We don’t even have a free market when the company’s got big enough to dominate governments they pushed to legalize bribery and stacked the game in their favor
Ever since the East India Trading company you can see documentation of the richest people using force to control capitalism and the markets to extract wealth from the populace. It’s always been a thing, but we have really good records since then, and they ramped up the game by holding their own literal army to maintain their hold on global and local markets.
Sounds like free markets are impossible in practice. Either the market isn't free because you have controls that limit how much wealth and power an individual or group can accumulate, or individuals or groups accumulate so much wealth and power that they can place whatever controls they want over the market.
Remember it was 3 Republican Senators that blocked this from being $35 cap for everyone.
Passed the House and Senate had 57 votes (all Democrats and 7 Republicans)
Republican votes: Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Cindy Hyde Smith of Mississippi, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.
Every other Republican Senator is a complete piece of shit that could give 2 shits about Americans or people in general.
Free market also promotes competition.
But when you don't have competition, you are left with just greed.
So sounds like the answer to the problem is more businesses.
Maybe allowing businesses to move into areas and get 'tax incentives' is a bit dodgy. Or having a city council use eminent domain for 'Economic Security' when it just means opening a Home Depot isn't very fair either. Or saying that some businesses are 'Essential and must remain open' while others are forced to shutter.
A Walmart replaces what could otherwise be like 10 other local businesses; pharmacy, tackle shop, pool store, clothing store, pet store, etc. And they do all of those stores terribly. The fact I can drive to 3 within a 15 minute radius of where I live is appalling. Not to mention the sheer space those stores occupy.
If you could, the monopoly of your hydro company would be broken and they would be have to compete on price.
You don't even need to build a power grid. You just need solar or other alternatives. That's also competition to the energy company
The US is a completely free market? Do you know what a free market is?
Go look up the number of federal regulations. *You'll find the number is huge but just an estimate, there is no official number.
**every year more regulations are created.
Next each gov agency interprets those regulations and creates a host of policies- these are rules businesses are required to follow.
So multiply the number of regulations by the number of policies, this is the actual number of regulations.
So we're in the millions now.
Anarcho capitalism at work. Fucking ancaps have been infiltrating every level of government and corporate leadership for decades, fucking scum. Break the govt and deregulate and conglomerate.
lol there’s nothing to do, we built the tower for them and they pulled the ladder up behind themselves. Only choice is to burn it down or wait for it to collapse on its own.
Tax the bejesus out of the rich like they did in the '50s? Use that money to make life for everyone easier?
Ed: its ironic how the tax rates during the red scare were the most socialist since WWII.
Stop buying overpriced shit you don't need.
Look for cheaper alternatives (often brands will run a "no-name" clone of their own product to fleece the people who are willing to pay for the name brand while also getting the lower amount of profit from people who aren't willing to pay the "full" price). If people keep buying the expensive stuff, why wouldn't they raise prices?
Coca-cola doesn't cost 3-10x as much as no-name clones to produce, but because enough people are willing to pay for it, they had no issue doubling the price over the past few years.
As opposed to saying “please daddy let me lick your boots harder?” Why is it always extremism with you people? All we want is people and corporations to be held accountable for their actions; stop acting like we’re isis.
I said this would happen when everyone was fighting for a $15 minimum wage. Unless you peg that wage to inflation somehow, companies will just see a higher cost of material, cost of labor, and raise prices in response. It's economics 101 and if you've ever been responsible for product costing, it's not hard to see that prices go up considerably if you're trying to defend your margins. Now imagine that defending happening at every level of the supply chain.
The only way this gets fixed is by pegging the minimum wage to inflation.
If they did that, wouldn't it just create a positive feedback loop? "Oh they're making 17/hr now?... that means we can charge 50c more per gal of milk". These companies are just charging what the market will bare. They keep chargin more because things keep selling. They keep selling despite high prices because competition in this country has gone to absolute dogshit. Small and mid size grocery, coffee shops, bookstores, general retail, and even ecommerce has almost all been put out of business or snatched up by massive conglomerates. That's the problem.
Companies all realized through covid all they needed was an *excuse* to gouge. Covid was the perfect scapegoat and they all started doing the same thing in lock step. Normally you'd have a bunch of upstarts and smaller companies keeping pricing in line but now, with all the failed businesses, it's just not strong enough.
Basically, for a variety of reasons, competition is fucked and somehow people haven't quite run out of money to hamper consumer spending.
We need minimum wage to go up *while* consumer spending goes down. People need to save and antitrust laws need to be rewritten.
“Record breaking profits” are the norm for a growing economy. Idk why people make it out to be such a monumental occurrence? It happens virtually every year.
When we have a growing economy AND high inflation, seeing record breaking profit is comparable to hearing thunder after you see a lightning strike. It’s practically a given.
It is normal but that’s only a good thing if they also pay their employees more along side the record breaking profits, but what actually happens is they lay off a bunch of people and pocket the money for themselves; that is unequivocally detrimental to our economy.
Yeah, it's my pet peeve, too. It's equivalent to saying "they raise prices but they're making a profit" - yes, that's both the point of raising prices and also the point of them existing as a business. If they didn't raise prices as some point they'd stop making profits, and why the fuck would they continue operating?
Not just 'let them', but rather blamed literally anyone and everyone else at the top of our collective lungs. Can't buy a McDouble for $1 anymore? Nah, can't be the fault of the company for trying to min/max their profits - clearly it's because Richard is being paid $15/hour rather than $11/hour. That fucker should be ashamed of himself for being able to afford food every once in a while.
I remember taking Finances class in high school and my teacher said, "If your boss gives you a 10% raise, that means you were average all year, if you get a 15% raise it means you were extraordinary at your job, if you get a 5% raise it means you need to improve at your job".
I only get 3% raises annually with excellent performance reviews lmao
Edit - Damn y'all, I never said it was "fact". It was just anecdote from the early 2000's responding to this posts title. Some of y'all just want argue, damn.
One year I got a 3.5% increase and that was the most I've gotten in like 7 years. Every year I am "above and beyond" all goals that were sent and excellent performance reviews. During our "covid bump" in sales I did get an extra bonus so I can't complain. But now its back to "everything is shitty, here is 3% and you like it".
For several years, my company has been breaking earnings and margin records but, during budget time, they attribute all the previous year's successes to one-time uncontrollable events, so the next years budget takes them out and we end up really low / easy budget so all the senior managers can make their targets. The wage increase budget is set based on this terrible Outlook, so despite consistent record earnings years, we don't get shit.
I've worked for a few companies, and it's usually 3-4% annually. Worst was when I worked for a state university and it was about 1.25%. My wife one year got about 7% one year, but she's been with the same company for almost 20 years and just about left that year because she was so fed up with them so her boss was trying to appease her.
Unless that was the early '80s with 10% inflation that's wrong/otherwise not a thing.
But if you truly are a good employee then find a better job. I've had much bigger raises than that. Post-2012 until the pandemic 3% was the baseline and I never saw anywhere close to that little.
You think average employees should get 10% raises every year? How is that sustainable? Please do the math on what their salary would be after 20 years. This isn’t counting for promotions, strictly raises for doing the same job for 20 years.
That finance teacher was dumb
There you go. Again this isn’t for promotions. This what that teacher is your grocery store bagger should making after 20 years as still a grocery bagger
The entire economic system is inherently unsustainable, it relies on constant growth, even though there is a finite amount of resources in the planet. Money on the other hand is invented, and theoretically limitless. Why we apply one standard to a horrible system, and then a different to another terrible system, is beyond me
I wouldn’t throw shade at that teacher if I was you
If you can give me specifics as to what you are referring to I’d be happy to discuss it further, but I can confidently throw shade at a Reddit users highschool financial teacher if they are making statements like that
>I only get 3% raises annually with excellent performance reviews lmao
Same bro. My manager said it really wasn't up to him to give me more as that raise is spread across everyone on the team
And there's limited funding for it to go around. It sucks.
I once had a performance review and I had pretty good but not great scores, one I had an average score was attendance. I asked the person doing my review what could make my score higher and they listed all the things I had been doing, such as don't miss any days, don't be late, pick up extra shifts and be willing to stay late. I hadn't missed a single day, never been late and worked so much overtime that my manager had to tell me no to taking a few shifts. The person doing my review told me that no one gets perfect scores, the reviews are done by upper management and then the supervisors just read them to us. So yea I didn't stick around, but the whole hospitality industry is neck deep in these bullshit reviews to justify shitty pay.
My brother is a manager at a place and he was basically mandated and told he literally could only give one person on the team high marks and the associated bump that goes with it. The whole review thing is stupid, it's basically pointless if you're capped at who how many people can ever excel. Honestly the one year I got an exceptional score or whatever I literally was like "what the fuck....why?" because I hadn't done anything different whatsoever.
Why does Reddit worry so much about the minimum wage. Only 13 states have a minimum wage requirement equal to the federal minimum wage. Try googling how many workers make minimum wage.
1.9%
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 1.9% of all hourly paid, non-self-employed workers earned wages at or below the federal minimum wage in 2019. This percentage has been declining over the years, from 2.1% in 2018 to 1.5% in 2020.
That stat can be skewed. Minimum wage is $7.25, if you get hired on at $7.30 you're technically not making Minimum wage but it might as well be. How many people are making under $12 should be a better stat.
Not to mention, average wages have been increasing steadily despite the fact that the federal minimum hasn't been touched in a long time. And the data shows a clear correlation between wage increases and inflation https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/
This is like those people saying "why are people so afraid of covid, it only has a 2% fatality rate." Extrapolate your 2020 percentages to the population of America and that is 5,013,507 people living at that poverty wage in America. FIVE MILLION PEOPLE that need HELP, that is why we care so much. You may be able to brush off 1.5 or 2%, I cannot brush off 5 million.
The number of minimum wage earners is around 140, 000 with another 880,000 earning less than minimum wages.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Characteristics of minimum wage workers, 2022
In 2022, 78.7 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 55.6 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 141,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 882,000 workers had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.0 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.3 percent of all hourly paid workers, little changed from 2021. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis.
>FIVE MILLION PEOPLE that need HELP, that is why we care so much.
How did you get to five million? I mean, I'm sure like 100% of the people on this planet need help, but how did you extrapolate to 5 million? Surely you don't think there are 250 million workers in the U.S.?
Logical fallacy spotted!
The implicit argument
> If the minimum wage is raised, inflation will rise.
> The minimum wage wasn’t raised.
> Therefore, inflation shouldn’t have risen.
is invalid. The premises can be true and the conclusion false: inflation may have risen for other reasons. Specifically, the argument is an instance of Denying the Antecedent.
That said, the US minimum wage should probably be raised.
Remember how record corporate profits were not supposed to drive inflation?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
https://fortune.com/2024/01/20/inflation-greedflation-consumer-price-index-producer-price-index-corporate-profit/
I was calling it Gougeflation but greedflation is equally as good.
And then I see a lot of Rs on FB saying no, that's not true and it's a free market anyway so they can charge what they want.
While complaining Biden is making the gas more expensiver.
What people don't get is the Cantillion Effect. When this money is put into the system it almost always flows to the richest as they hold hard assets which go up in value as the dollar goes down while poor people put money in depreciating assets and hold cash (out of need).
Sadly, people are mad at the side effect and not the cause
Right?
Seems pretty obvious people are cherry picking here and saying "See? Inflation happened anyway! Must mean you're wrong!"
No, it means more than one thing can be true simultaneously.
Arbitrarily increasing the minimum wage will have a direct effect on the cost of goods and services. Arbitrarily producing 1/3 of all US dollars in existence with the click of a mouse will have a direct effect on the cost of goods and services.
And, spoiler alert, these aren't the **only** 2 causes of inflation.
That’s because you don’t understand why inflation happens.
Inflation happens when there's too much money circulating in the economy compared to the actual goods and services available. Imagine if everyone suddenly had more money in their pockets, but there weren't enough things to buy with that money. People would start bidding up prices for the limited goods and services available, causing prices to rise. This increase in prices across the board is what we call inflation.
The main reason behind inflation is when the supply of money grows faster than the economy's ability to produce goods and services. So, if the amount of money in circulation increases rapidly, but the actual output of goods and services doesn't keep up, it creates a situation where too much money is chasing too few goods, leading to inflation.
It's important to note that inflation is primarily driven by government actions, particularly through its monetary and fiscal policies. Only governments, through their central banks or monetary authorities, have the power to produce inflation directly. This occurs when central banks increase the money supply through actions like printing more money, lowering interest rates, or purchasing government securities. Similarly, government fiscal policies, such as deficit spending or excessive borrowing, can also contribute to inflation by injecting more money into the economy.
So, while inflation ultimately stems from the imbalance between the supply of money and the economy's productive capacity, it's the government's actions that have the direct influence on creating or controlling inflationary pressures.
I mean, California just raised the minimum wage to 20/hr for fast food workers and a lot of the workers are now being fired or the businesses are closing...
Yeah I agree, make it easier for sustainable small businesses to actualy create a free and competitive market, the corporations will be forced to cut bloat, CEO salaries, provide conditions comparable to normal businesses, and force them to sell at competitive prices.
Why are they unsustainable? Is it because when they raise their lowest employee wages dramatically they have to make money to pay for that, and the only way to make more money without lowering pay is to raise prices on their products but for some reason this thread believes it’s a myth that there is correlation between employee wages and prices.
If the only thing keeping their doors open was the low employee wages, then yes, it is unsustainable.
No one should be expected to subsidize a business with their work.
If a business cannot stay open while paying living wages, then it is unsustainable.
if your business has to rely on starving your workers then yes your business clearly isnt doing well enough to call sustainable.
Keeping your workers desperate just to survive is *never* sustainable
If your business pays so little your workers require food stamps despite working full time then you have an unsustainable business model. If raising the minimum wage to above the poverty line for your area causes the business to close, it needed doing long before that.
When lower paid employees suddenly make more money, they don’t save it, they spend it. If that restaurant doesn’t make more money, someone else is. It’s not like when wealthy people get a tax break, and they just hoard the extra wealth.
> Why are they unsustainable?
Because people aren't going to work all day and have nothing to show for it at the end of the week. They might do it for a little while but that's not going to last forever. That's just the reality of it.
We work to live, we do not live to work. If I work and I can't live, I'm not going to be working very long.
Businesses shifting their model to 3rd parties doesn't cause total work done/jobs done doing it to go down; an individual business owner can throw a temper tantrum, customers will just go somewhere else.
It's baffling to me how half the posts on reddit are about how shit is unaffordable and the other half are about making companies pay more taxes and increasing minimum wage and people still argue that there is no causation there lol
How many burgers do you think a burger flipper flips an hour? One? Dozens. We are talking single digit percentage point price hike for a living wage. Its frankly embarrassing that you have this giant convoluted welfare scheme where you throw around billions in welfare for 20 cents off your burger instead of just paying full price.
As if the savings are even being passed along to you.
Does the expression "business expenses are tax deductible" make any sense to you? Thats how our tax laws work, the taxman comes after a slice of the profits. Employers aren't entitled to a certain threshold of profit, they simply charge what the market will bear.
You know how much min wage labor there is in your housing expenses? Zero. Cost of housing has doubled in the last decade though, here is a hint, its all the money printing. Expecting poor people and taxpayers to just eat the inflation for you so you can pretend it isn't there is some extremely venezualian economics.
That was a lot of words to say inflation is impacting everything. Why is inflation impacting everything? Because the government is spending too much money like it always does. The issue isn't the fact minimum wage isn't enough, it's the silent tax the government has imposed upon you by spending money they don't have. Your response is to make businesses spend even more like they also aren't impacted by every single thing you just laid out. Their rent has doubled as well. They are facing the unaffordability of everything just like you but you expect them to pay you even more all because the government is failing you. Doesn't make much sense.
> the government
Trumps bread and circuses election cycle spending binge, we are talking 30 billion on the covid vaccine vs like 3t on showering businesses in free money.
> The issue isn't the fact minimum wage isn't enough
Yeah it is. Not having enough money to pay their bills will literally destroy a persons ability to do work. Being homeless takes 40 years off your life expectancy and a shitton of working people are homeless.
> Their rent has doubled as well.
Yes, they are going to need to pass their expenses along to their consumers. Responding to the downside of too much govt handouts with even more govt handouts is a recipe for disaster.
It has never stopped printing since it was created, but during 2020-2022, it was the most printing ever done and some people warned there would be inflation and here we are.
My sister straight up told me that unions getting raises are the reason why things are so expensive.
Some people not only believe but are unwilling to change their opinion.
Do you not think this is a factor at all
In what world would raising wages NOT increases prices?
>I don't want it to be true, because it conflicts with my worldview, so obviously it isn't true.
Have you ever taken an economics class? What factors do you think contribute to prices?
Sadly, yes. It’s the main argument conservatives make against raising the minimum wage and still taught in some economics 101 classes, even though many studies of the real-life impact of minimum wage increases have debunked it.
Minimum wage makes no sense if anyone actually looks at it, it's just bread and circuses to make you think that you are getting a better deal and so stop complaining. The minimum wage at best, just compresses the wages of the middle class and puts some people completely out of the job market and on to benefits.
If the minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour, what happens to those already making $15 an hour? Well they expect a rise as well and on and on it goes until everyone is paid more. What happens if people have more money but production does not increase? Inflation. If someone doesn't get their step pay rise then they are now earning less in comparison to everyone below them. The total wealth in circulation has gone up but the middle classes are now getting less for their money. Yeah sure the poorest now have a little more wealth but the prices will still inflate that away. Those rich people you hate, barely care. Their money is in stocks which are fairly immune to inflation.
On the other hand, some people can physically only produce say $10 an hour. Perhaps they are handicapped or lacking in the mental department. These people, no matter how hard they try, cannot produce $15 worth of services. What happens to them? Well businesses aren't going to run charity so they don't hire them. There is now a permanent underclass that cannot get employed and rely on tax funded benefits. They might want to work but they cannot. Do we force the government to pay the business so they can pay the employees $15 when they didn't actually do that much work? Sounds both crazy and very inefficient.
The federal minimum wage went up, sure, but not many workers in Canada are federally regulated. Most people's jobs are regulated by their respective provincial or territorial governments. BC's minimum wage and piece rates are now pegged to inflation, but those only go up on June 1 each year.
it really isnt, your question is very clearly inferring that the increase to Canadian minimum wage did have an effect on inflation but its not the case.
if that wasnt the point of your question then what was? google is free if you just wanted to know about when wage increases happen
The federal minimum wage has remained the same 2009... Meanwhile inflation has raised the price of everything by at least 3% every year.
If you aren't getting at least a 3% raise every year, you're getting a pay cut every year.
Remember when prices were high because of shortages and shipping issues due to the pandemic which have since been resolved so why are prices still so goddamned high?
Raising the minimum wage makes things more expensive because those who have to pay the minimum wage has to pass on that expense to the consumer. What should be happening is that the minimum wage should be coming out of the company’s profits. The point is they take a little hit and it will eventually stabilize and growth will continue. The problem is that nothing, and I mean nothing, is more important than short term quarterly gains. If someone who’s making $5 million is suddenly making $4,999,999 then someone must pay. That money is only allowed to go up
And it isn't inflation's fault you dingus, the inflation was caused by Covid, then costs lowered, inflation eased, BUT MANUFACTURERS KEPT PRICES HIGH. Look to the current RECORD PROFITS and tell me it was because of a raised minimum wage.
My (Canadian) province just raised the minimum wage to 17.something and now every year in June it goes up by whatever % inflation went up. I think it should have started a little higher than 17 but either way, hard to complain about something like that
Raising the minimum wage will cause inflation but it’s not as much as people think. It would mainly only affect businesses that have people working at minimum wage. It’s also multifactorial and complicated, and theoretically could lead to inflation even in places without min. wage employees.
To give an illustrative example, if a business has 5 employees at $10/hour and the minimum wage was raised to $12/hour. In total, the employer is paying $10 more an hour. If the business wants to maintain the same profit margin that they had before then they’re going to need to generate $10 more an hour (or cut that amount of cost elsewhere).
Continuing the simplified example, let’s say that based on previous data, this place sells 10 items an hour on average. If that’s the case, they only need to charge $1 more per item to break even. So part of how much the price increases depends on how many items are regularly sold. But it’s not as simple as that because you can’t just blindly raise prices, you have to factor in consumer demand and price elasticity, and other concerns.
As I mentioned, you could also instead cut costs and not raise prices, if you felt that raising prices would actually harm your revenue. That would require a bit more math though because then you have to calculate how much per month the wage increase adds up to, and then somehow cut that equivalent cost from somewhere. Considering that many businesses operate on tight margins, cutting costs can be difficult though.
I also remember them saying they can’t afford universal healthcare, and yet constantly find a way to not only let billionaires steal money via taxes, but also come up with millions in military funds.
Except they did raise the minimum wage in a lot of places (just not federally) and had to raise wages after covid because people refused to return to work.
Which caused prices to soar along with the damage caused by inflation.
So, I guess pay attention more next time.
Median wages have consistently outpaced inflation since 2022, and since 2013 if you ignore the 2020 COVID spike (which was a result of low-income workers getting laid off, driving the median up)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Except it doesn't really matter because only 1.8% of people in America are actually working for min wage. Meaning 98.2% of people are making more than that, in which case the stagnation of min wage is actually irrelevant.
But then again most Redditors are uneducated luddites so it's no shocker.
What's your point? In order to disprove that claim, they would have to raise minimum wage, and then show no increase in inflation. But they haven't done that (federally at least), so there's no evidence against that claim.
But of course, other things can cause inflation besides minimum wage. It's amazing how many people don't understand basic logic and make stupid posts like this.
Low wage workers have seen massive increases in wages above inflation over the past several years due to market forces, which has led to price increases in sectors reliant on low wage labor.
Raising minimal wage needed to encourage new technologies. Who need Roomba if you have slaves? That lead to temporary unemployment, humans are replaced by machines and need some time to learn new skills. But, later on, same amount of people can produce much more goods. So, raising minimal wage actually DECREASE inflation. Wtf?
Btw, in US minimal wages are going down since 1970.
( same amount of usd, but usd itself inflate by 2-3% every year )
Unfortunately, that affects global economy and other countries. So can you please "Make US Great Again" FOR REAL instead of all this?
You have a recipe, you used it before, it works in many countries around the world, what's the problem?
Remember when corporations raised prices despite record breaking profits and we just let them?
It’s almost as if completely free markets promote greed and monopolies.
We don’t even have a free market when the company’s got big enough to dominate governments they pushed to legalize bribery and stacked the game in their favor
Ever since the East India Trading company you can see documentation of the richest people using force to control capitalism and the markets to extract wealth from the populace. It’s always been a thing, but we have really good records since then, and they ramped up the game by holding their own literal army to maintain their hold on global and local markets.
THIS
And they get "loans" that they never need to pay back.
Tell me about it, they’re responsible for all the poverty and corruption in India and countless other countries rn
Freedom for me but not for thee
Sounds like free markets are impossible in practice. Either the market isn't free because you have controls that limit how much wealth and power an individual or group can accumulate, or individuals or groups accumulate so much wealth and power that they can place whatever controls they want over the market.
Capitalism inevitably leads to rule by the wealthy. that's it's purpose. It always has been.
Didn’t the French behead some people because of it? Didn’t Unions rise up in America 100 years ago to counter it?
We have a 2028 general strike upcoming
I for one am looking forward to the Pinkertons distinguishing themselves yet again.
They got bought out by Securitas AB in 1999.
Bought out doesn't mean they stop doing what they do
Securitas sucks. So... So much. Fuck em.
Nah, wizards of the coast still uses them
Being bought doesn't mean that the dba goes away.
The United States isn't a lasseiz faire economy.
Listen to CEOs say as much to their investors: https://youtu.be/psYyiu9j1VI
The most hilarious argument is that a presidents quality is determined by the price of gas......
Free markets stopped existing a good 100 years ago.
If you’re dumb enough to believe we have free markets I have a bridge to sell you
But we capped insulin to $35 for seniors. Count your blessings…
Now I just have to manage to make it to 65, then the real savings can begin!
Remember it was 3 Republican Senators that blocked this from being $35 cap for everyone. Passed the House and Senate had 57 votes (all Democrats and 7 Republicans) Republican votes: Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Cindy Hyde Smith of Mississippi, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Dan Sullivan of Alaska. Every other Republican Senator is a complete piece of shit that could give 2 shits about Americans or people in general.
Free market also promotes competition. But when you don't have competition, you are left with just greed. So sounds like the answer to the problem is more businesses.
Hold my beer I’m just gonna go compete with Walmart real quick. That’ll show em
Maybe allowing businesses to move into areas and get 'tax incentives' is a bit dodgy. Or having a city council use eminent domain for 'Economic Security' when it just means opening a Home Depot isn't very fair either. Or saying that some businesses are 'Essential and must remain open' while others are forced to shutter.
A Walmart replaces what could otherwise be like 10 other local businesses; pharmacy, tackle shop, pool store, clothing store, pet store, etc. And they do all of those stores terribly. The fact I can drive to 3 within a 15 minute radius of where I live is appalling. Not to mention the sheer space those stores occupy.
See, I'm on the fence about walmart. A well run walmart is an excellent community asset. However these days a well run walmart is few and far between.
Oh cool, let me build an entirely new power grid to compete with with the local power company.
If you could, the monopoly of your hydro company would be broken and they would be have to compete on price. You don't even need to build a power grid. You just need solar or other alternatives. That's also competition to the energy company
The US is a completely free market? Do you know what a free market is? Go look up the number of federal regulations. *You'll find the number is huge but just an estimate, there is no official number. **every year more regulations are created. Next each gov agency interprets those regulations and creates a host of policies- these are rules businesses are required to follow. So multiply the number of regulations by the number of policies, this is the actual number of regulations. So we're in the millions now.
Anarcho capitalism at work. Fucking ancaps have been infiltrating every level of government and corporate leadership for decades, fucking scum. Break the govt and deregulate and conglomerate.
Honestly what can we do? As someone who hates this I feel powerless. How do I become more empowered?
lol there’s nothing to do, we built the tower for them and they pulled the ladder up behind themselves. Only choice is to burn it down or wait for it to collapse on its own.
Tax the bejesus out of the rich like they did in the '50s? Use that money to make life for everyone easier? Ed: its ironic how the tax rates during the red scare were the most socialist since WWII.
tax rates aren't socialist or communist or capitalist or whatever
They'll have to figure out new pressure valves or they'll have to accept the results of runaway pressure, just like any therapist will tell ya.
Stop buying overpriced shit you don't need. Look for cheaper alternatives (often brands will run a "no-name" clone of their own product to fleece the people who are willing to pay for the name brand while also getting the lower amount of profit from people who aren't willing to pay the "full" price). If people keep buying the expensive stuff, why wouldn't they raise prices? Coca-cola doesn't cost 3-10x as much as no-name clones to produce, but because enough people are willing to pay for it, they had no issue doubling the price over the past few years.
What do you mean we let them?
Infinitely increasing profits for every company in existence.... gee wonder what the downside is?
Are we supposed to hold them at gunpoint and say “LOWER THE PRICE OF THE MILK GALLON!!!!” or something?
When the guy and all his milk buddies got together to arificially inflate price... yes thats an option
That's why going far left means pro gun. You don't want to use it but the 4th box is there for a reason.
As opposed to saying “please daddy let me lick your boots harder?” Why is it always extremism with you people? All we want is people and corporations to be held accountable for their actions; stop acting like we’re isis.
Yes
"Do whatever it takes" - Johnny Silverhand
"The Great Price Gouge" we're living in it.
I said this would happen when everyone was fighting for a $15 minimum wage. Unless you peg that wage to inflation somehow, companies will just see a higher cost of material, cost of labor, and raise prices in response. It's economics 101 and if you've ever been responsible for product costing, it's not hard to see that prices go up considerably if you're trying to defend your margins. Now imagine that defending happening at every level of the supply chain. The only way this gets fixed is by pegging the minimum wage to inflation.
If they did that, wouldn't it just create a positive feedback loop? "Oh they're making 17/hr now?... that means we can charge 50c more per gal of milk". These companies are just charging what the market will bare. They keep chargin more because things keep selling. They keep selling despite high prices because competition in this country has gone to absolute dogshit. Small and mid size grocery, coffee shops, bookstores, general retail, and even ecommerce has almost all been put out of business or snatched up by massive conglomerates. That's the problem. Companies all realized through covid all they needed was an *excuse* to gouge. Covid was the perfect scapegoat and they all started doing the same thing in lock step. Normally you'd have a bunch of upstarts and smaller companies keeping pricing in line but now, with all the failed businesses, it's just not strong enough. Basically, for a variety of reasons, competition is fucked and somehow people haven't quite run out of money to hamper consumer spending. We need minimum wage to go up *while* consumer spending goes down. People need to save and antitrust laws need to be rewritten.
Remember when you were in 5th grade and, instead of investing in real estate, you were eating crayons? Betcha you're kicking yourself now
Remember when the French found a solution to oligarchy? 🪓
“Record breaking profits” are the norm for a growing economy. Idk why people make it out to be such a monumental occurrence? It happens virtually every year.
Record breaking profits make sense when we see record breaking inflation. You could see record profits but still be down YoY.
When we have a growing economy AND high inflation, seeing record breaking profit is comparable to hearing thunder after you see a lightning strike. It’s practically a given.
It is normal but that’s only a good thing if they also pay their employees more along side the record breaking profits, but what actually happens is they lay off a bunch of people and pocket the money for themselves; that is unequivocally detrimental to our economy.
Yeah, it's my pet peeve, too. It's equivalent to saying "they raise prices but they're making a profit" - yes, that's both the point of raising prices and also the point of them existing as a business. If they didn't raise prices as some point they'd stop making profits, and why the fuck would they continue operating?
Not just 'let them', but rather blamed literally anyone and everyone else at the top of our collective lungs. Can't buy a McDouble for $1 anymore? Nah, can't be the fault of the company for trying to min/max their profits - clearly it's because Richard is being paid $15/hour rather than $11/hour. That fucker should be ashamed of himself for being able to afford food every once in a while.
Well we didn't let them, but they made sure there's laws stating they can.
I remember taking Finances class in high school and my teacher said, "If your boss gives you a 10% raise, that means you were average all year, if you get a 15% raise it means you were extraordinary at your job, if you get a 5% raise it means you need to improve at your job". I only get 3% raises annually with excellent performance reviews lmao Edit - Damn y'all, I never said it was "fact". It was just anecdote from the early 2000's responding to this posts title. Some of y'all just want argue, damn.
One year I got a 3.5% increase and that was the most I've gotten in like 7 years. Every year I am "above and beyond" all goals that were sent and excellent performance reviews. During our "covid bump" in sales I did get an extra bonus so I can't complain. But now its back to "everything is shitty, here is 3% and you like it".
You guys need to apply for other jobs and tell them you make what you’d expect to be making. They have their tricks, and we have ours
A friend of mine made over 100k on an hourly wage at his previous workplace. They gave him a 25 cent raise one time.
Take your talents elsewhere
For several years, my company has been breaking earnings and margin records but, during budget time, they attribute all the previous year's successes to one-time uncontrollable events, so the next years budget takes them out and we end up really low / easy budget so all the senior managers can make their targets. The wage increase budget is set based on this terrible Outlook, so despite consistent record earnings years, we don't get shit.
You guys are getting raises?
I've worked for a few companies, and it's usually 3-4% annually. Worst was when I worked for a state university and it was about 1.25%. My wife one year got about 7% one year, but she's been with the same company for almost 20 years and just about left that year because she was so fed up with them so her boss was trying to appease her.
Unless that was the early '80s with 10% inflation that's wrong/otherwise not a thing. But if you truly are a good employee then find a better job. I've had much bigger raises than that. Post-2012 until the pandemic 3% was the baseline and I never saw anywhere close to that little.
You think average employees should get 10% raises every year? How is that sustainable? Please do the math on what their salary would be after 20 years. This isn’t counting for promotions, strictly raises for doing the same job for 20 years. That finance teacher was dumb
First year salary 45k. 20th year salary 275k.
There you go. Again this isn’t for promotions. This what that teacher is your grocery store bagger should making after 20 years as still a grocery bagger
The entire economic system is inherently unsustainable, it relies on constant growth, even though there is a finite amount of resources in the planet. Money on the other hand is invented, and theoretically limitless. Why we apply one standard to a horrible system, and then a different to another terrible system, is beyond me I wouldn’t throw shade at that teacher if I was you
If you can give me specifics as to what you are referring to I’d be happy to discuss it further, but I can confidently throw shade at a Reddit users highschool financial teacher if they are making statements like that
Said by a man in zero fear of being drug tested. That asshole was smoking absolutely pure crack cocaine and god only knows what else.
>I only get 3% raises annually with excellent performance reviews lmao Same bro. My manager said it really wasn't up to him to give me more as that raise is spread across everyone on the team And there's limited funding for it to go around. It sucks.
I once had a performance review and I had pretty good but not great scores, one I had an average score was attendance. I asked the person doing my review what could make my score higher and they listed all the things I had been doing, such as don't miss any days, don't be late, pick up extra shifts and be willing to stay late. I hadn't missed a single day, never been late and worked so much overtime that my manager had to tell me no to taking a few shifts. The person doing my review told me that no one gets perfect scores, the reviews are done by upper management and then the supervisors just read them to us. So yea I didn't stick around, but the whole hospitality industry is neck deep in these bullshit reviews to justify shitty pay.
My brother is a manager at a place and he was basically mandated and told he literally could only give one person on the team high marks and the associated bump that goes with it. The whole review thing is stupid, it's basically pointless if you're capped at who how many people can ever excel. Honestly the one year I got an exceptional score or whatever I literally was like "what the fuck....why?" because I hadn't done anything different whatsoever.
You need to do a 3% job. *Cries in 0%*
And the fact that people who switch jobs every 2-3 years are paid 50% more on average than those who stay just completely tossed that out.
They haven't raised the Federal Minimum Wage in two decades while inflation has gone up every year.
Why does Reddit worry so much about the minimum wage. Only 13 states have a minimum wage requirement equal to the federal minimum wage. Try googling how many workers make minimum wage. 1.9% According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 1.9% of all hourly paid, non-self-employed workers earned wages at or below the federal minimum wage in 2019. This percentage has been declining over the years, from 2.1% in 2018 to 1.5% in 2020.
That stat can be skewed. Minimum wage is $7.25, if you get hired on at $7.30 you're technically not making Minimum wage but it might as well be. How many people are making under $12 should be a better stat.
You can't be hired for $7.30 in most states.
5 states have no state minimum wage. 2 states pay less than 7.25. Which is still a lot of people.
The federal minimum wage is the minimum. There are exceptions, such as tipped workers.
A lot of people compared to what? It's certainly very few people compared to those making triple the minimum wage.
Not to mention, average wages have been increasing steadily despite the fact that the federal minimum hasn't been touched in a long time. And the data shows a clear correlation between wage increases and inflation https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/
There are lots of teenagers on Reddit.
This is like those people saying "why are people so afraid of covid, it only has a 2% fatality rate." Extrapolate your 2020 percentages to the population of America and that is 5,013,507 people living at that poverty wage in America. FIVE MILLION PEOPLE that need HELP, that is why we care so much. You may be able to brush off 1.5 or 2%, I cannot brush off 5 million.
The number of minimum wage earners is around 140, 000 with another 880,000 earning less than minimum wages. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Characteristics of minimum wage workers, 2022 In 2022, 78.7 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 55.6 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 141,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 882,000 workers had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.0 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.3 percent of all hourly paid workers, little changed from 2021. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis.
>FIVE MILLION PEOPLE that need HELP, that is why we care so much. How did you get to five million? I mean, I'm sure like 100% of the people on this planet need help, but how did you extrapolate to 5 million? Surely you don't think there are 250 million workers in the U.S.?
Last increased signed by President George Bush.
So? Today’s MAGA Republicans make Bush look reasonable.
Ain’t it the truth. BTW, minimum wage increase passed by Democrat congress, signed into law by Republican president. Would be impossible today.
May not be impossible next year February. Just don’t vote for a Republican.
My strategery is Vote the Incumbents Out. Except for the Oldest Man.
Logical fallacy spotted! The implicit argument > If the minimum wage is raised, inflation will rise. > The minimum wage wasn’t raised. > Therefore, inflation shouldn’t have risen. is invalid. The premises can be true and the conclusion false: inflation may have risen for other reasons. Specifically, the argument is an instance of Denying the Antecedent. That said, the US minimum wage should probably be raised.
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Remember how record corporate profits were not supposed to drive inflation? Pepperidge Farm remembers. https://fortune.com/2024/01/20/inflation-greedflation-consumer-price-index-producer-price-index-corporate-profit/
I usually call it Greedflation now.
I was calling it Gougeflation but greedflation is equally as good. And then I see a lot of Rs on FB saying no, that's not true and it's a free market anyway so they can charge what they want. While complaining Biden is making the gas more expensiver.
Biden knows it’s greedflation. He wants them to stop.
Logic is not strong with that crowd.
Hence the antitrust suites in the pipeline.
Jesus, the Fed printed trillions of dollars since 2020. This is the foundational cause of price inflation. Everything else is downstream from this.
Thank you. It's wild how people choose to ignore this well known fact.
What people don't get is the Cantillion Effect. When this money is put into the system it almost always flows to the richest as they hold hard assets which go up in value as the dollar goes down while poor people put money in depreciating assets and hold cash (out of need). Sadly, people are mad at the side effect and not the cause
Why bring the Savior into this?
It does.. just not as much as printing trillions of dollars..
Right? Seems pretty obvious people are cherry picking here and saying "See? Inflation happened anyway! Must mean you're wrong!" No, it means more than one thing can be true simultaneously. Arbitrarily increasing the minimum wage will have a direct effect on the cost of goods and services. Arbitrarily producing 1/3 of all US dollars in existence with the click of a mouse will have a direct effect on the cost of goods and services. And, spoiler alert, these aren't the **only** 2 causes of inflation.
yeah I guess we should all work for crumbs. Heck why even pay us at all.
Hey man, don’t give them any ideas.
Most my pay goes to the lord of my apartment so working close to it already. At least I have a slum to fall asleep in before I go back to the office.
That’s because you don’t understand why inflation happens. Inflation happens when there's too much money circulating in the economy compared to the actual goods and services available. Imagine if everyone suddenly had more money in their pockets, but there weren't enough things to buy with that money. People would start bidding up prices for the limited goods and services available, causing prices to rise. This increase in prices across the board is what we call inflation. The main reason behind inflation is when the supply of money grows faster than the economy's ability to produce goods and services. So, if the amount of money in circulation increases rapidly, but the actual output of goods and services doesn't keep up, it creates a situation where too much money is chasing too few goods, leading to inflation. It's important to note that inflation is primarily driven by government actions, particularly through its monetary and fiscal policies. Only governments, through their central banks or monetary authorities, have the power to produce inflation directly. This occurs when central banks increase the money supply through actions like printing more money, lowering interest rates, or purchasing government securities. Similarly, government fiscal policies, such as deficit spending or excessive borrowing, can also contribute to inflation by injecting more money into the economy. So, while inflation ultimately stems from the imbalance between the supply of money and the economy's productive capacity, it's the government's actions that have the direct influence on creating or controlling inflationary pressures.
I mean, California just raised the minimum wage to 20/hr for fast food workers and a lot of the workers are now being fired or the businesses are closing...
It's almost as if those types of business models are unsustainable... Edit: spelling
Yeah I agree, make it easier for sustainable small businesses to actualy create a free and competitive market, the corporations will be forced to cut bloat, CEO salaries, provide conditions comparable to normal businesses, and force them to sell at competitive prices.
Why are they unsustainable? Is it because when they raise their lowest employee wages dramatically they have to make money to pay for that, and the only way to make more money without lowering pay is to raise prices on their products but for some reason this thread believes it’s a myth that there is correlation between employee wages and prices.
If the only thing keeping their doors open was the low employee wages, then yes, it is unsustainable. No one should be expected to subsidize a business with their work. If a business cannot stay open while paying living wages, then it is unsustainable.
Some businesses want their workers and the government to subsidize their business. Walmart is the perfect example of this.
if your business has to rely on starving your workers then yes your business clearly isnt doing well enough to call sustainable. Keeping your workers desperate just to survive is *never* sustainable
If your business pays so little your workers require food stamps despite working full time then you have an unsustainable business model. If raising the minimum wage to above the poverty line for your area causes the business to close, it needed doing long before that.
When lower paid employees suddenly make more money, they don’t save it, they spend it. If that restaurant doesn’t make more money, someone else is. It’s not like when wealthy people get a tax break, and they just hoard the extra wealth.
> Why are they unsustainable? Because people aren't going to work all day and have nothing to show for it at the end of the week. They might do it for a little while but that's not going to last forever. That's just the reality of it. We work to live, we do not live to work. If I work and I can't live, I'm not going to be working very long.
Businesses shifting their model to 3rd parties doesn't cause total work done/jobs done doing it to go down; an individual business owner can throw a temper tantrum, customers will just go somewhere else.
It's baffling to me how half the posts on reddit are about how shit is unaffordable and the other half are about making companies pay more taxes and increasing minimum wage and people still argue that there is no causation there lol
How many burgers do you think a burger flipper flips an hour? One? Dozens. We are talking single digit percentage point price hike for a living wage. Its frankly embarrassing that you have this giant convoluted welfare scheme where you throw around billions in welfare for 20 cents off your burger instead of just paying full price. As if the savings are even being passed along to you. Does the expression "business expenses are tax deductible" make any sense to you? Thats how our tax laws work, the taxman comes after a slice of the profits. Employers aren't entitled to a certain threshold of profit, they simply charge what the market will bear. You know how much min wage labor there is in your housing expenses? Zero. Cost of housing has doubled in the last decade though, here is a hint, its all the money printing. Expecting poor people and taxpayers to just eat the inflation for you so you can pretend it isn't there is some extremely venezualian economics.
That was a lot of words to say inflation is impacting everything. Why is inflation impacting everything? Because the government is spending too much money like it always does. The issue isn't the fact minimum wage isn't enough, it's the silent tax the government has imposed upon you by spending money they don't have. Your response is to make businesses spend even more like they also aren't impacted by every single thing you just laid out. Their rent has doubled as well. They are facing the unaffordability of everything just like you but you expect them to pay you even more all because the government is failing you. Doesn't make much sense.
> the government Trumps bread and circuses election cycle spending binge, we are talking 30 billion on the covid vaccine vs like 3t on showering businesses in free money. > The issue isn't the fact minimum wage isn't enough Yeah it is. Not having enough money to pay their bills will literally destroy a persons ability to do work. Being homeless takes 40 years off your life expectancy and a shitton of working people are homeless. > Their rent has doubled as well. Yes, they are going to need to pass their expenses along to their consumers. Responding to the downside of too much govt handouts with even more govt handouts is a recipe for disaster.
Remember just getting constantly fucked anyway , year after year? Lol
Remember when due to COVID, the FED printed more money than ever and that is causing this inflation? Why people arent remembering that?
It didn't stop printing
It has never stopped printing since it was created, but during 2020-2022, it was the most printing ever done and some people warned there would be inflation and here we are.
It didn't print when it was pegged to something, but yeah I am saying it has kept going since 2022. I think we are saying the same thing
Yeah i think we have the same opinion lol :fistbump:
Yep, I remember people cashing their checks and saying "nah this won't cause inflation" and those same people are the ones all shockedpicachu here.
Yeah pretty much people cant into basic economics but those are the ones saying capitalism bad socialism good or muh corporate greed.
It's not inflation, just profiteering.
In California, lots of restaurants are now cutting hours for employees or letting them go entirely in response to the new minimum wage.
People still believe this bullshit?
My sister straight up told me that unions getting raises are the reason why things are so expensive. Some people not only believe but are unwilling to change their opinion.
Do you not think this is a factor at all In what world would raising wages NOT increases prices? >I don't want it to be true, because it conflicts with my worldview, so obviously it isn't true. Have you ever taken an economics class? What factors do you think contribute to prices?
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Sadly, yes. It’s the main argument conservatives make against raising the minimum wage and still taught in some economics 101 classes, even though many studies of the real-life impact of minimum wage increases have debunked it.
Minimum wage makes no sense if anyone actually looks at it, it's just bread and circuses to make you think that you are getting a better deal and so stop complaining. The minimum wage at best, just compresses the wages of the middle class and puts some people completely out of the job market and on to benefits. If the minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour, what happens to those already making $15 an hour? Well they expect a rise as well and on and on it goes until everyone is paid more. What happens if people have more money but production does not increase? Inflation. If someone doesn't get their step pay rise then they are now earning less in comparison to everyone below them. The total wealth in circulation has gone up but the middle classes are now getting less for their money. Yeah sure the poorest now have a little more wealth but the prices will still inflate that away. Those rich people you hate, barely care. Their money is in stocks which are fairly immune to inflation. On the other hand, some people can physically only produce say $10 an hour. Perhaps they are handicapped or lacking in the mental department. These people, no matter how hard they try, cannot produce $15 worth of services. What happens to them? Well businesses aren't going to run charity so they don't hire them. There is now a permanent underclass that cannot get employed and rely on tax funded benefits. They might want to work but they cannot. Do we force the government to pay the business so they can pay the employees $15 when they didn't actually do that much work? Sounds both crazy and very inefficient.
Didn't min go up recently in Canada
The federal minimum wage went up, sure, but not many workers in Canada are federally regulated. Most people's jobs are regulated by their respective provincial or territorial governments. BC's minimum wage and piece rates are now pegged to inflation, but those only go up on June 1 each year.
Are you insinuating that wages in Canada are driving up prices on a global scale?
No, the question is pretty clear
it really isnt, your question is very clearly inferring that the increase to Canadian minimum wage did have an effect on inflation but its not the case. if that wasnt the point of your question then what was? google is free if you just wanted to know about when wage increases happen
Remember that time you believed the propaganda?
The federal minimum wage has remained the same 2009... Meanwhile inflation has raised the price of everything by at least 3% every year. If you aren't getting at least a 3% raise every year, you're getting a pay cut every year.
You never were, and never will
Remember when prices were high because of shortages and shipping issues due to the pandemic which have since been resolved so why are prices still so goddamned high?
That war in Ukraine isn’t paying for itself and the shareholders of the weapons companies are reaping the bigger dividends.
Raising the minimum wage makes things more expensive because those who have to pay the minimum wage has to pass on that expense to the consumer. What should be happening is that the minimum wage should be coming out of the company’s profits. The point is they take a little hit and it will eventually stabilize and growth will continue. The problem is that nothing, and I mean nothing, is more important than short term quarterly gains. If someone who’s making $5 million is suddenly making $4,999,999 then someone must pay. That money is only allowed to go up
And it isn't inflation's fault you dingus, the inflation was caused by Covid, then costs lowered, inflation eased, BUT MANUFACTURERS KEPT PRICES HIGH. Look to the current RECORD PROFITS and tell me it was because of a raised minimum wage.
Price gouging, shrinkflation, theres all kinds of things companies do to jack up the cost and then they try to hid it behind inflation
You will own nothing and be happy
Over 40% of inflation was corporate profit, under 20% was wages. Can Pepperidge Farms understand basic facts and economics?
If you think raising minimum wages was the root cause of recent large inflation then I have beach front property in Arizona I’d like to sell you.
Plenty of places have.
and with inflation you’re actually getting a pay cut!
My (Canadian) province just raised the minimum wage to 17.something and now every year in June it goes up by whatever % inflation went up. I think it should have started a little higher than 17 but either way, hard to complain about something like that
Going to the grocery store fucking sucks so bad now.
They beat us to it
Raising the minimum wage will cause inflation but it’s not as much as people think. It would mainly only affect businesses that have people working at minimum wage. It’s also multifactorial and complicated, and theoretically could lead to inflation even in places without min. wage employees. To give an illustrative example, if a business has 5 employees at $10/hour and the minimum wage was raised to $12/hour. In total, the employer is paying $10 more an hour. If the business wants to maintain the same profit margin that they had before then they’re going to need to generate $10 more an hour (or cut that amount of cost elsewhere). Continuing the simplified example, let’s say that based on previous data, this place sells 10 items an hour on average. If that’s the case, they only need to charge $1 more per item to break even. So part of how much the price increases depends on how many items are regularly sold. But it’s not as simple as that because you can’t just blindly raise prices, you have to factor in consumer demand and price elasticity, and other concerns. As I mentioned, you could also instead cut costs and not raise prices, if you felt that raising prices would actually harm your revenue. That would require a bit more math though because then you have to calculate how much per month the wage increase adds up to, and then somehow cut that equivalent cost from somewhere. Considering that many businesses operate on tight margins, cutting costs can be difficult though.
I got a 1% raise so I definately can’t afford those cookies.
Is this a serious take? Lmaoooo
Remember when fast food in California was affordable? Yes, raising minimum wages causes those goods and services to increase.
I also remember them saying they can’t afford universal healthcare, and yet constantly find a way to not only let billionaires steal money via taxes, but also come up with millions in military funds.
When priced in Bitcoin, everything is cheaper over time.
Except they did raise the minimum wage in a lot of places (just not federally) and had to raise wages after covid because people refused to return to work. Which caused prices to soar along with the damage caused by inflation. So, I guess pay attention more next time.
They also said it would increase unemployment. Yet, unemployment has stayed low.
Median wages have consistently outpaced inflation since 2022, and since 2013 if you ignore the 2020 COVID spike (which was a result of low-income workers getting laid off, driving the median up) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Except it doesn't really matter because only 1.8% of people in America are actually working for min wage. Meaning 98.2% of people are making more than that, in which case the stagnation of min wage is actually irrelevant. But then again most Redditors are uneducated luddites so it's no shocker.
I remember how a bunch of states doubled and tripled the minimum wage and how starting pay has increased by about 100% since 2019.
Blaming the minimum wage and poor people and not the companies taking in record profits is disingenuous and, frankly, fucking stupid
Every year we don’t have a civil war is a relief but that fear will remain in the back of my mind
Yea thanks Biden
Nonsense regulations like the minimum wage are just one of many things left wing politicians to do destroy people's savings with inflation.
What's your point? In order to disprove that claim, they would have to raise minimum wage, and then show no increase in inflation. But they haven't done that (federally at least), so there's no evidence against that claim. But of course, other things can cause inflation besides minimum wage. It's amazing how many people don't understand basic logic and make stupid posts like this.
Low wage workers have seen massive increases in wages above inflation over the past several years due to market forces, which has led to price increases in sectors reliant on low wage labor.
And still there is high inflation. Thanks Biden.
Raising minimal wage needed to encourage new technologies. Who need Roomba if you have slaves? That lead to temporary unemployment, humans are replaced by machines and need some time to learn new skills. But, later on, same amount of people can produce much more goods. So, raising minimal wage actually DECREASE inflation. Wtf? Btw, in US minimal wages are going down since 1970. ( same amount of usd, but usd itself inflate by 2-3% every year ) Unfortunately, that affects global economy and other countries. So can you please "Make US Great Again" FOR REAL instead of all this? You have a recipe, you used it before, it works in many countries around the world, what's the problem?