trillion relief package, dealing a blow to progressives in a highly anticipated decision that has left much of Washington holding its breath for days.
The ruling, confirmed by three sources — and predicted by Biden himself — has thrust the future of the wage hike into uncertainty. The $15 hourly wage increase that Democrats are seeking could pass only on party-line votes, and they needed the protections of the so-called budget reconciliation process to shield the language from a Republican filibuster.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced shortly after the ruling that the House would plunge ahead with including it in its coronavirus relief bill, which is set for a vote on Friday night.
But Democrats in both chambers acknowledge that the policy will be stripped out in the final version of the bill — a setback for the left wing of the party, which has pushed for the policy for a decade.
[…]
Biden, who had proposed the wage hike as a key plank of his $1.9 trillion package, said through a spokeswoman that he was also “disappointed in this outcome,” but added that he “respects the parliamentarian’s decision and the Senate’s process.”
[…]
Democrats for weeks have argued that the minimum wage hike could be included in the package through reconciliation, citing analysis from the Congressional Budget Office that found the boost would increase the deficit by reducing reliance on social services. But Republicans counter that the same CBO report suggests the increase would result in the loss of 1.4 million jobs and say it’s an extraneous provision.
“This decision reinforces reconciliation cannot be used as a vehicle to pass major legislative change — by either party — on a simple majority vote. This decision will, over time, reinforce the traditions of the Senate,” said the Senate Budget Committee’s top Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
NYT (“Top Senate Official Disqualifies Minimum Wage From Stimulus Plan“) adds:
Democrats suffered a major setback on Thursday in their bid to push through a $15-an-hour minimum wage as part of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, after the Senate’s top rule-enforcer said that the increase could not be included in the bill.
The decision effectively knocked out a crucial plank of Mr. Biden’s plan championed by liberals, and demonstrated the perils of Democrats’ strategy to fast-track passage of the sweeping pandemic aid legislation, part of an effort to steer around Republican obstruction.
It underscored that even with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, Mr. Biden and Democrats still face formidable challenges in delivering on their most ambitious promises given their slim majorities and opposition from Republicans.
[…]
The decision also poured fuel on a smoldering debate among Democrats about how to use their Senate majority to achieve Mr. Biden’s agenda. Progressives who have pushed for the elimination of the filibuster — which effectively requires 60 votes to advance any major legislation — pointed to the ruling as evidence that Democrats had no choice but to change the rules of the Senate to enable them to push through crucial policy changes that have been stalled time and again amid Republican opposition.
The episode also touched off a bitter round of finger-pointing among Democrats, who are divided over how hard to push for the wage increase. Mr. Biden, a longtime creature of the Senate, had publicly professed skepticism that the provision would survive the procedural thicket facing his stimulus plan.
Two moderate Democrats, Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, had also said they did not support including such a large increase to the federal minimum wage in the package, although some Democrats believed they might ultimately relent.
[…]
“I’m confident that we have a majority in the United States Senate, including the vice president, that would vote to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of President Biden’s ‘American Rescue Plan,'” Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont and the chairman of the Budget Committee, said in a statement. “Yet because of the archaic and undemocratic rules of the Senate, we are unable to move forward to end starvation wages in this country and raise the income of 32 million struggling Americans.”
He said he would try an alternative approach, proposing an addition to the stimulus measure that would take tax deductions away from companies that fail to pay their workers at least a $15 hourly wage.
President Biden, having spent 36 years in the Senate, was rightly skeptical that this could happen through reconciliation. An excellent primer from the House Committee on the Budget explains the process. Key here is the so-called “Byrd Rule.”
Named for Senator Robert Byrd, the Byrd rule (Section 313 of the Congressional Budget Act) was first adopted in the mid-1980s to limit extraneous provisions from inclusion in reconciliation bills. Because reconciliation bills are considered using expedited procedures in the Senate, the Byrd rule is aimed at preventing the use of reconciliation to move a legislative agenda unrelated to spending or taxes, and to some extent it limits Congress’ ability to use reconciliation to increase deficits – at least over the long-term. The Byrd rule prohibits the inclusion of “extraneous” measures in reconciliation, defining “extraneous” as follows:
*measures with no budgetary effect (i.e., no change in outlays or revenues);
*measures that worsen the deficit when a committee has not achieved its reconciliation target;
*measures outside the jurisdiction of the committee that submitted the title or provision;
*measures that produce a budgetary effect that is merely incidental to the non-budgetary policy change;
*measures that increase deficits for any fiscal year outside the reconciliation window; and
*measures that recommend changes in Social Security.
Any Senator may raise a point of order against an extraneous provision in the reconciliation bill, amendments, or the conference agreement. The Senate Parliamentarian decides whether there is a Byrd rule violation, and provisions struck through a Byrd rule point of order cannot be offered later as amendments. However, Byrd rule points of order can be waived by a vote of 60 Senators.
This was clearly extraneous to a COVID relief bill and the arguments to the contrary were rather silly.
“I strongly disagree with tonight’s decision by the Senate Parliamentarian,” Sanders said in a statement Thursday evening. “The (Congressional Budget Office) made it absolutely clear that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour had a substantial budgetary impact and should be allowed under reconciliation. It is hard for me to understand how drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was considered to be consistent with the Byrd Rule, while increasing the minimum wage is not,” Sanders added, referring to the rule — named after the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd — that prohibits including “extraneous” measures as part of the budget process that Democrats are employing to send the Covid-19 relief package to Biden’s desk by early March.
“Let’s be clear: raising the minimum wage is COVID-19 relief,” Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement responding to the ruling. “We simply cannot go back to the Black, Brown, AAPI, Indigenous, poor and working class voters who delivered us the White House and the Senate majority and tell them that an unelected parliamentarian advised us — based on arcane rules — that we could not raise the minimum wage as we promised,” she added, calling on the Senate to reform the filibuster “to allow populist and necessary policies like the $15 minimum wage to pass with a majority of the Senate.”
The whole point of the process is to expedite taxation and spending bills. If any pet program can be attached, then it’s simply normal order.
That the minimum wage increase is quite popular and has more than enough support in the House and Senate to pass in a straight up-down vote is, certainly, more evidence that the filibuster—especially a filibuster that is itself normal order—is incredibly undemocratic. That’s particularly true given that equal representation of the 50 states in the Senate regardless of population further skews the process, requiring a supermajority of the public to get a bare Democratic majority.
But the two Democratic Senators who oppose the minimum wage increase, Manchin and Sinema, also oppose ending the filibuster. Absent Democrats expanding their majority in the 2022 elections—which would go against historical norms—this state of affairs will remain in effect.
The parliamentarian is a non-partisan and is seems completely right on this to me. The Romney-Cotton proposal shows that there is some room to peel off Republicans on this (probably with a minimum wage that is not universal, but more tailored to local economies). But it’s not going to be easy.
I think Biden and the congressional leadership knew this all along so they continued pushing for the $15 just for show to make the radicals happy. They can either drop it or negotiate a lower number/more flexible plan. I think the negotiation tactic would be better. Might have to give up a bit of spending in return.
Steve
@Hal_10000:
I’ll write more about this at some point but I think this is the right way to go. Or, more accurately, I think there should be a universal baseline with an adjustment for local economies. That’s what we do with, for example, civil service pay.
@James Joyner:
Exactly — the schedule already exists, you don’t have to invent anything. Set a minimum wage that is appropriate for Keokuk Iowa, then apply the GS locality adjustments to figure out what that would be in specific locations. The only slightly annoying part would be for each business to determine which enumerated locality (if any) it is in. Since most minimum wage jobs are at brick-and-mortar establishments, that shouldn’t be too hard. Type your business address into the web app and it will tell you.
The whole thing is pathetic. Right now 76% of voters support the relief bill, including 60% of actual Republicans. This takes the hand-wringing alleged utility of the Senate’s idiocy to a whole new level. If there were a capital-gains tax cut at stake and the numbers were the same and the Democrats were talking about compromises the Sunday morning talk shows would be filled with think-tank moderates talking about a full-scale reboot of the American government.
As James notes, the famous moderate duo of Mitt Romney and Tom (Land’o) Cotton already have a minimum wage proposal out. This is the GOPs chance to show they can be bipartisan and do what’s right for the country. Don’t hold your breath.
It is not dead.
There are currently at least 2 Republican proposals for increasing the minimum wage. Also there is talk of restructuring the current DEM proposal in such a way* to make it pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian. Whether it would work or not is another question. Either way people haven’t given up and considering how popular** the idea is in general, they shouldn’t.
* one such work around is to “In the coming days, I will be working with my colleagues in the Senate to move forward with an amendment to take tax deductions away from large, profitable corporations that don’t pay workers at least $15 an hour and to provide small businesses with the incentives they need to raise wages,”’ Sanders said in a statement. “That amendment must be included in this reconciliation bill.” Doing so should be considered tax and budget related. We’ll see.
**Minimum wage increases have been passed by voter initiatives in both Misery and Floriduh, other places as well I suspect
Tailoring the minimum wage is just as problematic. In Mississippi the living wage for an adult with no children is 13.99 and 27.70 for an adult with 1 child. The minimum wage is 7.25. The progressive tailoring would be to bring it to 14/hr in Mississippi. Romney’s minimum wage is 10/hr? If that 4/hr below what it takes to survive in the poorest state in the country, what’s the point?
@Hal_10000:
This Senate parliamentarian isn’t non-partisan though. The CBO already ruled that changing the minimum wage has a substantial impact on the budget. Why did the parliamentarian, who has no particular expertise in economics ignore them? Meanwhile, he had no problem letting the Republicans put all kinds of extraneous things like ANWR drilling in their reconciliation bills.
The DNC should follow the precedent the GOP set in 2001 with Robert Dover and fire the parliamentarian.
@Stormy Dragon:
Note this is also the parliamentarian that ruled no one was allowed to say anything bad about Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing for attorney general.
I wouldn’t mind if they fired Elizabeth MacDonough.
@Hal_10000: ” The Romney-Cotton proposal shows that there is some room to peel off Republicans on this …”
Actually, it doesn’t. We went through this in ’09, where the GOP Senate was always willing to negotiate before saying ‘No’. Romney *might* be willing to say ‘yes’, but Cotton is scum.
@Modulo Myself:
Which source are you using for “living wage” in various regions? I’m curious how they define it, and how it compares to other models.
As for “what’s the point of a minimum wage below the living wage?”, you have to remember that part of the point is to punish single parents…
@steve:
“[Biden] will work with leaders in Congress to determine the best path forward, because no one in this country should work full time and live in poverty,” [WH Press Secretary] Psaki said.
What a backward country we live in! What passes as radicalism in a country of tremendous wealth and abundance is Biden’s position on the minimum wage.
A ”one size fits all” approach to an extremely diverse economy/cost of living is just as dumb as those who think they deserve a minimum wage period.
I won’t bother pointing out the inherent flaws of such nonsense, most of you have a 3 digit IQ.
It may be a matter of appealing to Republicans. Don’t say you want to end or kill the filibuster. Say it deserves the death penalty.
@Bill:
Bill, Bill, Bill.
@Modulo Myself:
I would love for the Democrats to try to pass it without reconciliation, let the Republicans filibuster, and then turn around and pass it through reconciliation. Just to taint the filibuster and the Republicans further.
@Bill:
What a bizarre thing to say.
@DrDaveT:
I used the MIT Living Wage Calculator. I’m sure they gathered their data and interpreted it in a normal way. In NYC the living wage comes out to 42,473.60 (20.42/hr) which seems reasonable to me.
@James Joyner: Can we retire the name Bill?
I’m not asking that New Bill be banned, it’s just disconcerting seeing him post under our departed commenting compatriot’s name.
Perhaps there’s an option in WordPress that links names to emails. It would also help with the “I mistyped my email, and now someone has to release the comment from moderation”
(Unless, of course, New Bill is Old Bill…)
@Gustopher:
It’s not only Republicans who are being tainted. Many Democrats still kind of believe in this compromise hocus-pocus and in the fact that these rich zeroes on the other side–like Romney–have some clue about what’s happening in this country. Just look at the messy issue of school reopening. 40% want to reopen schools immediately regardless if teachers have all been vaccinated. But there are many liberal Democrats who believe that everybody hates teachers and their unions as much as some raving Republican does so it’s a political risk to stand with them. It’s just not the case.
@Gustopher:
Nah, the old Bill had a sense of humor, dropped funny news stories in the forum and got testy w/Dr T. This Bill is a bot based on obsolete tech.
@Modulo Myself:
Those come to $29,120 and $57,616 per annum.
Median US income is $31,133.
MS cost of living is 81.1% of the national average (housing is 55.6%)
But you’re suggesting that 2 parents with a child would need over $86k for a “living wage”?
@Gustopher:
It’s state legislature session season right now. Many of them have to be done, including their budgets, by May or so. They really need to know by mid-March how much aid is coming, and in what form, in order to incorporate it. Or that there is no aid and they’ll have to balance their budgets on their own. No more dragging things out. Don’t spend three months on trickery that gets Sanders and Manchin and Sinema and the Parliamentarian to agree to some sort of minimum wage language. Don’t spend time trying to embarrass the Republican Senators. Pass the bill and get the money flowing in time to do the states the most good.
@Mu Yixiao:
While I haven’t looked at the living wage model under discussion, most assume adequate housing, nutrition and transportation costs, where your budget can be tight, but your life somewhat comfortable. Typically discussions of the minimum wage aren’t tied to a living wage, but the income needed to avoid being in poverty. Poverty line and living wage can be two separate things.
A minimum wage job, should keep you out of poverty, but you will still be low income.
@Mu Yixiao:
Yeah, those dumb idiots at MIT looking at data. What do they know? Get us some libertarians here stat. They’ll give us the real numbers based on having read a couple WSJ op-eds and having insane childlike faith in the ‘free market’.
@Modulo Myself:
Who pissed in your Wheaties this morning?
If the MIT numbers are right, then most of MS isn’t earning a living wage*. Nor WI. Nor NY or CA. TN is just scraping by.
And I’m barely making it–despite owning a house, driving a 2-year old car, watching TV on a 35-inch screen (the perfect size for the space), browsing OtB on 100mb broadband, eating well, dressing well, going out once a week, and living a rather nice life.
So… Excuse me if I question what a “living wage” is supposed to cover (and yes, I actually read the technical documentation for the MIT calculator).
*Based on median income vs. MIT’s living wage.
@steve: “I think Biden and the congressional leadership knew this all along so they continued pushing for the $15 just for show to make the radicals happy”
Something like 70% of the country is in favor of the rise to $15. The “radicals” are the Republicans in congress who respond only to their donors.
@Mu Yixiao:
I have no idea where you live, but if you live in NYC, are single and get paid 42K/year, you don’t own property and you aren’t able to pay for a car or auto insurance. If you’re very frugal, you’re probably getting by with several roommates just barely above the level of paycheck to paycheck. So the number seems close enough to me.
There’s a bigger problem than just where we set the minimum wage. Make the minimum wage too high and you incentivize automation. Too low and you have a lot of desperate people living under freeway overpasses. The competition between human and robot is only going to get worse for humans. Or at least it’s worse if we assume that the only way to survive is to be employed. If we had UBI, automation would be a good thing, not a bad thing.
Some fundamental changes need to be made, because the line showing the cost of maintaining a human life is going up as the line showing the cost of robot labor goes down. We are very near the point where quite large numbers of humans will be simply unable to compete.
Then of course we run into a whole host of sociological issues. What does a person do when their labor has too little value? What is a human life without work? What would a society where the unemployment rate is permanently 20, 30, 40% look like?
Damned if I know.
@Michael Reynolds:
We’re going to wind up with UBI, possibly the world over.
Of course, the donor class will resist it, or at least to any significant living income. and the moralizers will rile against it.
But the way I see it we can have UBI, or we can have a revolution and then UBI.
@Michael Reynolds:
The cost of robotics isn’t what is keeping robots from replacing workers, for many low wage jobs that are repetitive in nature, the ROI is pretty darn attractive, plus it qualifies for an investment tax credit and depreciation. Like the employee barren, Amazon store, the fast food franchise sans workers could be open today and be more profitable than the current operations.
@Mu Yixiao:
That’s because they *aren’t*. For a nation as rich as we are, you’d never know it driving though whole sections of this country. You aren’t supposed to be just “getting by” or one minor crisis away from life-ruining debt; you definitely aren’t supposed to be working multiple jobs to get by. You aren’t supposed to worry about the electricity getting turned off or losing your living space because your check was too light this week. We’re about to see whole swaths of people who thought they were doing just fine be ruined by COVID medical expenses. Folks who were making more than minimum wage are about to be absolutely crushed by unexpected expenses and yet we expect a significant portion of the population to do essential work during a pandemic for the bare minimum that wasn’t sufficient in the Before Times.
Americans have been tricked for generations to think it’s normal to work more than one job in order to survive. It’s not, not historically and not traditionally in this country or any wealthy others. We’ve been lied to that lower wages mean more jobs but when those extra jobs end up being yours anyways, why not just get paid more for the one? A living wage means one job with sufficient wages so you actually have time to LIVE, not just hop from job to job so you can afford a mattress to die on for overwork.
@Modulo Myself:
I wasn’t making a veiled effort to discredit the source; I was asking a question. Which you answered — thank you. Here’s the specific definition that I was looking for:
That makes it clear both what they mean by “living wage” and how it differs from poverty level. (Good on them for also accounting for geographic differences in state and local taxes.)
@Mu Yixiao:
In a household with one or more child, that would qualify for the Earned Income “Tax Credit”. When the median income qualifies someone for welfare, there’s a problem. I don’t think the problem here is undeserving people getting welfare.
@Michael Reynolds:
My life is great without work. Take yesterday. (I’m temporarily unemployed). I woke up, made a great breakfast, went to Panera and drank coffee and caught up on back issues of the New Yorker, went over to Walmart to pick up kitchen essentials I was out of like salt and smoked paprika, went to the gym and did 5 miles on a bike with a kickass 160 HR, went home and showered and spent the next 3 hours producing a very mediocre chili, watched 30 mins of YouTube chili videos to see what I was doing wrong, which turned out to be adding too many black beans, then met my friend Stephanie at Halpatter Brewing Company for some new ales I’ve never had before. Then home to read a few chapters of The Sparrow, and then tv for a couple hours.
Why would I want to go to some stupid job if I didn’t have to?
@Michael Reynolds:
There will always be work – the only question is does it need to paid for in order to be considered work. Humanity can’t stand boredom. People will forever be doing projects just for the hell of it; we’d probably end up with viable Mars and Moon colonies decades earlier if we had people working on it because they wanted to, rather than potentially just putting in hours to get that paycheck. Passion projects would explode similar to how people started tackling things like building desks for students during the pandemic. Similarly, we’d see some serious Darwin Award contenders as dumb people with free time started trying to see what would happen if tried to light your farts on fire after a massive chili contest.
If you had the money to exist and your existence was not tied to What You Do but rather Who You Want to Be, what kind of world might we end up with?
@Modulo Myself:
Follow the money.
The point of a minimum wage below a living wage is corporate socialism. A handout to the “job creators”. So that they can continue to show high profits with low costs.
in 2014, it was shown that the benefit to just Walmart alone in save costs was 6.2 billion in government assistance to low paid workers ( source , another source )
The GAO states that millions of workers in 2020 are on gov’t food assistance and federal heath care. ( source )
Companies don’t pay. Then YOU pay.
I can TOTALLY understand this if the company was a small business and struggling to get started… but when a company earns BILLIONS annually and chooses not to pay their employees KNOWING that they can be guided to government benefits to intentionally avoid paying a living wage, then there is something seriously wrong.
The GOP looks like they are trying to control costs, but the reality is that it is just shifting the burden to the taxpayers.
And Dems are screwed, because they MUST FIGHT keep the social safety net in place or else those workers wouldn’t have food or heath care.
@Sleeping Dog:
Yep. I know McD and others already have pilot programs.
People keep referring to the Luddites and their (unfounded, eventually) fear that there wouldn’t be jobs if we had automated looms. But I think this is different. We’re at a turning point. And it won’t just be fast food workers, there are an increasing number of white collar jobs threatened as well.
@Teve: @KM:
I lack your confidence in people. I don’t think it’s going to be easy or painless to transition to a workless life. Tens of millions of people with no organizing principle in their lives worries me.
Speaking for myself alone, work was the one thing in my life at age 16 that made any sense. School was a waste of my time. My family were nuts. I craved a logical system, and work was that: show up, do some things, get paid.
I’m already looking at a version of post-employment. For the first time in my life I don’t have to work. I’m even old enough to call it, ‘retirement.’ It’s unsettling. So, what am I doing? Working, of course.
@Mu Yixiao:
I suspect lots of people are substituting piss for milk in their Wheaties. Or: why one must be cautious extrapolating off the median.
For some reason, I can’t find the corresponding graph for any year after 2014. The visualizations on the census website are different now.
@Michael Reynolds:
White collar jobs, why hire an attorney to review legal briefs and background material in trial preparation when a computer can to a key word/phrase search and pull out that info. Why hire an MD to read an x-ray or other imaging tech, when a computer can scan and ID anything untoward as well and quicker. Who needs accountants. And while a bunch of chimps couldn’t do it, we’re fast getting to the point where much writing can be done by a computer.
Glad I’m retired.
@Michael Reynolds: I don’t know that it’s going to be easy or painless to transition to that kind of life, but I expect it’s going to be a hell of a fight to get the greedheads to part with some cash.
@Sleeping Dog: there’s already technology in use which writes summaries of baseball games.
The problem that is going to develop with UBI, is that the amount will be like the aforementioned, living wage, it will sustain a family, but that is about it. That maybe fine for those who would have spent their lives working in low wage jobs, barely scraping by, but for those whose abilities would allow them to earn an income that allows them to create some wealth and not have financial worries short of a black swan type event, the UBI won’t cut it, if they lose their job/career to a robot.
What we are quite likely to see, is that rather than the tax code subsidizing the change over to robots, that the robots are actually taxed and at a high rate to discourage implementation. Bill Gates is an advocate of this.
A good and recent example of a decent working class job getting eliminated by automation, are toll collection workers on toll roads. Massachusetts automated all collection on the Mass Pike and completely eliminated those jobs, which were state jobs with an income of $65,000/yr, plus the usual state employee bennies. NH and NY mostly automated and slashed the number of jobs. In NH the pay was ~$15/hr and all the exhaust you could inhale. Maine will automate their toll collection in the spring.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yeah. I have to agree with you on this. it will prolly result in a lot of people clinging to their special interests in groups, resulting in needless confrontations over nothing.
They had a show about that…. I think it was called “The Walking Dead”.
@Sleeping Dog:
Unless you are in the tech industry like I am, you have NO idea the phenomenal leaps that are going on in AI, voice recognition & response and video and audio analytics. Google is driving the hell out of this, as are some really smart Israeli companies.
You have likely had some basic conversations with IVR’s, but that is mild in what you will see in the next two years.
This will wipe out massive number of call center jobs in the USA. Several million folks displaced.
Anything that has to do with a job for customer interactions is being eliminated. Grocery stores, financial institutions, heathcare… all is going to disappear.
Forget about deliveries and teh gig economy, that will all be displaced as well. Manufacturing is gone. And the “service industry” will be gone. and what jobs then remain?
Right now, today, you can go to Sam’s Club and shop without interacting with a single human if you choose to. Scan the stuff as you put it in teh cart, and out you go. Or just order it online and have it put in your trunk. or delivered.
But yet we are giving government tax breaks so that people will have more kids.
Jesus, I am depressing as shit.
@Mu Yixiao:
Speaking only for myself, I’m amenable to believing that’s true. But then again, I’m living in a 400 sq. ft. studio apartment in a town on the edge of the Portland, OR exurbs and I have an income of ~$45,000 from Social Security, a small pension from the Teamsters, work as a substitute teacher, and returns on a smallish investment portfolio that is mostly in cash equivalents. That’s not a complaint, by the way, I chose to live this way. Still in all, my income would only barely qualify me for a one bedroom in a marginal neighborhood and some of my neighbors in this very building are living 2 unrelated adults to a unit or a family with more than one child. I do better than scrape by, but I wouldn’t if it was more than just me. And that’s at $14K above your quoted median. So yeah, I can go with “most of MS isn’t earning a living wage.”
@Teve:
Don’t take the following as an attack, I don’t intend it in that way at all, but as a serious question, how long will you be able to continue with the kind of day you had yesterday? During my unemployed time before I went to Korea (at roughly 250% of what I’d been making in the US before I left), I didn’t have the money to do any of those things. On the other hand, I’d been scraping by for about 7 or 8 years before I left for Korea, whereas, from what you had told us in the past, you had a pretty good job for a while.
@Liberal Capitalist: sometimes I think algorithms are going to take over the world. Sometimes I think the exact opposite. The other day I went to Google something on my iPad. I prefer speaking to typing so I spoke my search quarry.
What I said: “How to watch Freaks and Geeks.”
What my iPad typed: “How to which creeks and beaks”
Some days are better than others…
@Michael Reynolds: “And it won’t just be fast food workers, there are an increasing number of white collar jobs threatened as well.”
So it’s okay if the guy who sweeps the floor in my office can’t feed his family as long as I still can? (And yes, I KNOW THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU MEANT, but I just couldn’t resist, sorry.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker: no worries, that’s not an attack.
I was in commission sales for the last couple of years and I spend very very little and don’t have a family. My car is a 2012 Ford Fiesta that was paid off 4 years ago and gets a thousand miles to the gallon. I rarely go out to eat because I can cook a $20 Outback meal for $5. I dress simple and cheap: I wear Levis and black Hanes t-shirts and Doc Martens 8053s that last a decade. I never buy books or magazines and I’m in the library once a week. Instead of an expensive cable package I watch TV on this iPad that’s attached to my cell plan. Every single piece of furniture in here was a hand me down. I buy less stuff so I can do more things.
I’ve got probably around $10,000 I can access so I’m good for maybe 6 to 10 months. But I just started looking for a new job because I don’t want to use everything up.
@Liberal Capitalist: The picture you paint of automation displacing tens of millions of people in the next decade is one that implies enormous social and political change very very soon. Since our Senate is incapable of functioning, that implies revolution.
@Liberal Capitalist:
Since, I sold call center tech for 20 or so years, I’m actually surprised that spec rec IVR hasn’t replaced more jobs. Recently I had a conversation with an AI system and I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, so I didn’t realize it till the system shuffled me off to a live agent. So they are getting very good and with AI adding value on the backside they will become even more conversational.
@liberal capitalist:
Awww… Jezuz… what teh hell… THIS GUY agrees with me.
https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-announces-legislation-require-15-minimum-wage-billion-dollar-corporations
When the left goes far let, and the right goes far right, we often meet.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
If I serve it up, I can’t blame you for taking a swing.
That said, I suspect I’m the only one here who ever worked fast food. Carl’s Jr. I didn’t last long.
Rather than work, people need either something to give them a purpose, or a way to pass the time. Both can be accomplished by work (I can attest to the second). But I think it’s sad when someone retires and find they would rather work because they don’t know what to do with their time.
I can understand scholars, writers, artists, etc. never retiring, because their work is their purpose. Ditto for entrepreneurs who have built one or several companies. However, you have writers and artists and entrepreneurs whose sole purpose is the money they make from their work, and facing retirement they may as well take up any job than to find something to do.
I vaguely recall an essay by Arthur C. Clarke in which he opined the goal of human society should be full unemployment. He meant a future where people don’t need to work to make a living (how?), and are thus free to pursue various interests.
I could see myself, for instance, simply studying, cooking, and finally getting around to finishing some of the stories I want to write, if I didn’t have to work. Hell, I could see myself doing that if I could find a job that didn’t require 12 hour days. For me that would be purpose enough.
@Mu Yixiao:
In Los Angeles, that is not a living wage for a family of three.
$86K Gross = $70K net after Federal/State/Local Taxes (assuming alot of deductions)
$70K-$30K rent = $40K ($2500 x 12 – Cheap rent)
$40K- $120-0 auto (Car Payment, Insurance, Repairs, Gas/Oil $1000 mo) – $28,000
$28,000 – $4800 (yearly DWP bill – $400/mo) = $23,200
$23,200 – $1200 (yearly GAS Co bill – $100.mo) = $22,000
$22,000 – $9600 (yearly grocery bill based on national average for famly of three) = $12,400
$12,400 – $19600 (average cost of health insurance for family of 3, 2020) = -7200
So we’re at negative $7200 with very low numbers for groceries, DWP, Auto, and rent. Haven’t even gotten to cable/internet/cell phones, clothes, school, school supplies, childcare (if needed), emergency expenses.
@Teve:
Yep.
Because there is no plan b for any of them. Nothing exists. Capitalism as a construct collapses. We can’t all be CEO’s of startups if there is no consumer. And while it may be bad here (as there is a lot of ambient wealth that will likely get spent over time) the developing countries will be decimated. And then throw in changing weather patterns and rising oceans for megadeaths becoming the norm in the impoverished countries.
To quote Rockhound in Armageddon: God, I hate knowing everything.
This is what I get for having degrees in Sociology, Political Science and Geography. Sucks.
@Michael Reynolds:
Does working in a grocery store bakery qualify?
@Liberal Capitalist: I read Martin Ford’s Rise of the Robots and he says basically what you say, but I’ve also seen some pushback.
I’m not really qualified to estimate what the future holds.
@Michael Reynolds: my first job was at a Burger King. I worked at five different coffee shops, and at one, a district manager (the scum of the Earth) timed me on the Cimbali with a stopwatch. That kinda counts.
@Teve: he wasn’t happy that he couldn’t chastize me about my times. Little did he know that was the fifth shop for me. I can pull 20 second shots in my sleep, since I adjust the grind all day.
@Hal_10000: @James Joyner: Id make minimum pay organizational and not mandatory. Minimums pay would be a percentage of either Gross or Executive Pay of the company (whichever greater) and firms failing to meet minimums would pay the difference in taxes to cover the safety net these workers would require to make up the difference.
I think that would strike a balance of getting multi-billion dollars companies like Walmart out of the business of using the taxpayers safety net to subsidize their compensation package while allowing Ned’s Hardware to still compete and grow.
Regardless of the method chosen, the principle here is to not put local and regional firms out of business. The HomeDepots of the world can absorb $20 minimum labor costs. Tims Hardware can’t.
@Jim Brown 32:
If Tim’s Hardware can only make a profit by paying substandard wages to employees forced to accept by the threat of starvation and homelessness, should society care if it goes out of business?
@Michael Reynolds: I’d never even SEEN a Carl’s Jr. until I came back from Korea in 2015. I’d seen the commercial with Paris Hilton before, but I don’t recall a store where I lived until much later.
@Michael Cain:
We can spare a few hours.
I want the Dems to literally let the Republicans filibuster, and then pass through reconciliation. Same day.
Prancing through the aisles saying “Neener! Neener!” would be optional.
Next day would be fine too, and would get a news cycle of Republicans disrupting covid relief.
Fast Food
My father owned a donut franchise when I was in Jr. High School. Bakers Dozen Donuts. You bought 12 donuts and we gave you 13. I worked there for no pay other than all the day old donuts I could eat.
When I was allegedly in college I worked at a Spudnuts donut shop for whatever minimum wage was in 1968. They used potato flour in the donut dough. Spud nuts…get it?
@Michael Reynolds:
Does making cotton candy in the movie theater lobby count?
(You have no idea how nasty a job that was. The hot liquid sugar gets all over everything, including you, and it burns like hell when it hits bare skin. Yes, real cooks have to deal with much worse, but this was a real wakeup for 17-year-old me.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I still haven’t.
@KM: Ive recently began to think about this…and it might end up being the way to go. Say the minimum went to $30. Yes, a LOT less jobs overall. But those that do have jobs can provide for an entire family…freeing those other people to do other things including self employment work.
We may have reached diminishing returns with dual income households from a societal cohesion POV.
@Michael Reynolds: Hardees (fired), Arbys (fired), Pizza Hut (quit). God I hated fast food.
@Stormy Dragon: Yes, because through no fault of Tim, the deck is stacked against him being able to compete with Home Depot & Lowes. These large chain Brands send most the profits out of the community. Tim lives and spends his profit locally…that is important.
If Tim grosses 200K and pays the mandated minimum percentage out in salary…Id say that is a net plus to the Community. Tim and his employees have incentive to make 300K next year because everyone is going to make more money.
@DrDaveT:..I still haven’t.
If you’ve seen a Hardee’s you’ve seen a Carl’s Jr.
Not mentioned in this item. Sometime in the ’70s (?) Hardee’s bought Burger Chef.
@Mister Bluster:..Correction…
In 1982, the General Foods Corporation, owners of the Burger Chef trademark and name, divested itself of the restaurant chain, gradually selling to the owners of Hardee’s. The final restaurant to carry the Burger Chef name closed in 1996.
@Mister Bluster:
Burger Chef was my family’s preferred fast food. My little brothers enjoyed the kid meals, and the DIY fixings made it possible for even a generic fast food burger to taste pretty good. But when Hardees bought BC, the local franchises did not become Hardees — they just vanished.
@Michael Reynolds:
I was a stock person at a grocery store. I was a retail clerk at a convenience store. I was a runner / dish washer at a bad pizza joint.
I worked three days in telemarketing before my brain revolted and said no – this thing is a moral wrong (selling time-shares). I never got paid for that, thank deity.
I have sold my plasma. Actually, kinda proud of that: a win-win.
—-
Selling your blood plasma is a trip.
You get interviewed about medical stuff / screening on your first exchange.
Then you semi-recline on a plastic covered lounger designed to be easily sterilized.
They take a pint of blood. You sit for 45 minutes waiting for the crew to centrifuge out the plasma and watch the one tv.
Your lounge neighbors are a total tripping event. Quite the cast of characters. Tolerance for odd behavior helps here. A Bukowski bunch decidedly.
Roughly 45 minutes to an hour later, a tech comes back with a bag of your own blood cells rehydrated with saline and it is dripped back into your arm via IV. It’s room temperature and feels really freakily chilly.
Your arm feels weirdly internally cold for a few minutes until body heat warms the new fluid up to standard. It’s a bit disconcerting. You def notice it.
For this I got paid $10 bucks in 1983 money.
Well spent, it bought a few days worth of food. Poorly spent, it bought one night’s worth of fun.
@DrDaveT:
The split is roughly the Mississippi more or less. East is Hardee’s. West is Carl, Jr.’s. (Not exactly, but fairly close.)
Same company. Same menu. Same store design beyond signage. Why they have not converged on one brand is kinda remarkable. The amount and the cost of the advertising required to register adequately nationwide, I guess.
For fast food, not half bad actually. It’ll do in a pinch.
Given a choice between McDonald’s, BK, Wendy’s, and Hardee’s / Carl’s Jr., I would mostly go for H/CJ just on taste.
Culver’s is too regional for the above comparison, not nationwide, but Culver’s in a heartbeat. They kick ass.
—
I love signs on interstates that promise Food Gas Lodging when you drive near to towns.
There is nothing more appetizing than the prospect of “food”. Really makes me want to stop in. The Donger needs food.
If you don’t care about time efficiency – i.e., if you’re bombing around, never drive the interstate. Go SRs and county roads. You’ll have much more diversion and fun.
Also, as a general rule, National Forests are way less populated / popular than National Parks. Like, by a whole factor. Way better experience.
Sold my plasma one time when I was living in San Francisco in 1975. Can’t remember what it paid but I’m sure I spent it on weed and beer.
I’d been thinking about doing it again. By the time I checked into it seven years ago I discovered that at 66 I was one year too old.
@Mister Bluster:
I did it regular for probably near a year.
You were proscribed from more than once a week donations. 10 bucks a week for me then was a marginal medium deal. A noted income bump. But not by any means do or die.
Abiding with the other folks on the loungers was the interesting bit and kinda addictive. I ran into some out-there folk. Few I would want to pal around with. Some I would. Charisma has no money or class boundaries. I was the weirdo that brought a book.
The 10 bucks usually got spent on luxuries like anything but pasta. Sometimes beer or booze.
@Jim Brown 32:
Who gets those fewer jobs? Probably white men, which means that women in general have a lot less independence (cannot escape bad or just unfulfilling relationships for economic reasons), and minorities get the shaft with way fewer who need work getting it, and minority women are really, really screwed.
That’s just something we would need to watch while increasing the minimum wage, and which we would decide how we want to measure beforehand. I expect cultural conservatives might embrace the effects, praising the lower divorce rate and the higher number of stay at home mothers, and lamenting the lazy minorities.
@de stijl:
$10 in 1983 = $26 and change today per inflation.
OK, I surrender! It turns out a number of you have the Mark of Hot Grease upon you.
And I never had to sell plasma, so true poverty props to those who did. (Actually, I would have sold plasma but I hate needles. I’d have stolen a purse before I’d give plasma.)
I’ll admit also that I sucked hard at Carl’s Jr. I was supposed to be in management training but I was rather distracted by waiting for a trial. Even so, I couldn’t do it. The printer would just chatter out orders and I’d stand there trying to assemble burgers and boy, was I not good at it.
I was also briefly in the Foster Farms chicken restaurant management program, back when they thought they’d be the next KFC. My qualifications for ‘management’ went something like, ‘What color is your skin? White? Management material!’ I’m literally out on bail at this point, and very actively sizing up the FF layouts for profitable nocturnal intrusions, but I was management material.
On the plus side I got to tour the chicken slaughtering and processing plant. Yeah. That memory will stick with you.
@Gustopher:
Be careful here. What consensus there is in the microeconomics literature agrees that the effect of minimum wage changes is felt almost entirely by teens and part-time shift workers (e.g. restaurant), not by 9-to-5 jobs. Yes, imposing a $30/hour minimum wage* would behave differently, but no one is proposing anything like that.
*As it happens, $30/hr full time with one 2-week vacation would be just enough for a family with 3 kids to no longer qualify for the EITC. As noted by others above, we are all subsidizing employers who pay wages at the low end of the scale. Is that better for economic growth and thus overall employment? I have no idea.
@Michael Reynolds:
I worked at Wendy’s for almost two years. Back when they had the salad bar. I had to come in at 6:00 AM to set that thing up and man, I am NOT a morning person.
It still beat restaurant dishwasher, though. That was the second-worst job I ever had. But it paid reasonably well.
The worst job I had was in a factory that made redwood lawn furniture. Such a lovely deep red! But redwood isn’t that color. That color comes from dunking the semi-finished furniture pieces in a stain tank filled with a combination of mineral spirits and iron oxide powder. It stains everything very efficiently–wood, clothing, and skin. I don’t know how I have escaped some serious skin disorder. And don’t get me started on the splinters.
But at least I didn’t lose a hand like the guy who tried to straighten out a redwood plank going into the trim saw.
@Mikey:
The Mike Rowe series Dirty Jobs did wonders for my contentment with my lot in life.
@Gustopher:
Cancel culture rearing it’s ugly head!
@Michael Reynolds:
At least it wasn’t telemarketing.
I felt like a worm cold-calling folks trying to convince them that a “free” room at a resort that required you to sit through a 5 hour presentation on the benefits of buying a time-share.
I literally got a page ripped out of the white pages. Today’s brief was to call Edmond thru Ettinger. I was white and I could read a script.
I went home and told my girlfriend how sketchy it was. She was supportive, but also pointed out we needed rent money and food.
Two mornings later I just go not going to happen. The alarm rang and I said fuck that and slept until ten.
Any job that requires you to leave your sense of decency and morality at the door. Nah. My brain just revolted and said “Nope”.
Never got paid. That’s a good thing because I was poor enough I might have cashed it.
Bad money is bad.
Plasma donation was a walk in the park compared to telemarketing.
@de stijl:
I found out later that if a sucker bailed on or left the presentation on the benefits of buying a time share early, they got billed full cost for the room.
Totally spaced out on Arby’s. Mea culpa.
YMMV, but I like Arby’s. They got the meats. H. Jon Benjamin and Ving Rhames told me so.
The curly fries are garbage. Soggy, limp, and lame.
Ving Rhames needs more on-camera work. Always eye catching and compelling. Radiates charisma.
Spaced on Quiznos too. Subway can bite my shiny metal butt.
Quiznos fucking rules!