California Dem Barbara Lee defends call for $50 federal minimum wage: 'Just barely enough'
Rep. Barbara Lee, who is running for US Senate, wants to significantly boost the amount minimum wage workers nationwide are paid.
Makes sense, cause by the time it gets through, $50/hr would be about right.
Needs to be pinned to the cost of living, and raised annually.
My wife and I make about that each and we're very comfortable. Just 15 years ago I was living out of my car and now I'm at a point where money is barely an issue. Everyone should have this level of security. Scraping by I was having constant panic attacks about not having enough money to meet my basic needs.
Glad to hear you were able to make it out!
If conservatives (little "c") want to go back to a time when people could buy a house and support a family of four on a single income, this is the only way to get there.
Critical that it is tied to inflation. Otherwise the system will just rebalance via price to protect profits. That has to be stopped. They have to give all of us a larger share.
Needs to be pinned to local cost of living, defined at the federal level and applied to each state individually.
This would then enable the state legislature to fight for the state with the lowest minimum wage by combatting the rent seekers who cause high costs of living.
This is taking the comment out of context, she said the federal minimum wage should be as high as $50 for places like the Bay area, she then went on to say that the national minimum wage should be raised to $20-25 based on affordability but that she's chiefly concerned with California.
Oh wait, you mean these dirt bags make shit headlines to impact good people? Normal people would call it deformation, but not today. Today it is called political strategy
Edit: Sorry that was to offensive. Fuck them, fuck anyone who voted against the people and fuck everyone in government who allows this shit. I mean everyone. Every seat in Congress and the Senate has been jeopardized. They all need to be gone as soon as possible. A vote....sure. is it soon enough, no. If you are Republican you support what is happening at the border (cowards) if you are democratic you support not drawing up bills that will fix immigration because they bent over backward to support that shit.
Immigration increases taxes and money and will support our fucking economy. The Republicans are fucking idiots and the democrats are adopting to be so. It is unacceptable.yes Biden will need to win the presidency and thats fine. He doesn't make the fucking laws. He doesnt make the laws. Shit. The president doesn't even enforce them, the states police do. Yes I'm upset, sorry. Bad Day
About time some Democrats start developing the awareness that they'll have to aim above their target if they want to hit it instead of consistently missing or failing to take the shot.
First I want to put out that Lee is basing her argument in data, something her detractors in the article are not doing.
If minimum wage had kept up with CEO compensation, the minimum wage in today dollars would be ~$130.
So Lee is striking a mid point between those two values. This seems reasonable.
I propose that we decide on some ratio of CEO compensation to minimum wage at a given company (say, 100x), and any company in violation of this has their profits taxed at 100% and redistributed to their employees.
I like the 12 to 1 rule. CEOs can't make more in one month than their lowest paid employee makes in a year. If you want to make more than that then raise the standard for everyone.
Ask for the whole pie and you're guaranteed a slice.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas., laughed at the suggestion, writing on social media Tuesday “why not $500 per hour?”
Assuming he actually worked 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, Senator Cruz's pay rate, as set by federal law, amounts to around $87 per hour. We know that he doesn't actually do that much work, so it's actually going to be much higher.
He also gets financial compensation from other other sources, so his actual per hour compensation is effectively much higher.
Yeah he's getting way more than just 87/hr from his position.
$50 is decent. It's a living wage. It is not exorbitant and there's plenty of incentive for workers aiming higher.
One of my most hated "arguments" is the notion that "well, I'm an experienced worker and I've only made $15/hr forever. Therefore I will actively fight against raising wages because my wages were always low". What self-defeating bullshit. If the minimum wage had been indexed to anything having to do with cost of living for the last half century, $50 would be about right.
Cries at current $7.25 minimum wage.
Those tears are telling you something. Like maybe unionize, or maybe move. At least do enough math to decide if you'd be better off elsewhere. We appreciate you and want you to be properly recompensed for your work.
Median price of a home in California (as of December 2023): $754,900.
It's as likely as any other national minimum wage hike.
I'm on board with people across the board making more money, but $50/hr everywhere in the US seems unrealistic.
Where I live (Midwest) that would put you in a very high percentile income bracket. But in much higher cost of living areas it's probably still barely enough to get by.
I feel like minimum wage should be adjusted by cost of living.
US civil servants' salary is broken into 2 numbers: Base Rate and Locality Rate. The first is based on their grade and time in grade. The second is wholly based on where their job is and is a percentage of the base rate. It goes from ~16% base to in the 30s%. It drastically needs to be more granular and updated in a lot of locations but this could work for a lot of jobs.
Then federal minimum wage sets the base rate and states and localities set Locality rate. States and cities could even use this to incentivize workers to move there at the cost of wages increasing across the board.
That seems like a much more sensible (and realistic) approach to me.
That's what she was saying, everyone is taking her out of context. She was saying the federal minimum wage should be as high as $50 in places like the Bay area, she then went on to say that the national wage should be brought up to ~$20-25 and base it on affordability.
This would also be for federal employees, not state level minimum wage. So postal workers, military bases, etc. Maybe state and local government? I'm not sure if those count as federal positions or not tbh
Then they'll only hire people from low cost areas. It'll be the next suburban exodus, except to rural instead
I don't think so. I mean, theoretically I see how that might apply to a small number of remote workers, but the vast majority of minimum wage workers (and many hourly workers) are in jobs that require a physical presence at the workplace.
God damn, I've never been paid anything close to $50 an hour.
I mean, most low paying jobs are also part time, so I don’t necessarily disagree. Make it $50/hour, would be an interesting experiment.
