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

Well for starters minimum wage(whether it 15 per hour or not) should be index with the rate of inflation every year. It should not be static as other have mentioned

 

What are tough jobs that pay between 15~25?

Rocket River

 

They would if it were "grueling"

 

How many people you know making 20 dollars would take a pay cut of 5 dollars an hour? Let’s be realistic losing 825 dollars a month for them is a lot.

 

Sewer worker...garbage man...debt collector...a whole lot of jobs....

 

Many

 

You must know lazier people than me. Most people doing hard jobs is because of the money.

 

No laws changed but enforcement of the laws did change dramatically after that point.

Think about this - from that day to today , we went from near zero to an estimated 8.5m by 2000 and peaking in 2007 at over 11.5m.

Today deportation from the interior is nearly nonexistent , the only ones who get deported are those caught trying to enter and a handful of bad apples , a blind eye is turned on the rest of them.

Do I think illegal immigration is the cause of the decline of the middle class ?

Not by itself but it is a big contributor , that problem is much more complicated than a single issue. But when you take an entire sector of jobs (residential construction) and tens of thousands of jobs in other industries away from citizens and depress the wages in those economic sectors - It does make a major contribution.
It has also been a factor in the wage gap between the top and bottom as many of those jobs pay the same today as they did two decades ago.

You just don't plug 11.5m people , all largely in the same socioeconomic group - generally uneducated - into the economy without consequences , and the consequences are greatest for those who are in direct competition for jobs / homes and other resources with the illegals and that's generally the working poor / middle class.

 

Edit - I know better than to go down that rabbit hole.

 

Largely you are correct here .... we cant all be 1%ers.

The biggest issue today is that the 1%ers are able to take a much greater percentage of the pie today than they have historically.

 

No .... the gubmint really cant check the profits of those people , at least not directly.

Its all about demand .... and there's only two things we cant make more of - Time and Land and in a time where populations are exploding in metro and suburban area's , land is at a greater premium than ever - particularly with these low interest rates where literally anyone with a job can get a loan and investors are able to buy up large amounts on credit often at a discount due to the guy who shouldn't have gotten a loan defaulting.

As yourself who's taking the hit in this scenario ? That's right , the guy in the middle.

 

This needs to be put in perspective. Historically, the last 50 years? or the last 500 years?

 

the horror of everyone making a living wage...How can this country be great without the exploitation of labor!!!!

 

Not attacking you personally but this is the dumb part of the argument against it. You adjust. It's the reason this is an issue now...that the wage has been left at a level that never kept up with inflation or just plain reality. There is no excuse that the minimum wage hasn't changed nationally in decades.

 

So, people here are against raising the minimum wage, but are fine with taxpayers subsidizing employees of massive corporations like Wal-Mart -- the largest employer in the country -- through welfare programs because their employees simply cannot negotiate a living wage without organized labor and collective bargaining?

Furthermore, this taxpayer funded subsidy isn't just happening at Walmart. The companies with the most low-wage workers are listed below. Together, they account for trillions of dollars of market cap and are prominently listed in the Dow Jones Industrial and S&P 500, yet they require taxpayer subsidies to their employees in order to have a working business model?

Yeah, right.

Needlessly, the strawman in the argument against raising the minimum wage is always small business, but how can it be acceptable to allow these massive corporations to continue to privatize profits and socialize costs by passing them onto already burdened taxpayers?

Therefore, if you don't want to raise the minimum wage, then you must support organized labor and collective bargaining against these massive corporations. Otherwise, it's simply taxpayer funded corporate socialism, and we all know everyone feels about big bad socialism, right?

 

Several years ago, the whole $15 an hour mantra was about doing it now and then. The argument was it would help lift people out of poverty into a livable wage. That argument was easy to pick apart as $15.00 an hour is not a livable wage either. The conversation has since meandered into incremental increases over several years.

Yes, tying minimum wage to inflation makes sense. Setting an arbitrary number like $15.00 an hour doesnt. Politicians use this to get votes. If it should ever passed, we just forget about it for 20 years like we have in the past.

Additionally, states can set the minimum wage to whatever they want. If people are truly that passionate about it (and they aren't, because people generally find better work eventually and move on to bigger problems), they should also talk to their state legislators.

Mindlessly throwing money at something, whether its government or private, is usually pointless. Find ways to train people and teach them to be more productive. Throw money at that instead.

 

There are tougher jobs that pay even less right now. Preschool teachers and Daycare staff. Some of the most difficult jobs but women have always gotten facked.

 

You're acting like inflation ONLY occurs if you increase wages. Wrong, it's been increasing (along with price of goods and services) while wages have stayed flat. Can we at least keep wages in step?

 

huh?
No, I stated wages should be tied to inflation.

 

This goes back further than 2000. You aren’t looking at the bigger picture, it’s not just illegals but workers in China, India, sub Sahara Africa, etc.

Not to mention competing with other developed nation workers who may get the benefit of the government managing healthcare.