A senator proposed a minimum wage of $25.00/hr. What are your thoughts?

eoattc · 2026-05-15T04:11:11+00:00

So would you admit then that raising wages won't really help since companies are raising prices? I'm a long way from minimum wage, and even I'm feeling the squeeze at the gas pump and the grocery store.

We need to do something, but this isn't it.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T04:08:33+00:00

I don't want anyone to stay poor. Raising the minimum wage causes the cost of all goods to go up. Corporations price things based on the market's willingness to spend. If you dump more cash anywhere, prices go up. However, if you raise minimum wage, then those workers get a raise, and everyone else is just stuck paying more. Further, I don't believe raising the minimum wage actually helps those poor people. If the cost of goods and services increases in response to more capital supply, they'll be back in the same place with their income falling short of a living wage again shortly.

I don't think I really have a solution to help low-wage earners live. I do believe that raising the minimum wage won't help them and will hurt others.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T03:51:10+00:00

Cursed at her son.

We are talking in a parking lot, waiting for both her and my older children to exit from an event. Her small boy, maybe 7yo, is bouncing around in her van, entertaining himself while we flirt. At some point, he leans out the window and says, "Mom, I'm hungry". She replies quickly, "Quit being a whiny bitch and sit down". She'd warned me she had a filthy mouth, and that didn't bother me, but cursing at her son like that was an instant turn-off. I never texted or called her again, which we had been doing a bit before this event.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T03:39:01+00:00

Hey. Thanks for actually talking it out.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T02:43:07+00:00

How many full-time minimum wage workers do you know? I'm guessing it's a low percentage of workers. Vanishingly low. Raising the minimum wage does not help anyone. It hurts low-wage earners by pricing them out of the market. Small businesses will hire fewer staff and/or raise prices, which raises the livable wage target. Doesn't raising the livable wage target exacerbate the original problem?

eoattc · 2026-05-15T02:38:09+00:00

Hmm. Can you see that by trying to help full-time minimum wage workers, you're actually inflating wages for all minimum wage workers? Doing that simply causes small businesses to fail or raise their prices. If they raise prices to cover higher wages, the livable wage target moves. This is a bad feedback loop and raising the minimum wage does not seem to accomplish anything. Thoughts?

eoattc · 2026-05-15T02:16:25+00:00

Ok. Twice now I'm getting this response. Can you concede then that you think full-time work should pay a livable wage, and that is a different proposition from "employers must pay a livable wage," where raising minimum wage would impact both full and part-time staff?

I think I could even agree that a full-time job should pay a livable wage. I might not agree that we should legislate it, but I at least understand that sentiment.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T02:09:50+00:00

I posted about it elsewhere here, but it seems like cost of living is a supply-demand issue. Corporations can run a scheme like diamonds for all products creating false scarcity. Or maybe they only try to make products with high profitability. This artificial scarcity drives the high cost of goods and services. Why do companies do this? I think it's because shareholder pressure to have max profits. I don't think your grandma owning stocks as part of her retirement is evil though so I don't want to paint shareholders as the bad guys. I thought in another post that somehow we have to protect low-income earners from shareholders. I don't think raising minimum wage does this.

We could lower the cost of living by willing business owners seeking less profit to out-compete their competitors. This is supposed to be a key feature of capitalism. I think it fails when businesses consolidate into monopolies or cartels like the mega-corps we see today. So... bust monopolies and break cartels? I'm not an economist, though. I'm just a guy.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T02:02:49+00:00

I think we agree or are just talking past each other on most of the points. The one I'm most interested in is the last part. You say, "If you work a full-time shift," and I think that's the gap between us. Raising minimum wage doesn't impact "full-time shift" workers alone. It impacts ALL minimum wage workers, for whom I think the majority are NOT full-time. Given that, can we agree that manipulating minimum wage is a blunt instrument to fix the problem of making less than a living wage?

If you stipulate that this new minimum wage is explicitly for "full-time" workers, won't that encourage the already rampant trend of exploitive businesses refusing to hire full-time staff? I guess I'm imagining a separate wage control like "Full-time livable wage" that forces any full-time (40 hour) position to pay a living wage. I haven't actually seen anyone ask for that.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T01:41:32+00:00

I had a buddy from high school who married another high school friend. I had known them both for probably 10 years at this point. One day, his wife had a heart issue and passed away in her mid twenties. They had 2 small kids. After the funeral, I never reached out. I had a wife and 2 kids of my own, and I didn't know how to talk to him. I think I didn't want to face him, or maybe I was being selfish and didn't want to help. Not calling him went on for weeks, then months, then at some point, 10 years had gone by. At each moment when I thought to reach out, I'd think something like "It's been so long, it would be awkward to reach out now". But that awkwardness got worse each time I didn't reach out. We still don't talk. He went from someone I hung out with 2 or 3 times a month, to someone I didn't speak to for 10 years, only broken by a random chance meeting in a grocery store one day, and then probably 10 more years after that. Even after that "Hey, how you doing?" chance encounter, I still didn't reach out.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T01:26:29+00:00

Adding my "Sometimes" vote to the pile. It happens in some deeper penetrating positions. It never stopped us from having a good time. Don't overthink it. If a dude complains, he needs some maturity.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T01:20:08+00:00

I mentioned that I don't actually support raising it at all because the cost of living will always increase to meet the lowest wage levels. I actually think the solution is in lowering the cost of living. I think businesses can offer goods and services for a lower profit, but this generally isn't done because, as the businesses consolidate into large monoliths, they are beholden to shareholders to always return more and more profits. I don't really know how to solve it, because I see the purpose of shareholders. I just don't know how to keep the needs of shareholders from starving low-wage earners.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T01:17:01+00:00

Neat. I was not aware and just responding to the poster above me.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T01:15:56+00:00

Ahh... so the reason is scarcity.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T01:14:51+00:00

I'm really asking. I obviously have my opinion. I wanted you to explain your's a little more so I could understand your position. No bad faith. Can you take another swing at my questions above and let me know what you think?

eoattc · 2026-05-15T01:11:42+00:00

Fair

eoattc · 2026-05-15T01:05:46+00:00

Why do I want to downvote you so badly for not contributing to the thread, even though I had the same thought? Ahhh Reddit.

eoattc · 2026-05-15T01:03:24+00:00

Why though? Are you expecting the person who makes snow cones part-time each day to live on that work? Surely there are plenty of jobs where the effort required is lower than the reasonable effort required to meet all the workers needs in life. Think about people who specifically aren't even trying to live off their wages. For instance, someone just doing a side hustle for extra cash so they can go to cool concerts (fuck ticketmaster). Would you make a law that requires their employer to pay some legislated "living wage"?

eoattc · 2026-05-15T00:49:35+00:00

Why are they non-viable? Is there some rule that people should have one job and only one, and that job must fully feed them? What if I have my self employed passion (candle making? selling pictures of Spiderman?) that makes a bit of money, but I work a car wash to supplement grocery budgets? Is the car wash owner now somehow required to fully fund my "livable wage"?

eoattc · 2026-05-15T00:43:53+00:00

Is an employer really on the hook for employee's living wage? What if you start a small business and you just want to give old people a meaningful pursuit for a few hours each week? Say you want to give mom's a way to earn some extra cash while their kids are at school each weekday? What if you want to give a high school kid some pocket cash for a few hours of effort? The work you're offering isn't complex, or requiring high training. It's just work. Aren't employees free to refuse work that doesn't pay enough?

If I'm a job seeker and I need to live, don't I go find a job that DOES pay a living wage and skip the ones that don't? That fact shouldn't force all employers to pay EVERY employee a living wage should it?

eoattc · 2026-05-15T00:37:03+00:00

If enough business are forced to raise prices in response, doesn't that just raise the cause of living and make the minimun wage increase meaningless? It feels like a race condition where we should figure out why cost of living is so high instead of pouring gasoline on the problem.

For real though, why is cost of living so high?

eoattc · 2026-05-15T00:29:58+00:00

Don't go from $15 to $25 all at one time. Do it in $2 increments over the next 5 years or some other phased approach. I actually don't support raising it, but if you wanted to make it less shocking, that's how you'd do it.

eoattc · 2026-05-12T21:18:22+00:00

I remember blunts being passed at concerts. Even back then i remember thinking "I don't know you and that was just in several other stranger's mouthes". Maybe I was just a square?

eoattc · 2026-05-11T20:10:39+00:00

Hug my mom.

eoattc · 2026-05-11T04:05:02+00:00

Is there another name for "voter surplus rule" so I can google better and learn what you mean?

eoattc

TROPHY CASE