Min Wage Hikes Hurting Business

I do now!

Yeah, we often try to figure out people who we know only as a screen name. Not an easy task.

Sarcasm genes dont exist and there is no evidence for them existing.

Hmmm. Interesting theory. What about sarcasm jeans? Sometimes I feel a little snarky when I’m wearing my favorite pair of off the rack Walmart blues. :thinking:

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There is an exception to the federal minimum wage for persons under 20 years old.

The Federal Minimum wage allows an employer to pay as little as $4.25 to persons under 20 years old in their first 90 days of employment. I think this exception is to solve the problem that you are pointing out: it allows teens to get experience and an employer to pay a lower rate during a probationary term while this unproven worker gains experience.

I honestly don’t know if this exception exists in Seattle. I don’t think it does. So your argument holds true for Seattle, but not everywhere.

https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/wages

In 2018 there were about 905,000 people over 25 years old getting paid $7.25 per hour or less.

Do you know what percentage of the people earning $7.25/hour or less are over 25?
52.9%

In other words, the majority of people earning $7.25/hour or less are over 25.

Do you have any stats that indicate that this is a temporary situation for the vast majority of 25+ year olds? It seems to me that if you are 26 years old or older and you still haven’t risen above $7.25/hour, it’s pretty likely that you are looking at a lifetime of low wage work.

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

Your link doesn’t dispute my point that only 1% of adult workers are earning minimum wage or less. In addition if you read far enough into it you will find this little fact.

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

The estimates of workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage are based solely on the hourly wage that respondents report (which does not include overtime pay, tips, or commissions). It should be noted that some respondents might round hourly earnings when answering survey questions. As a result, some workers might be reported as having hourly earnings above or below the federal minimum wage when, in fact, they earn the minimum wage.

So many waiters or bartenders would be counted as below minimum wage even if they were making far above it when you included their tips.

And then there is this.

from https://www.seattletimes.com/business/uw-study-finds-seattles-minimum-wage-is-costing-jobs/

The team concluded that the second jump had a far greater impact, boosting pay in low-wage jobs by about 3 percent since 2014 but also resulting in a 9 percent reduction in hours worked in such jobs. That resulted in a 6 percent drop in what employers collectively pay — and what workers earn — for those low-wage jobs.

I wasn’t trying to dispute your point about 1%. (Really, this conversation would be much easier if you weren’t so defensive.) I was highlighting the fact that a small percentage of a huge number is still a large number.

I also wanted to point out that the majority of people getting paid $7.25 per hour or less are over 25 years old. It is a common conservative talking point that low wage workers are mostly teens. They are not. (I am not accusing you of making this point. No need to point this out.)

It’s true that some of those 26-70 year olds getting paid $7.25 or less per hour are getting tips. Most people living on tips are servers in restaurants. That can be a good paying job for a few people, but it doesn’t have a lot of upward mobility. Slinging food for tips favors young, attractive, fit, and energetic people. Most of us don’t get younger, more attractive, more physically fit, and more energetic over time.

<Here is the part where you insert an anecdote about a 55 year old server who makes $100K or a story about a person who waited tables until she graduated from dental school in her 30s.> Those are exceptions. Most servers don’t make much money and most people waiting tables in their late 20s and 30s and beyond don’t quickly transition into high wage work.

Regarding Seattle workers: The truth is that at this point the impacts both positive and negative are moderate.

Studies indicate that low wage workers in Seattle fall into three categories: 1) workers who had experience and were working a lot of hours at the time the minimum wage started going up, 2) workers who had some experience but were working less hours than the first group at the time that the minimum wage increases went into effect and 3) workers with no experience.

The first group is earning more now than they were before. The second group is working fewer hours and making about the same. The third group (people with no experience) are the ones that are suffering. New low wage workers are not entering the workforce at the same rate as before. That group is earning less.

“There is a possibility here that we are seeing fewer people come into the low-wage workforce, not because there are a lot of people out there looking and not finding work, it’s also possible that there are a lot fewer people looking. It is really expensive to live in Seattle. And the number of people who are moving to Seattle thinking ‘I’ll just rent an apartment there and find a minimum wage job’ is probably low.”

“It’s really a question of values as to whether we consider this outcome to be good. For some people, the folks who are taking home more money as a consequence of this, they were the people we were trying to help. They were the people who had been in the low-wage work force for a long time. They are not necessarily upwardly mobile people. They are the people for whom these were dead-end jobs and we put more money in their pockets.”

“Some people might look at teenagers and other young people looking for first jobs and are having more difficulty and they might say to themselves ‘they are going to be OK in the end, because they are going to stay in school. They are going to get certificates and degrees and they are going to end up in a labor market that is much better than the minimum wage labor market.’”

I know that you want to declare the minimum wage increase in Seattle to be an utter failure, but the truth is that the measured impact is moderate so far and it’s still kind of early to determine if it helped the people that it was intended to help.

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Do you think that the Dem Politicians will heavily tax their rich Billionaire donors
also equally? You know, people like :honeybee::honeybee:Buzz Buzz Jeffrey from Amazon, and
Georgey Soros?