In US dollars per hour. Currently it's $7.25 nationwide, with the highest state level being $9.32 in Washington.

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50
2 votes
Jul 8, 2015

If the minimum wage was $0, which has the most votes, employers could pay people $0.01 an hour.

That's a whole $0.40 a week (before taxes) for someone who works the average 40 hours a week.

A bottle of Water costs about $.50-1.50.

As it is right now, most people can't even survive above the poverty line with a $7.25/h job.

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100
main reply
2 votes,
Jul 8, 2015

I think it's important that low income workers learn the value of their own labor, so that businesses actually have to compete for workers based on wage. Minimum wage is essentially a covert tax on unskilled labor, which results in outsourcing of menial manufacturing jobs, call centers, etc. I think removing minimum wage would have to come with a restructuring of welfare. For example, give everyone an allowance of say $5k, an income tax exemption up to the poverty line, and then a 40% or so marginal income tax beyond that. The idea is that if you're at or below the poverty line, you get 5k, if you earn up to 12.5k more than the poverty line you get less, and if you earn more than 12.5k over the poverty line you pay in. I think you'd have to increase some other taxes, or cut some other spending to pay for all of this, but it should allow for the removal of minimum wage without making things worse.

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50
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2 votes,
Jul 8, 2015

If they payed $0.01 an hour, then nobody would take that job.

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0
0 votes,
Jul 8, 2015

Then neither you nor your kids have been hungry enough. People will take a job if they have lost enough hope that better times are not coming. Businesses will prey upon these people because they can. Contrary to popular belief, businesses only do the right thing when that contributes to what they are paying their board members. Big businesses really do not care about their employees.

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0
0 votes,
Jul 8, 2015

It's almost impossible to get that poor in the US, welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, section 8, etc. Now I'm not saying you're going to eat high on the hog, nor am I saying that everyone takes advantage of the system, but if you're going to be poor be poor in the US.

Now say we do set the min. wage to $15, what about the people who already make $15 an hour, they will rightly say, we are worth more than min. wage, so their wages will go up, and so on and so on, and so the poor will be back in the same boat.

Might it not be better to upgrade their skills. Instead of leading protests, which does give you some air time, why not help people upgrade with skills, it's doesn't take that much, some childcare at a community center while the parents take classes online or take classes in a trade? So once they get a degree or finish a trade they can find better paying jobs. Of course that take hard work, and you don't get air time, so instead they want the "easy way" and protest.

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0
0 votes,
Jul 8, 2015

You are right about the social services part of this equation in the US at this time. Just remember though, that the same people who don't want a minimum wage also don't want any social services, or at least they don't want to pay taxes to support those services. They want to keep all of their wages for themselves, they want to eliminate any "handouts" to everyone and they just can't seem to understand why anyone who has a brain can't get a $60,000 a year job with full paid health insurance.

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0
User voted 15.
0 votes,
Jul 8, 2015

People get desperate, and eventually hungry. When things get bad enough and there is no other choice, they most certainly will work, and they work for a pittance. This is evidenced by every third world sweat shop in existence.
Here's a list of minimum and average wages around the world: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

Looks like in the Central African Republic they are paying .10 cents an hour, average work week is 52 hours.
Seems clear to me that people take whatever jobs they can get in order to survive.

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50
2 votes
Jul 8, 2015

$15/hour nationwide. Higher in cities like L.A., NYC, Chicago, etc... where the cost of living is higher. Bottom line, if you can't pay your employees a living wage you shouldn't be in business.

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0
User voted 24.
0 votes
Jul 8, 2015

The articles of corporation should also contain (in addition to the long forgotten "the corporation is granted as long as the corporation performs for the good of the people") as part of their contract that the corporation will pay 'x' amount of dollars (can be scaled to locale) per job description to it's employees (ALL it's employees, from CEO to third class floor sweeper person).

As you'll notice, or maybe you won't or will chose to ignore, the federal government (wage and labor) has already classified almost every occupation along with how much that occupation should make (this is an important scale when contracting for the federal government).

It seems to me that if the feds have gone to this much trouble, then it shouldn't be that much harder to include CEOs, and certain NON-contracted occupations into the list and make EVERYONE adhere to the guidelines.

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