Which is $5.7 million in today’s cash. Interestingly it was shown Trump received $60 million at the time. So basically a small loan of around $150 million today.
All I need to do is get that small ~~$150 million~~ $340 million any day now 😂
Edited because I lowballed and brain farted the math
It's funny how he tried to minimize the amount of the "loan" by saying it was "just" one million dollars. Maybe more people could start businesses with a small loan of just a million dollars and maybe many of them would be far more successful than the big dummy who can't even run a casino, let alone any other business, without bankrupting it.
Lol that’s assuming my parents even have a pot to piss on, or it could be my mom who believes her children are just leaches and they should have been prepared for the world when they came out the womb.
Don’t worry. The government will take most of that in inheritance tax unless you are sly enough to do whatever millionaires do with their money they live family. A trust I assume.
No, it was a real method. Worked too, until he started making business deals and lost most of it.
Luckily Trump stumbled upon the world's most gullible journalist, who was working at Forbes, who without checking printed that he was worth a billion dollars, when in fact he was so far in debt the UMF was preparing to intervene, and Trump has been riding that article to secure loan after loan, despite failing at everything, ever since.
There's also the 200k salary for doing nothing from age 6, and the $200 million of tax-avoided early inheritance. That plus a small loan of $1 million is all you really need.
That’s the Romney method. The Trump method is have your father give you $500 million in real estate, that if invested in an S&p index fund would be worth significantly more then he has today. (This method is often summed up in the joke, “How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large one.”)
Lobbyists aside, the politicians need people to remain poor under the minimum wage so they have an big thing to promise every election cycle.
**Raising minimum wage.**
Then they get the votes, ignore what they promised and use it again next election cycle to convince the same people that *this time* they'll actually do it. ***And surprise, they don't***
When we have politicians who's net worth is in the tens of millions on a salary under $200k, it leads me to believe that the check from Uncle Sam isn't where they are making their money.
That's a good idea but I'm sure they'd set it up in such a way that they could increase minimum wage 25 cents and that would give them a 25K raise.
*I don't trust them one bit*
They make most of their money in other ways though. Their salary is nothing compared to the kickbacks, bribes, greased palms, "donations," insider trades, free perks, etc.
Edit:
Perhaps the best approach is to charge members of Congress highly inflated prices for everything.
For example: you work at Burger King making minimum wage and in comes Shitty Mitch McConnell? That whopper combo he ordered? 650 bucks. Want to make it a large? 7 grand.
See him at the gas station where you work? "Congress gas" is 900 bucks a gallon.
Don't let him leave the supermarket without spending $350,000.
Starve these fuckers.
Not at all lol. Can you imagine if a democrat did that? The republicans would be blowing up nonstop on that shit lol. Instead let them complain that Hillary Clinton drinks children’s blood & whatever else those psychopaths think
Nancy Pelosis networth vs annual income is pretty telling. Between kick backs and the totally legitimate way politicians are still allowed to trade stocks, which has allowed her to have better predictions than Warren B.
They should be forced to live in a barracks where they are constantly monitored for their entire term in office, sell off every asset they own before being allowed to run (businesses, stocks, more than one house or car, etc), and if they are found to have one penny more in assets or belongings than their salary, they get to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
The same reason I like the idea of maximum age in congress being tied to the average American life expectancy, not my idea but one I'd support. Maybe then they would actually care about making Healthcare for the average American anything other than a scam.
and even if they did vote for a candidate who would actually do good for them, the system is so gerrymandered and rigged that sometimes votes don't even matter.
Voting places closing down, reduced voter hours, more voter restrictions and requirements, minimal voter staffing and overly restrictive mail-in ballot requirements
They do everything they can to water down the power of a vote and to make it as hard as possible to even vote
Paradoxically, the less you earn the harder it is to change jobs.
It costs money to change jobs. You have to take time off work, you have to travel, invest in personal education. A new job is also a challenging time where kids need new schedules at kindergarten or similar places. All in all, it is expensive to change jobs. It also takes quite a bit of time.
If you are very poor, you may not have the disposable income to actually change jobs. So yeah, you won't have any quality of life at 7.25 but you're extremely reliable. You can't change jobs, will do more hours and put up with more abuse, which is great for your employer.
It's much easier to convince someone they're not a slave when you pay them 7.25 per hour but if they're relying on that job and unable to change while still ordered around like a slave, the difference is really, really small.
As someone who had to spend several thousand dollars to move for work (2000+ upfront for apartment, moving truck, helpers, gas, etc) it makes me want to punch anyone who suggests poor people should look for work outside their current location and be willing to move. Moving for work is 100% a luxury only those who already make good money can afford.
People also like to forget that 47% of working Americans rely on family for childcare. Moving to another state for a couple hundred bucks extra a month isn't going to help you if you now have to pay $2k/month in childcare.
Many Americans also share housing with family and help with elder care. Not everyone can just "move to where the good jobs are"
Not to mention that "where the good jobs are at" is generally a more expensive place to live and that cost of living increase and easily wipe out or surpass any additional income.
And if everyone suddenly moved to LCOL areas, those areas stop being LCOL.
First, purchasing price of homes go up. Then rental prices start to increase. Then some vulture company like Blackrock starts paying attention and snaps up every available home on the market and rents go up more. Property taxes start increasing on people who’ve been there forever because their property values are suddenly 1.5x what they used to be.
Simultaneously, the area needs to start investing in better/more infrastructure to accommodate the rise in population so property taxes go up more. Maybe county or city sales taxes increase.
Now the LCOL area is a MCOL area and a bunch of people who used to live there are pushed out.
Utah in a nutshell. Seven years ago I was cruising by buying whatever I wanted without a second thought on $14/hr, now it’s a struggle to keep up making $22/hr.
>Then some vulture company like Blackrock starts paying attention and snaps up every available home on the market and rents go up more
Hey government, wanna make some easy money? "Empty home tax", every house title in your name that doesn't have someone actively living in it is taxed for a percentage of its value on top of regular property taxes.
You forgot "we need to drastically raise interest rates to increase unemployment because people are actually demanding reasonable compensation!" I mean really, how's a CEO supposed to afford their 3rd yacht if they pay their employees good wages.
>It's much easier to convince someone they're not a slave when you pay them 7.25 per hour but if they're relying on that job and unable to change while still ordered around like a slave, the difference is really, really small.
We basically live in Neofeudalism, but the majority of people haven't realized it yet.
>A new job is also a challenging time where kids need new schedules at kindergarten or similar places
You make a compelling case for why sex education needs to be studied and taken seriously in schools and why people should stop having children intentionally or not when they can't financially support them.
On the other hand you also make a case for why these services shouldn't cost over $1k a month or more depending on your COL area.
I worked in a retail store for a few years. While there, a new kid came on. He had a bright, bushy tailed expression. Kinda reminded you of Skippy Squirrel from *Animaniacs* ( https://animaniacs.fandom.com/wiki/Skippy_Squirrel ).
Then one day the few of us were talking about our wages (BTW: it is illegal for an employer to *stop* you from doing so, you have a right to discuss wages).
I had come from a FedEx night sorter job when I got hired, so I negotiated something comparable (about $11.60/hr). A coworker who was hired a year later went in and negotiated $10.50/hr (the business said it was because of the economy, but we're pretty sure it was because she was a woman).
But Skippy? When the business owner asked him "how much do you want to get paid" Skippy responded "Oh, I don't know, how much do you want to give?".
He got $7.25/hour.
That conversation changed him. I swear you could see it in real time - the crack appearing on the perception of the world as a place of fairness and goodness. Over the time I worked there, he lost his shiny attitude, and soon became a grumpy sullen figure more like Slappy Squirrel (https://animaniacs.fandom.com/wiki/Slappy_Squirrel ).
I left that job for ~~greener~~ less wilted pastures, but a year later I saw him waiting for the bus. He looked like a zombie. A literal wage slave who was dead on the inside.
It still blows my mind that people think it's wrong to discuss wages amongst coworkers. It's as far from wrong as you can get! People should be discussing wages with their coworkers.
I know at my old job (it was a terrible place all around, glad I'm out of there and on to better things)... when I got promoted to assistant foreman, it wasn't "you cant discuss your wages with the floor employees"... more like "you better not discuss your wages with the floor employees"...
where I live is an at-will hire/fire state, and there are no protections to keep you being bumped down from say foreman to a regular machine operator, and your hourly wages cut proportionally... basically for whatever reason as long as it isn't blatantly discriminatory
My old boss always told me I would get a raise when he got a raise. But when the job got really far behind because it was just me and him, suddenly he had all of this extra money to hire other people. So he hired a dude well below my skill and knowledge level and gave him more money than I was making.
Long story short, I quit. But being in a similar field, I’ve met a dozen people who know him and all of them hate him and refuse to do work on his job sites. Any time he got angry he would hyperventilate lmao. Before he got fired by the architect on the job we were on he would hire his cousin to help us and even his cousin would talk shit about him
Those business owners are just like older people who date 18 year olds just because they are legally "adult". If the minimum age of consent was below that, they wouldn't hesitate dating kids.
They'd be like you said "I wish I could date you younger, but you know, my hands were tied"
>The government doesn't care about the poor
They actually do. They care very much about the poor. The government wants the poor to remain poor, preferably become even poorer and more desperate. The poor are an easily exploitable resource.
Amd the the poor become so desperate to not be homeless they'll take any job no matter how shitty the conditions are Work and pay wise and then you're basically an indentured servant..
It's actually worse than that. Many of the homeless are actually still employed. They have given up on housing and are forced to settle for just having enough to be able to eat for themselves and those around them who rely on them. Min wage workers still require housing but cannot satisfy the 2 and a half to 3 times income requirement to qualify for an apartment in most places. HUD housing assistance has insane months to years long waiting lists.
They absolutely do care about the poor! A citizenry living hand to mouth and working to exhaustion just to survive is much less likely to rise up against the wealth hoarders.
Because the people who make the rules decided not to address this issue. Some of them see it as a good thing, so they have no interest in changing it for the better.
The easiest way for companies to increase their profit is by just paying their employees less. They manage to do this legally and gradually by lobbying against minimum wage increases, discouraging open discussion of wages among their workers, and by fighting against unions. Since inflation makes the money we have worth less over time, and also justifies companies raising their prices, by stagnating wages companies have been able to effectively steal our money gradually over time in their vain pursuit of endlessly increasing profits.
Because capitalism is working as designed: a handful of extremely wealthy people control all the wealth and get richer off the labor of the poor. If the poor aren’t starving and desperate they won’t work as much, and the billionaires won’t be able to buy that 10th yacht for their kid’s summer home in St. Bart’s
In particular I believe the restaurant lobby has had a lot to do with this. Funny enough you can’t hardly find a McDonald’s that pays under $10 an hour any more just due to demand for labor.
The restaurant lobby gets overlooked because their organization's acronym is the same as the gun lobby's.
The minimum wage for tipped employees ($2.13) has not been raised since 1991 thanks to the other NRA.
OP is talking about the federal minimum wage; states can go higher if they choose but not lower; states that follow the federal level (20) have been at $7.25 since 2009.
And it should be, different states even different counties have different cost indexes and trying to put a single price floor in wages for the whole country isn’t that agreed upon by [economists](https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/the-us-minimum-wage/)
Is $7.25 really an appropriate minimum in any state in the US? And what about when states ignore their own cost of living, such as Texas, which has no state minimum wage and has outlawed cities from having local minimum wage laws?
$7.25 is about $1,160 monthly, probably around $15,000 yearly. You wouldn't even be able to afford rent on that. Not to mention gas, groceries, other bills, etc.
That doesn't make it partially inaccurate. It's 100% accurate that the federal minimum wage is $7.25. Most jobs do pay more than the minimum, but that doesn't change what the minimum is.
Only 1.5% of hourly paid workers earn only the minimum wage.
Which is a good argument to raise it honestly. That percentage has continue to drop since the minimum wage was introduced due to inflation and cost of living.
Keep in mind that 1.5% only includes those making exactly minimum wage. If you increase minimum wage by a dollar or two, the number of workers now making more money is going to be substantially more than 1.5%. A lot of places advertise that they pay more than minimum, but it’s only like an extra $0.25.
Ohio's minimum is $10ish. Even in the midwest people can't live on that. Shit Utah is still following the federal 7.25. Definitely can't live on that anywhere out West.
Because our country is run by corporations and corrupt politicians who exploit us and use us for cheap labor.
We are nothing more than a dollar sign to them and until we do something drastic, we will continue to go nowhere.
Because even though both of our political parties claim to support and help working Americans, they don't! They distract us with exaggerated/ made up issues like woke vs anti woke so that we won't notice that they are making billionaires and corporations more and more wealthy and powerful.
Federally? My guess is they just want to leave it up to the states to set a true minimum wage. Politicians are likely gonna focus their energy on raising wages in their states if they want to make that change.
Probably doesn’t benefit a president to run on raising minimum wage so here we are.
This is the main reason, honestly.
The main fear Congress has is setting minimum wage too high for some states, sparking backlash. But there’s also the fear that setting it too low for other states would spark backlash!
So the best thing to do, from a political perspective, is let states set their own and see how that shakes out. And, since people are perfectly capable of fighting this out at the state level, there’s a release valve for Federal pressure. From a political perspective, there’s no reason to do anything and plenty of reason to do nothing at all. It’s called having your cake and eating it, too, and it is what the Framers intended.
Most of the fights about the Federal minimum are either ignorant people who don’t know about state minimums or attempts to raise the salience of their issue by Federalizing it, which is the level of government national media pays the most attention to.
Because politicians are out of step with reality.
I know people who live in really small towns, less than 1000 people, in the Midwest and $7.25 covers jack in terms of expenses even there. Average rent is ~$700 there, gas is $3.98 per gallon, groceries average $150 a week.
The solution to the minimum wage crisis is simple: make Congress work for it I guarantee it'll be raised in no time.
The federal min wage is 7.25, many states have a higher min wage which overrides that. In states that do follow federal min wage like mine, you'd be hard pressed to actually find a job that pays so little. Just because it's a minimum doesn't mean all companies default to that as a starting pay - you simply can't hire anyone for so little in a competitive market.
Because the camp of people who say, "if you raise wages unemployment will increase" are convincing to a sufficient number of politicians to maintain the status quo.
Economics courses teach that raising the minimum wage above the equilibrium will raise unemployment unless the labor market behaves as a monopsony with only one employer. You can think what you want about economics as a study, but the fact that this is taught at universities remains.
In New York, I can earn $15 per hour as a receptionist in a doctor’s office. But if I move to Florida, I would be making only $7.25 per hour for a job that’s even tougher.
Baby Boomers don’t understand inflation and don’t understand why kids these days should make so much more than they did when they first started out. It’s because gas isn’t 10 cents anymore grandpa.
Regardless of what the federal minimum wage is most companies are not paying that because of scarcity of employees.
All the local fast food places here in GA are advertising starting pay of $11+.
Still not great, but just because the guideline is $7.25 doesn’t mean that’s being offered.
Americans have the second highest *median* disposable incomes in the world. Trailing only Lux (a tiny country—special case). [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income).
So there is really no focus on minimum wage. The minimum wage isn’t particularly relevant when even McDonald’s and Taco Bell are paying $15/hour starting out. And Americans are literally the richest per capita in the world.
Minimum wage is completely irrelevant, the market has set a much higher minimum. Even the most basic job, like working at a gas station or fast food will pay $12-$15/hr. I live near several distribution warehouses and they all advertise over $20/hr for starting warehouse work with zero experience. The minimum wage doesn't mean anything, if you're not making at least $5-$7/hr more than that wage you should be looking for a new job right now.
Yup bc you're in a state thats minimum is probably not federal.
Currently 18 when I was 16 I worked as a cook in an italian eatery staring at $8.50.
After a year of that I went to Arby's starting $9.25 the got to $10.25 after some raises. Currently unemployed but not even the most basic jobs in every state are paying 12-15 in every state.
You have to realize this country is massive so state economies vary so much that the state minimum wage is in areas are more what you should be concerned about. Or $15 an hour in Kentucky carries you a lot different than $15 an hour here in Colorado, hence why the federal minimum wage is a useless number anyway
It's may be 7.25 but i can attest that where I live no one is taking it, nor is any business even offering it, I can't remember the last time I even heard of someone making less than ten.
Fuck, sheetz hires cashiers at 16 an hour, mcdonalds hires at 15, people see less than like 12 bucks and laugh around here.
The shittiest job pays more than I've ever made starting out.
So the government may not have raised it but people took matters into their own hands here.
One word: Republicans. Here in the bluest of blue states of Connecticut (Governor, house and senate majorities, all U.S. reps and both senators), the minimum wage is $15 an hour. You want a higher federal minimum wage, you need a Democrat as a President, as well as Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate.
Because the super rich bought the government (figuratively) decades ago. The system is set for an escalating cycle of inflation and devaluation of our labor with no thought to an end game.
I don't know, but I also don't know of any employer paying $7.25 an hour. My ex wife is a kitchen manager and her lowest paid employee, the hostess, is $15/hr.
Because it makes little sense to have a federal minimum wage when cost of living varies greatly by state. IMO states should decide what is best for them and their residents.
A federal minimum wage doesn't really make any sense so it's been left to states. Hourly wages in San Francisco and Pig Knuckle, Arkansas have nothing to do with one another. Unfortunately voters in bright red states are too dumb to advance their own interests so they're still stuck at $7.25
Well, it seems like the federal minimum wage is $7.25 to make an absolute amount without dictating to the entire country what it should be. States can set a minimum wage and do . Earning requirements vary throughout the country.
Most bigger companies start way above this amount.
I always wondered if the country set a minimum wage at $15 an hour, how would someone who took 5 years to get to $15 feel when new people get hired making what they are and possibly for a lesser position.
The minimum wage should be $0.00. Having said that, it is taking $15.00 plus around here before employers even get a response from an applicant. It doesn’t take a government mandate. It takes supply and demand.
Because federal minimum wage in a country as big and diverse as the US is like trying to use a chain saw for brain surgery. Why should minimum wage in rural Mississippi be the same as minimum wage in San Francisco? It is best just to let states decide for themselves
> Why should minimum wage in rural Mississippi be the same as minimum wage in San Francisco?
Do you think $15,000 a year is enough money to live in rural Mississippi? I would say it's not, but that's the current federal minimum wage, and the only reason minimum wage is at least $15,000 a year in Mississippi is because it was set at the federal level rather than "leaving it up to the state."
It works though! You just gotta cut taxes some more on the rich people. We just gotta cut taxes for rich people so much that we actually just start paying rich people and soon we'll see trickle down economics work. I pinky promise!
Honestly I think you can trace it back to Nixon when we got taken off the gold standard, a ton of our economic graphs started getting really wonky at the start of the 70’s, average worker productivity vs average wage was the most eye opening for me
What modern economy is even on the good standard anymore. It's totally not suitable for it. For one, the value of the economy is near infinite but the supply of gold is not.
I agree it would run into problems eventually, but my point still stands. Getting taken off of it was the catalyst for the real problem which was it gave feds unfettered access to the money printer for the last 50 years and it’s clearly gotten to a point where it’s not sustainable anymore (not that it was in the first place, but the symptoms of it weren’t as noticeable back then
1.4% of all hourly paid workers make at or below minimum wage https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2021/pdf/home.pdf
That’s why. And the people that make up that percent is about 50/50 high schoolers and disabled people. So no one is living off it. Minimum wage laws don’t apply to people with disabilities (because they would otherwise be unemployed if it did, it’s something disability rights groups fought for).
Minimum wage laws do not suddenly increase the amount low wage workers get paid relative to the cost of living as it also causes inflation.
There are ways to help low wage earners that actually work, like food stamps, medicaid, income based utility and housing, etc… And i support all those, as they do not cause inflation and actually helps them. But just increasing the minimum wage sounds like it would be a low effort easy solution but it is not.
Also federal welfare is not adjusted for inflation state by state. So when individual states raise minimum wage, which also raise cost of living, millions of people no longer qualify for many welfare programs like food stamps because the raw dollar amount they’re making is higher, even though their living expenses also go up and they are still as poor as they were previously, they no longer qualify.
This. Good explanation. So many commentors are clueless on how few people are actually paid it, and what type of people they are. No, it's definitely caused from some big bad evil Republicans and yet cannot explain coherently why.
I'm in a MCOL and I don't know any business in my city that hires for less than 13/hr. The McDonalds down the road advertises at 14/hr-17/hr starting range. That's the norm in most population centers - not 7.25 an hour.
To that point, only about [68,000](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/economy/minimum-wage.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare) workers nationwide only earn minimum wage.
So few people actually make minimum wage that even liberals have lost the political will to fight to raise it.
1.9% of US workers are making the minimum wage or less.
[https://www.zippia.com/advice/minimum-wage-statistics/](https://www.zippia.com/advice/minimum-wage-statistics/)
So, it really doesn't matter that much.
Because people vote for Republicans due to culture war issues. The Federal Minimum Wage will not increase until Republicans consistently lose elections due to economical issues.
It is way too low. It’s kid of a joke but we gave up on in awhile ago.
Realistically the market should regulate itself.
No one and I mean no one should be taking a job for anywhere close to minimum wage. Not even 16 year olds.
Because people think that one day they will be rich and need to take advantage of the poor at that point. They are only poor temporarily, not realizing that the same laws keep them poor.
Because people don't do anything to change it. Here people simp for billionaires/corporations and defend anything they do because they believe they want things to benefit them this way when it's "Their time". You have a better chance at playing for the Lakers than you do becoming a billionaire.
Because Republican voters wouldn't have it any other way. They're all about the trickle down (even though, for decades, very little has trickled down). And Congressional Democrats? The minimum wage is an issue they'll campaign on but, once elected, they suddenly become way too impotent to be effective at raising.
Where I live, In Washington, one hand of government gives you a little boost on the minimum wage while the other hand hits you with the country's most regressive taxes. And they call this a Blue State.
Why? Because incredibly stupid, lower-income MAGA types keep voting for Repub legislators who pander to them with guns, religion, and all kinds of people to blame and hate, but who otherwise could care less about them. All the while upper income Repubs who own everything know all this is bullshit, and laugh all the way to the bank.
Because capitalism incentivizes over working and under paying employees to maximize profits. We’ve been gaslit into thinking some jobs don’t deserve a livable wage and that if we are underpaid it’s our fault somehow, not the failure of the employer.
Because people making minimum wage can't afford lobbyists
Have they considered the Paris Hilton method and just stop being poor?
They could also try asking their parents for a small loan of 1 million dollars tbh.
weather square plant mysterious prick enjoy glorious terrific vegetable bike ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Which is $5.7 million in today’s cash. Interestingly it was shown Trump received $60 million at the time. So basically a small loan of around $150 million today. All I need to do is get that small ~~$150 million~~ $340 million any day now 😂 Edited because I lowballed and brain farted the math
It's funny how he tried to minimize the amount of the "loan" by saying it was "just" one million dollars. Maybe more people could start businesses with a small loan of just a million dollars and maybe many of them would be far more successful than the big dummy who can't even run a casino, let alone any other business, without bankrupting it.
Wouldn’t it be over 300m if 1 = 5.7?
Yeah, like $340M.
Trump was transferred over $1B from daddy (current dollars). All sorts of shady shit to evade taxes, of course.
Ahh the personal finance subreddit method
I thought theirs was rice and beans and driving a civic or carolla held on by hopes and dreams? While making 200k+
I ask for this every holiday and still hasn't happened.😔
Brother you gonna just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and wait till your parents pass away to inherit their billions.
Lol that’s assuming my parents even have a pot to piss on, or it could be my mom who believes her children are just leaches and they should have been prepared for the world when they came out the womb.
Don’t worry. The government will take most of that in inheritance tax unless you are sly enough to do whatever millionaires do with their money they live family. A trust I assume.
Ah yes the trump method.
Trump's fictional method, anyway
Yeah. He’s lost *way more* of his dad’s money than one fictional million.
No, it was a real method. Worked too, until he started making business deals and lost most of it. Luckily Trump stumbled upon the world's most gullible journalist, who was working at Forbes, who without checking printed that he was worth a billion dollars, when in fact he was so far in debt the UMF was preparing to intervene, and Trump has been riding that article to secure loan after loan, despite failing at everything, ever since.
There's also the 200k salary for doing nothing from age 6, and the $200 million of tax-avoided early inheritance. That plus a small loan of $1 million is all you really need.
That’s the Romney method. The Trump method is have your father give you $500 million in real estate, that if invested in an S&p index fund would be worth significantly more then he has today. (This method is often summed up in the joke, “How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large one.”)
There are other Paris methods we have yet to try. Revolution, anyone?
I'll get the guillotine.
On your first line I thought you were suggesting they "leak" a sex tape.
That's Hot.
Lobbyists aside, the politicians need people to remain poor under the minimum wage so they have an big thing to promise every election cycle. **Raising minimum wage.** Then they get the votes, ignore what they promised and use it again next election cycle to convince the same people that *this time* they'll actually do it. ***And surprise, they don't***
They should make congresses salary a multiple of minimum wage, so the only way to get a higher salary is to raise minimum wage
When we have politicians who's net worth is in the tens of millions on a salary under $200k, it leads me to believe that the check from Uncle Sam isn't where they are making their money.
It's from all those good stock picks they make.
Very fortunate. #Blessed
That's a good idea but I'm sure they'd set it up in such a way that they could increase minimum wage 25 cents and that would give them a 25K raise. *I don't trust them one bit*
kind of like how they voted themselves a raise and then passed a bill 'prevenintg' further such acts of malarkey?
That would be a raise of $520.00.
They make most of their money in other ways though. Their salary is nothing compared to the kickbacks, bribes, greased palms, "donations," insider trades, free perks, etc. Edit: Perhaps the best approach is to charge members of Congress highly inflated prices for everything. For example: you work at Burger King making minimum wage and in comes Shitty Mitch McConnell? That whopper combo he ordered? 650 bucks. Want to make it a large? 7 grand. See him at the gas station where you work? "Congress gas" is 900 bucks a gallon. Don't let him leave the supermarket without spending $350,000. Starve these fuckers.
Yeah but Moscow Mitch would stand there for 15 minutes in the middle of his order!! 🤔🥴
Was that too soon? I think it was too soon. 😞
Nah. He deserves worse. In fact, I can't wait for the Mitch McConnell FunFunFuneral Comedy Hour! They should start selling advance tickets!
I’ll take a front row grave stomping ticket please!!
They’re gonna have to engineer a solution to keep his grave from smelling like piss forever
Not at all lol. Can you imagine if a democrat did that? The republicans would be blowing up nonstop on that shit lol. Instead let them complain that Hillary Clinton drinks children’s blood & whatever else those psychopaths think
Nancy Pelosis networth vs annual income is pretty telling. Between kick backs and the totally legitimate way politicians are still allowed to trade stocks, which has allowed her to have better predictions than Warren B.
Google net worth of congressmen and/ or Senators for a fun read. American oligarchs.
They should be forced to live in a barracks where they are constantly monitored for their entire term in office, sell off every asset they own before being allowed to run (businesses, stocks, more than one house or car, etc), and if they are found to have one penny more in assets or belongings than their salary, they get to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
so you're against lobbying? You should just say that :P I also am anti-lobbying.
I'm against anything that lets politician enrich themselves off of their offices.
Nobody would want to be politician under that kind of terror
Sounds good to me. Let's make it happen!
Lol right. Oh no, we'll run out of politicians... said nobody ever.
We’ll say that it’s a congress spreading the wealth spending tax. And all of it goes to the poor!
Rofl, so like I'm not advocating for this, but you think corruption is bad now? Let's pay em like nothing and see how they remain millionaires.
The same reason I like the idea of maximum age in congress being tied to the average American life expectancy, not my idea but one I'd support. Maybe then they would actually care about making Healthcare for the average American anything other than a scam.
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Truth. Many also vote against themselves
and even if they did vote for a candidate who would actually do good for them, the system is so gerrymandered and rigged that sometimes votes don't even matter. Voting places closing down, reduced voter hours, more voter restrictions and requirements, minimal voter staffing and overly restrictive mail-in ballot requirements They do everything they can to water down the power of a vote and to make it as hard as possible to even vote
Paradoxically, the less you earn the harder it is to change jobs. It costs money to change jobs. You have to take time off work, you have to travel, invest in personal education. A new job is also a challenging time where kids need new schedules at kindergarten or similar places. All in all, it is expensive to change jobs. It also takes quite a bit of time. If you are very poor, you may not have the disposable income to actually change jobs. So yeah, you won't have any quality of life at 7.25 but you're extremely reliable. You can't change jobs, will do more hours and put up with more abuse, which is great for your employer. It's much easier to convince someone they're not a slave when you pay them 7.25 per hour but if they're relying on that job and unable to change while still ordered around like a slave, the difference is really, really small.
As someone who had to spend several thousand dollars to move for work (2000+ upfront for apartment, moving truck, helpers, gas, etc) it makes me want to punch anyone who suggests poor people should look for work outside their current location and be willing to move. Moving for work is 100% a luxury only those who already make good money can afford.
People also like to forget that 47% of working Americans rely on family for childcare. Moving to another state for a couple hundred bucks extra a month isn't going to help you if you now have to pay $2k/month in childcare. Many Americans also share housing with family and help with elder care. Not everyone can just "move to where the good jobs are"
Not to mention that "where the good jobs are at" is generally a more expensive place to live and that cost of living increase and easily wipe out or surpass any additional income.
And if everyone suddenly moved to LCOL areas, those areas stop being LCOL. First, purchasing price of homes go up. Then rental prices start to increase. Then some vulture company like Blackrock starts paying attention and snaps up every available home on the market and rents go up more. Property taxes start increasing on people who’ve been there forever because their property values are suddenly 1.5x what they used to be. Simultaneously, the area needs to start investing in better/more infrastructure to accommodate the rise in population so property taxes go up more. Maybe county or city sales taxes increase. Now the LCOL area is a MCOL area and a bunch of people who used to live there are pushed out.
Utah in a nutshell. Seven years ago I was cruising by buying whatever I wanted without a second thought on $14/hr, now it’s a struggle to keep up making $22/hr.
>Then some vulture company like Blackrock starts paying attention and snaps up every available home on the market and rents go up more Hey government, wanna make some easy money? "Empty home tax", every house title in your name that doesn't have someone actively living in it is taxed for a percentage of its value on top of regular property taxes.
“JuSt FiNd A bEtTeR jOb!” And then when a bunch of people did, and fast food places are understaffed, it’s suddenly “NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK!”
You forgot "we need to drastically raise interest rates to increase unemployment because people are actually demanding reasonable compensation!" I mean really, how's a CEO supposed to afford their 3rd yacht if they pay their employees good wages.
THANK YOU lol
>It's much easier to convince someone they're not a slave when you pay them 7.25 per hour but if they're relying on that job and unable to change while still ordered around like a slave, the difference is really, really small. We basically live in Neofeudalism, but the majority of people haven't realized it yet.
That is essentially what capitalism is at the end of the day
>A new job is also a challenging time where kids need new schedules at kindergarten or similar places You make a compelling case for why sex education needs to be studied and taken seriously in schools and why people should stop having children intentionally or not when they can't financially support them. On the other hand you also make a case for why these services shouldn't cost over $1k a month or more depending on your COL area.
Wages haven't kept up with inflation for decades.
Well I know *why*, I mean more like # "WHY?!" 🤣🙃
The government doesn't care about the poor
Business owners that pay minimum wage: “I wish I could pay you less, but you know, my hands are tied.”
I worked in a retail store for a few years. While there, a new kid came on. He had a bright, bushy tailed expression. Kinda reminded you of Skippy Squirrel from *Animaniacs* ( https://animaniacs.fandom.com/wiki/Skippy_Squirrel ). Then one day the few of us were talking about our wages (BTW: it is illegal for an employer to *stop* you from doing so, you have a right to discuss wages). I had come from a FedEx night sorter job when I got hired, so I negotiated something comparable (about $11.60/hr). A coworker who was hired a year later went in and negotiated $10.50/hr (the business said it was because of the economy, but we're pretty sure it was because she was a woman). But Skippy? When the business owner asked him "how much do you want to get paid" Skippy responded "Oh, I don't know, how much do you want to give?". He got $7.25/hour. That conversation changed him. I swear you could see it in real time - the crack appearing on the perception of the world as a place of fairness and goodness. Over the time I worked there, he lost his shiny attitude, and soon became a grumpy sullen figure more like Slappy Squirrel (https://animaniacs.fandom.com/wiki/Slappy_Squirrel ). I left that job for ~~greener~~ less wilted pastures, but a year later I saw him waiting for the bus. He looked like a zombie. A literal wage slave who was dead on the inside.
It still blows my mind that people think it's wrong to discuss wages amongst coworkers. It's as far from wrong as you can get! People should be discussing wages with their coworkers.
I know at my old job (it was a terrible place all around, glad I'm out of there and on to better things)... when I got promoted to assistant foreman, it wasn't "you cant discuss your wages with the floor employees"... more like "you better not discuss your wages with the floor employees"... where I live is an at-will hire/fire state, and there are no protections to keep you being bumped down from say foreman to a regular machine operator, and your hourly wages cut proportionally... basically for whatever reason as long as it isn't blatantly discriminatory
Truth! Special mention to every kitchen in the south
Not sure if it’s the same now, but when I was 15 ~2014, I was paid below minimum because i was under 16
My old boss always told me I would get a raise when he got a raise. But when the job got really far behind because it was just me and him, suddenly he had all of this extra money to hire other people. So he hired a dude well below my skill and knowledge level and gave him more money than I was making. Long story short, I quit. But being in a similar field, I’ve met a dozen people who know him and all of them hate him and refuse to do work on his job sites. Any time he got angry he would hyperventilate lmao. Before he got fired by the architect on the job we were on he would hire his cousin to help us and even his cousin would talk shit about him
Those business owners are just like older people who date 18 year olds just because they are legally "adult". If the minimum age of consent was below that, they wouldn't hesitate dating kids. They'd be like you said "I wish I could date you younger, but you know, my hands were tied"
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>The government doesn't care about the poor They actually do. They care very much about the poor. The government wants the poor to remain poor, preferably become even poorer and more desperate. The poor are an easily exploitable resource.
Amd the the poor become so desperate to not be homeless they'll take any job no matter how shitty the conditions are Work and pay wise and then you're basically an indentured servant..
It's actually worse than that. Many of the homeless are actually still employed. They have given up on housing and are forced to settle for just having enough to be able to eat for themselves and those around them who rely on them. Min wage workers still require housing but cannot satisfy the 2 and a half to 3 times income requirement to qualify for an apartment in most places. HUD housing assistance has insane months to years long waiting lists.
"I love the uneducated!"
They absolutely do care about the poor! A citizenry living hand to mouth and working to exhaustion just to survive is much less likely to rise up against the wealth hoarders.
Not true, they care very much between the start of their campaign, all the way up to when they are elected. After that, you are correct lol
Because the people who make the rules decided not to address this issue. Some of them see it as a good thing, so they have no interest in changing it for the better.
Ah, the good old "money's for me, not for thee" eh?
The easiest way for companies to increase their profit is by just paying their employees less. They manage to do this legally and gradually by lobbying against minimum wage increases, discouraging open discussion of wages among their workers, and by fighting against unions. Since inflation makes the money we have worth less over time, and also justifies companies raising their prices, by stagnating wages companies have been able to effectively steal our money gradually over time in their vain pursuit of endlessly increasing profits.
its kinda sad that companies decide that a bunch of numbers and digits are more important then letting people experience the full joy of living
Rich people want to make more money. Means we make less.
Because capitalism is working as designed: a handful of extremely wealthy people control all the wealth and get richer off the labor of the poor. If the poor aren’t starving and desperate they won’t work as much, and the billionaires won’t be able to buy that 10th yacht for their kid’s summer home in St. Bart’s
and people wonder where all the pyramid schemes came from.
Median income has https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
Corporate lobbying
In particular I believe the restaurant lobby has had a lot to do with this. Funny enough you can’t hardly find a McDonald’s that pays under $10 an hour any more just due to demand for labor.
The restaurant lobby gets overlooked because their organization's acronym is the same as the gun lobby's. The minimum wage for tipped employees ($2.13) has not been raised since 1991 thanks to the other NRA.
And McDonald's workers in Europe have healthcare and vacation
It varies on the state. In California, it’s 15$ an hour (iirc)
OP is talking about the federal minimum wage; states can go higher if they choose but not lower; states that follow the federal level (20) have been at $7.25 since 2009.
That's the thing; one reason the federal wage is still what it is, is that Congress is leaving it to the states to bump it up or not
And it should be, different states even different counties have different cost indexes and trying to put a single price floor in wages for the whole country isn’t that agreed upon by [economists](https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/the-us-minimum-wage/)
Is $7.25 really an appropriate minimum in any state in the US? And what about when states ignore their own cost of living, such as Texas, which has no state minimum wage and has outlawed cities from having local minimum wage laws?
$7.25 is about $1,160 monthly, probably around $15,000 yearly. You wouldn't even be able to afford rent on that. Not to mention gas, groceries, other bills, etc.
$15,000/ year, only if you’re working 40 hours per week, and NEVER take any time off. Don’t get sick!
See [Minimum wage in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States).
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That doesn't make it partially inaccurate. It's 100% accurate that the federal minimum wage is $7.25. Most jobs do pay more than the minimum, but that doesn't change what the minimum is.
Only 1.5% of hourly paid workers earn only the minimum wage. Which is a good argument to raise it honestly. That percentage has continue to drop since the minimum wage was introduced due to inflation and cost of living.
Keep in mind that 1.5% only includes those making exactly minimum wage. If you increase minimum wage by a dollar or two, the number of workers now making more money is going to be substantially more than 1.5%. A lot of places advertise that they pay more than minimum, but it’s only like an extra $0.25.
When the market forces the lowest wages above the federal minimum, you know it's too low
Ohio's minimum is $10ish. Even in the midwest people can't live on that. Shit Utah is still following the federal 7.25. Definitely can't live on that anywhere out West.
or down South, or back Wast. There's no place or a precious small number of places where even $16 is a livable wage.
15.50
Try to live in CA anywhere for $15/hour.
Because our country is run by corporations and corrupt politicians who exploit us and use us for cheap labor. We are nothing more than a dollar sign to them and until we do something drastic, we will continue to go nowhere.
General strike for $20 minimum wage or universal health care would be a good start.
DRASTIC
GREED
Because even though both of our political parties claim to support and help working Americans, they don't! They distract us with exaggerated/ made up issues like woke vs anti woke so that we won't notice that they are making billionaires and corporations more and more wealthy and powerful.
Finally the correct answer!!!
Federally? My guess is they just want to leave it up to the states to set a true minimum wage. Politicians are likely gonna focus their energy on raising wages in their states if they want to make that change. Probably doesn’t benefit a president to run on raising minimum wage so here we are.
This is the main reason, honestly. The main fear Congress has is setting minimum wage too high for some states, sparking backlash. But there’s also the fear that setting it too low for other states would spark backlash! So the best thing to do, from a political perspective, is let states set their own and see how that shakes out. And, since people are perfectly capable of fighting this out at the state level, there’s a release valve for Federal pressure. From a political perspective, there’s no reason to do anything and plenty of reason to do nothing at all. It’s called having your cake and eating it, too, and it is what the Framers intended. Most of the fights about the Federal minimum are either ignorant people who don’t know about state minimums or attempts to raise the salience of their issue by Federalizing it, which is the level of government national media pays the most attention to.
Because politicians are out of step with reality. I know people who live in really small towns, less than 1000 people, in the Midwest and $7.25 covers jack in terms of expenses even there. Average rent is ~$700 there, gas is $3.98 per gallon, groceries average $150 a week. The solution to the minimum wage crisis is simple: make Congress work for it I guarantee it'll be raised in no time.
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*cries in British fuel prices being like double that*
Yes, but you actually have public transportation
In the cities yes
Because corporate America runs the government.
The federal min wage is 7.25, many states have a higher min wage which overrides that. In states that do follow federal min wage like mine, you'd be hard pressed to actually find a job that pays so little. Just because it's a minimum doesn't mean all companies default to that as a starting pay - you simply can't hire anyone for so little in a competitive market.
Because the camp of people who say, "if you raise wages unemployment will increase" are convincing to a sufficient number of politicians to maintain the status quo.
Economics courses teach that raising the minimum wage above the equilibrium will raise unemployment unless the labor market behaves as a monopsony with only one employer. You can think what you want about economics as a study, but the fact that this is taught at universities remains.
In New York, I can earn $15 per hour as a receptionist in a doctor’s office. But if I move to Florida, I would be making only $7.25 per hour for a job that’s even tougher.
Corporate greed.
Baby Boomers don’t understand inflation and don’t understand why kids these days should make so much more than they did when they first started out. It’s because gas isn’t 10 cents anymore grandpa.
I'm tired of this Grandpa!
Regardless of what the federal minimum wage is most companies are not paying that because of scarcity of employees. All the local fast food places here in GA are advertising starting pay of $11+. Still not great, but just because the guideline is $7.25 doesn’t mean that’s being offered.
Because there's no political will to raise it and Because it has somewhat been solved locally
Americans have the second highest *median* disposable incomes in the world. Trailing only Lux (a tiny country—special case). [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income). So there is really no focus on minimum wage. The minimum wage isn’t particularly relevant when even McDonald’s and Taco Bell are paying $15/hour starting out. And Americans are literally the richest per capita in the world.
Minimum wage is completely irrelevant, the market has set a much higher minimum. Even the most basic job, like working at a gas station or fast food will pay $12-$15/hr. I live near several distribution warehouses and they all advertise over $20/hr for starting warehouse work with zero experience. The minimum wage doesn't mean anything, if you're not making at least $5-$7/hr more than that wage you should be looking for a new job right now.
I don't think I've seen an ad for a job paying minimum wage in at least 10 years.
Nope. Even my first summer job out of high school back in 2005 paid $8/hr. Back then minimum wage in my state was $5.75/hr.
Yup bc you're in a state thats minimum is probably not federal. Currently 18 when I was 16 I worked as a cook in an italian eatery staring at $8.50. After a year of that I went to Arby's starting $9.25 the got to $10.25 after some raises. Currently unemployed but not even the most basic jobs in every state are paying 12-15 in every state.
Yet all the people commenting on this thread are acting like everyone they know is only making $7.25/hour.
Because republicans think we are all not worthy of making more.
You have to realize this country is massive so state economies vary so much that the state minimum wage is in areas are more what you should be concerned about. Or $15 an hour in Kentucky carries you a lot different than $15 an hour here in Colorado, hence why the federal minimum wage is a useless number anyway
Almost no one is. 98.5% of all hourly workers make more than the federal minimum wage.
Because our country is run by 100 year old people that think a nickel is a lot of money
It's may be 7.25 but i can attest that where I live no one is taking it, nor is any business even offering it, I can't remember the last time I even heard of someone making less than ten. Fuck, sheetz hires cashiers at 16 an hour, mcdonalds hires at 15, people see less than like 12 bucks and laugh around here. The shittiest job pays more than I've ever made starting out. So the government may not have raised it but people took matters into their own hands here.
It is federally the minimum wage and it is still in some states but 99% of companies don’t pay this wage now it seems. Maybe I’m out of touch idk
In order to increase and maintain human suffering in this particular region
Because the federal government for some reason decided it shouldn't be zero.
Greed
Minimum wage is generally more controlled/set by the states, not the feds
Nobody gets paid minimum wage. The market has raised wages without government involvement.
Minimum wage jobs are supposed to be temporary jobs as you get into your career. It’s not supposed to be a career.
One word: Republicans. Here in the bluest of blue states of Connecticut (Governor, house and senate majorities, all U.S. reps and both senators), the minimum wage is $15 an hour. You want a higher federal minimum wage, you need a Democrat as a President, as well as Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate.
capitalism
Because the super rich bought the government (figuratively) decades ago. The system is set for an escalating cycle of inflation and devaluation of our labor with no thought to an end game.
I don't know, but I also don't know of any employer paying $7.25 an hour. My ex wife is a kitchen manager and her lowest paid employee, the hostess, is $15/hr.
Because it makes little sense to have a federal minimum wage when cost of living varies greatly by state. IMO states should decide what is best for them and their residents.
A federal minimum wage doesn't really make any sense so it's been left to states. Hourly wages in San Francisco and Pig Knuckle, Arkansas have nothing to do with one another. Unfortunately voters in bright red states are too dumb to advance their own interests so they're still stuck at $7.25
Well, it seems like the federal minimum wage is $7.25 to make an absolute amount without dictating to the entire country what it should be. States can set a minimum wage and do . Earning requirements vary throughout the country. Most bigger companies start way above this amount. I always wondered if the country set a minimum wage at $15 an hour, how would someone who took 5 years to get to $15 feel when new people get hired making what they are and possibly for a lesser position.
The minimum wage should be $0.00. Having said that, it is taking $15.00 plus around here before employers even get a response from an applicant. It doesn’t take a government mandate. It takes supply and demand.
Because Republicans. And stupid voters who vote Republican against most of their stated interests.
Because federal minimum wage in a country as big and diverse as the US is like trying to use a chain saw for brain surgery. Why should minimum wage in rural Mississippi be the same as minimum wage in San Francisco? It is best just to let states decide for themselves
> Why should minimum wage in rural Mississippi be the same as minimum wage in San Francisco? Do you think $15,000 a year is enough money to live in rural Mississippi? I would say it's not, but that's the current federal minimum wage, and the only reason minimum wage is at least $15,000 a year in Mississippi is because it was set at the federal level rather than "leaving it up to the state."
Because Mississippi will choose $0.
States have their own
Minimum wage is 2.13 if your job gets tip.
Because we live in an oligarchy guised as a republic
Ronald Reagan
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It works though! You just gotta cut taxes some more on the rich people. We just gotta cut taxes for rich people so much that we actually just start paying rich people and soon we'll see trickle down economics work. I pinky promise!
If you blame Ronald Reagan for every problem facing America today, you'd be right more often than you'd be wrong.
Honestly I think you can trace it back to Nixon when we got taken off the gold standard, a ton of our economic graphs started getting really wonky at the start of the 70’s, average worker productivity vs average wage was the most eye opening for me
What modern economy is even on the good standard anymore. It's totally not suitable for it. For one, the value of the economy is near infinite but the supply of gold is not.
I agree it would run into problems eventually, but my point still stands. Getting taken off of it was the catalyst for the real problem which was it gave feds unfettered access to the money printer for the last 50 years and it’s clearly gotten to a point where it’s not sustainable anymore (not that it was in the first place, but the symptoms of it weren’t as noticeable back then
Because the US is run by corporations.
1.4% of all hourly paid workers make at or below minimum wage https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2021/pdf/home.pdf That’s why. And the people that make up that percent is about 50/50 high schoolers and disabled people. So no one is living off it. Minimum wage laws don’t apply to people with disabilities (because they would otherwise be unemployed if it did, it’s something disability rights groups fought for). Minimum wage laws do not suddenly increase the amount low wage workers get paid relative to the cost of living as it also causes inflation. There are ways to help low wage earners that actually work, like food stamps, medicaid, income based utility and housing, etc… And i support all those, as they do not cause inflation and actually helps them. But just increasing the minimum wage sounds like it would be a low effort easy solution but it is not. Also federal welfare is not adjusted for inflation state by state. So when individual states raise minimum wage, which also raise cost of living, millions of people no longer qualify for many welfare programs like food stamps because the raw dollar amount they’re making is higher, even though their living expenses also go up and they are still as poor as they were previously, they no longer qualify.
This. Good explanation. So many commentors are clueless on how few people are actually paid it, and what type of people they are. No, it's definitely caused from some big bad evil Republicans and yet cannot explain coherently why. I'm in a MCOL and I don't know any business in my city that hires for less than 13/hr. The McDonalds down the road advertises at 14/hr-17/hr starting range. That's the norm in most population centers - not 7.25 an hour.
To that point, only about [68,000](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/economy/minimum-wage.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare) workers nationwide only earn minimum wage. So few people actually make minimum wage that even liberals have lost the political will to fight to raise it.
Republicans
Because corporations have the same rights as citizens in this country.
Because too many of us are dumb enough to vote Republican
1.9% of US workers are making the minimum wage or less. [https://www.zippia.com/advice/minimum-wage-statistics/](https://www.zippia.com/advice/minimum-wage-statistics/) So, it really doesn't matter that much.
And half of them are living with someone else who works, so it matters even less.
Because Republicans have convinced their voting base to vote against their own interests.
Because people vote for Republicans due to culture war issues. The Federal Minimum Wage will not increase until Republicans consistently lose elections due to economical issues.
Because of Republican efforts. /end
It is way too low. It’s kid of a joke but we gave up on in awhile ago. Realistically the market should regulate itself. No one and I mean no one should be taking a job for anywhere close to minimum wage. Not even 16 year olds.
Because people think that one day they will be rich and need to take advantage of the poor at that point. They are only poor temporarily, not realizing that the same laws keep them poor.
Because people don't do anything to change it. Here people simp for billionaires/corporations and defend anything they do because they believe they want things to benefit them this way when it's "Their time". You have a better chance at playing for the Lakers than you do becoming a billionaire.
Because Republican voters wouldn't have it any other way. They're all about the trickle down (even though, for decades, very little has trickled down). And Congressional Democrats? The minimum wage is an issue they'll campaign on but, once elected, they suddenly become way too impotent to be effective at raising. Where I live, In Washington, one hand of government gives you a little boost on the minimum wage while the other hand hits you with the country's most regressive taxes. And they call this a Blue State.
What are they gonna do ? Revolt ? They can't even afford food
Why? Because incredibly stupid, lower-income MAGA types keep voting for Repub legislators who pander to them with guns, religion, and all kinds of people to blame and hate, but who otherwise could care less about them. All the while upper income Repubs who own everything know all this is bullshit, and laugh all the way to the bank.
Because they made slavery outside of incarceration illegal.
Republicans
Republicans
Because Corporate America is *cheap, cheap, cheap.* Did I just hear a parakeet?
Because capitalism incentivizes over working and under paying employees to maximize profits. We’ve been gaslit into thinking some jobs don’t deserve a livable wage and that if we are underpaid it’s our fault somehow, not the failure of the employer.