What will happen to the now $15-25 jobs if the min wage becomes $15?

I think that the market can determine it. Stop allowing in illegals and wages will adjust. Using what is basically slavery-light IS NOT the solution and then hiking minimum wage is basically a poor treatment of the symptom of a greater illness affecting the economy. The world was better when immigration law was strict and Americans could afford to own a single-family home and raise a family with the wife not having to work on the salary of delivery driver. Yes that was life for Americans in the 50s and into the 60s.

 

I dont know, those workers would likely want raises ... but they might not get one .

I'm more concerned about entry level lifeguards making 15 an hour. Your're asking employers to increase labor costs by 50 % on a 10/hr worker .... not sustainable IMO .

Im all for the idea that no one in this country should work full time and not be able to make ends meet, put food on the table etc ... BUUUUT there are other ways to do that.

MCdonalds and wallmart aren't gonna be hurt by this, they will just hasten the development of more self serve kiosks.

 

If somone is making 15-20 doing a tough job and can move an easier job and make 15 they will.

Supply of labor for that now vacant job will plummet. As such the pay for that job will increase until they can fill it.

Simple Economics.

 

They will stay at their current wages and be angry. Slowly technology will take over the new vastly overpaid workers and their jobs will go away. New off the books job market will be created with no taxes or benefits.

Never going to happen tho

 

But but but prices will increase!

And they should. Min labor intensive things like fast food / eating out will be more expensive.

Less min labor intensive things like healthcare, rent, farm food will not.

 

When do you think immigration laws were strict?

 

Yeah service industry wages should be higher. Those jobs are safe from automation

 

Honestly, I'm more concerned how this would affect small businesses.

Large corporations like McDonalds, Walmart, etc will just do what they typically do. They aren't hurting one bit and could afford to make less in profits, but of course their greedy selves will make sure and try to buy their way out of paying workers a decent wage (by automating more systems, lobbying to keep current wages, etc).

Small businesses on the other hand, that's where the effect would be felt.

We definitely need an adjustment in wages though. Currently, a dual income family is struggling to get by and unfortunately the family is having to make choices which affect the health status of that family (working a second job and not spending time with the family, etc). It's funny, because conservatives love pretending they care about family values, that they care about the "unborn", etc. In reality though, they care from a moral standpoint and they love to speak it, but when it comes to actually taking action, they do not walk the talk. Ultimately, they care about protecting corporations and protecting the wallets of wealthy individuals while at the same time, making sure "these family values" they love speaking about are thrown out the window.

I'm not saying that raising minimum wages alone will help, but it will certainly be a start. I'm okay with price adjustments, this would be expected, but just because minimum wage goes up by $7/hr doesn't mean everything will go up by the same amount. Eventually with higher wages, the market would adjust and so would employers who currently pay workers that amount of money at the time.

I understand the concern of folks switching to a lower paying job, but there is more to switching jobs than simply, I'm okay making less money. We still have pension plans to think about (for those still in pension plans, that wouldn't make the switch), those that don't want to lose their current benefits (of course those matter to people), being vested where you might work, etc. I don't see the issue as quite dramatic as conservatives like to point out.

 

They should go up.

In Seattle they instituted a mandatory $15 for minimum even for waiters, and yes food prices went up, but so did sales, and volume, it actually INCREASED their economy quite a bit.

DD

 

This is from the U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, dachuda. I think you may be misinformed. Check this out. Nowhere do they mention "illegal aliens" or illegal immigrants, which strongly implies that is not what they are.

Characteristics of minimum wage workers, 2018

March 2019 | Report 1078

In 2018, 81.9 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.5 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 434,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

About 1.3 million had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.7 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 2.1 percent of all hourly paid workers. The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less edged down from 2.3 percent in 2017 to 2.1 percent in 2018. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis. (See table 10.)

This report presents highlights and statistical tables describing workers who earned at or below the federal minimum wage in 2018. The data are obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a national monthly survey of approximately 60,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Information on earnings is collected from one-fourth of the CPS sample each month. The CPS does not include questions on whether workers are covered by the minimum wage provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or by individual state or local minimum wage laws.

The estimates of workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage are based solely on the hourly wage they report, which does not include overtime pay, tips, or commissions. See the accompanying technical notes section for more information, including a description of the source of the data and an explanation of the concepts and definitions used in this report.

Highlights

The following are highlights from the 2018 data:

Age. Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up just under half of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers (ages 16 to 19) paid by the hour, about 8 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 1 percent of workers age 25 and older. (See tables 1 and 7.)

Gender. Among workers who were paid hourly rates in 2018, about 3 percent of women and about 2 percent of men had wages at or below the prevailing federal minimum. (See table 1.)

Race and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity. The percentage of hourly paid workers with wages at or below the federal minimum differed little among the major race and ethnicity groups. About 3 percent of Black or African American workers earned the federal minimum wage or less. Among White, Asian, and Hispanic workers, the percentage was about 2 percent. (See table 1.)

Education. Among hourly paid workers age 16 and older, about 3 percent of those without a high school diploma earned the federal minimum wage or less, compared with about 2 percent of those who had a high school diploma (with no college), about 2 percent of those with some college or an associate degree, and about 1 percent of college graduates. (See table 6.)

Marital status. Among workers paid an hourly wage, those who were never married, who tend to be young, were more likely (about 4 percent) than married workers (1 percent) to earn the federal minimum wage or less. (See table 8.)

Full- and part-time status. About 5 percent of part-time workers (people who usually work fewer than 35 hours per week) were paid the federal minimum wage or less, compared with about 1 percent of full-time workers. (See table 1.)

Occupation. Among major occupational groups, service occupations had the highest percentage of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum wage, at about 6 percent. Just under three-fourths of workers earning the minimum wage or less in 2018 were employed in service occupations, mostly in food preparation and serving related jobs. (See table 4.) Industry. The industry with the highest percentage of workers earning hourly wages at or below the federal minimum wage was leisure and hospitality (11 percent). About three-fifths of all workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage were employed in this industry, almost entirely in restaurants and other food services. For many of these workers, tips may supplement the hourly wages received. (See table 5.)

State of residence. The states with the highest percentages of hourly paid workers earning at or below the minimum wage were in the South: Louisiana (about 5 percent) and South Carolina (about 4 percent). In the District of Columbia, about 4 percent of workers were paid at or below the federal minimum. The states with the lowest percentages of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum wage were in the West or Midwest: Alaska, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington (all were less than 1 percent). It should be noted that more than half of states have minimum wages that exceed the federal minimum. (See tables 2 and 3.)


The tables mentioned are at the link below.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/pdf/home.pdf

 

Before Reagan .... Once he signed that amnesty bill in 1986 , things changed.

 

That makes no sense, no laws changed so I asked again when do you think they were strict?

Do myou really think immigration is the cause of the middle class decline?

 

Yeah, it definitely wasn't amazon. It was raising those obsolete jobs replaced by automation that did it.

Interesting note, I was in Walmart recently during normal midday traffic. I was a bit surprised to see an unmanned floor cleaner going down the isles buffering the floor.

 

The idea that illegal immigrants are dragging down everyone's pay is a white nationalist myth

 

Increasing minimum wage could boost an economy as supply side economics has never been proven (in fact the opposite is what has been shown). While it may negatively impact shareholder value at companies by a modest amount, it will most definitely stimulate the local economy.

 

It will not affect shareholders across the board. The costs will be redistributed. The idea of dropping large amounts of cash to the bottom of the economy is silly. This is not wealth redistribution. Cost of food goes up. Rents go up. Ect...

A fair assessment is to analysis the quality of life over a large period of time. Its very obvious we are all doing much better as a whole. We all can't be 1%ers.

 

So you're strongly pro-union then? Wages were higher when CEOs made less and unions bargained to keep employee wages high. It had nothing to do with illegal immigration.

 

Marginal increases of pay don't drive rent prices up (which are already ridiculously high). They will eat into margins versus be inflationary as demonstrated by the current inflation rate. Companies have record profits - and it's not wealth redistribution - thats what Republicans like to label it but really that's when you cut taxes for the rich and then cut social services on the poor.