Posted on 02/11/2021 12:34:59 PM PST by Brian Griffin
The scheme would most importantly take local housing costs and employer & employee status into account.
The basic housing cost factor would be the square root of the pre-Covid 2019 HUD fair market rent of a one-bedroom apartment in the zip code area of the employee's most common work site divided by 10, rounded.
Typical HUD fair market rents might be around $1,200/month in much of America, $2,000/month in some big cities and $3,000/month in prime SF Bay areas.
The basic housing cost factors for those amounts would be $10.95, $14.14 and $17.32, respectively.
To compute the base minimum wage, the basic housing cost factors would be adjusted for CPI inflation since January 2019 and then rounded up to the next dollar.
People would have to work somewhat more hours to cover their big city rent. The big city rents are higher for many reasons, such as better lifestyle attractions, commute time value and long-term income growth opportunities.
Some smart aleck might say four weeks of 40-hour $18/hour work won't cover $3,000/month SF rent. I would first say share a place or take the BART to & from Richmond, CA. I would then say high SF & NYC rents have fallen.
With 160 work hours a month, people might gross $1,760 in a small town and $2,400 in a big city, or about $560 and $400 a month above typical rents, at a minimum. That may not seem much, but most people start their first job while living with family and then develop skills and experience that command a premium above the minimum wage.
In 2024, after say 10% inflation, the base minimum wages would be $13/hour, $16/hour and $20/hour, respectively.
The employer status factors might be:
A. $1/hour off for unincorporated/Chapter S unaffiliated[i.e. not a franchise] businesses and persons,
B. $1/hour off if such businesses/persons operate from just one location(excluding equipment/supply storage),
C. $1/hour off if such businesses/persons had no other direct employees except the substantive owner(s) during the same employer standardized hired employee pay period.
The employee status factors might be:
A. $1/hour off if the employee claimed to be unemployed on his/her written job application,
B. $1/hour off if the employee claimed to be under age 18 on his/her written job application,
C. $1/hour off if the employee claimed to have a criminal/drug court record on his/her written job application.
These factors allow for a quite appropriate amount of targeted wage flexibility in the labor market.
The maximum reduction for any employee would be $3/hour.
A small business in a modest housing cost locale might be able to get help for $10/hour($13/hour less three $1/hour discounts).
I'm sure many of you would say this is too complicated. However, one basic rule coupled with an inflation adjustment and six employer optional exceptions is actually quite a simple system. It has been my lifelong experience that employers will readily go through a great amount of effort to pay most employees as little as possible.
In practice the federal Department of Labor would compute the base minimum wages annually by zip code and small employers would check the DoL website annually for their most expensive zip code place of business (or listen to their fellow employers kvetch). Status factor application would be an employer option.
There are many of you that object to a federal minimum wage. However, federal minimum wages are necessary when the federal government subsidizes rents to below $300/month for many millions of people. Refugees are entitled to full welfare benefits by treaty.
If there was no federal minimum wage, many employers would simply collect job applications until they find a federally subsidized person (or some older mortgage-free homeowner) who could afford to work for say $6/hour. The federal welfare system, which is not going away in my lifetime, badly corrupts the job market.
Many of you might say having a federal minimum wage costs jobs. It does, but not as much as supposed since the services provided by low wage workers, such as fast food preparation and shelf stocking, are often highly desirable and avoid the need for impossibly high capital investment. Moreover, if a college student misses out on a $6/hour job, he can borrow tuition money and pay the borrowed money back when he gets a $50,000/year job after graduation. The student who misses out on a job will have more time to study and may even have his educational debt wiped clean by vote-buying politicians.
It should be understood that a federal minimum wage also increases the ready availability of quality labor by making jobs more financially attractive to workers and by greatly reducing the number of job applications a person has to fill out to get a job since employer fishing for $6/hour labor is outlawed.
I suspect that the federal government should set federal minimum wages with the goal of minimizing federal welfare costs.
Bear in mind, President Joe Biden would gladly sign a 'historic' nationwide federal $15/hour minimum wage bill into law. The average federal employee salary in Washington, DC was about $108,000/year a few years ago. To Nancy, Chuck and Joe, $15/hour is chump change.
I would suggest that a revised federal minimum wage law not go into effect until January 1, 2022 because the small businesses that remain need to recover from Covid restrictions and massive amounts of Covid financial "relief" are still being handed out to individuals.
If you add $10/hour of value, what should your wage be?
If you add $10/hour of value, with a $15 minimum wage, how is your ability to get on the employment ladder "much easier?
I don’t see where your reply addressed my post. With the exception of arguing it’s only federal cash flow that matters.
Which goes back to my point - What does local govt do when wages go up? They raise taxes. Taxes hidden in increases in rent, food and services. As landlords and vendors see increases in property taxes and utility rates (county cash flow) and pass those on through increases of their own. WHich hurt the poor.
Raising wages en masse is hunky dorey only when every other cost stays the same. Raising wages arbitrarily results in an increase in govt control on all levels, driven by increases in direct and hidden taxes levied against that ‘increased paycheck’ which, in reality, hasn’t been increased at all because the individual’s purchase power is devalued. Creating more poor.
Our poverty rate is about 10%, lowest since pre-ww2. Of that a majority will never rise above because of mental or physical hinderances. The disabled person on $1000 a month disability isn’t going to make any other income. If we’re going to be smart about poverty, instead of putting more people deeper in poverty by doubling the minimum wage, it would make better fiscal sense to directly address the 10 million or so who are in poverty but do have the ability to bootstrap, and set a bootstrap path for them. While at the same time, increasing social security disability by 50% to $1500 or even doubling it, offset by decreases in the military ‘in theatre’ budget (since we’re no longer fighting foreign wars thanks to Trump). Which is obviously not Biden’s plan.
Many persons who are working still get Section 8 housing-—You need to factor that into the calculations here.
Wow, this is really funny. You are lamenting the loss of a measly million jobs (doubtful as that is) for political reason but where were the Republicans over the past 2 decades while MILLION of IT jobs were given away to foreign nationals via H-1B. Republican were AWAOL and are hypocrites. Very unchristian.
Since you brought up IT: there is a shortage of qualified workers at the moment. The good ones are commanding sky-high salaries, and the pool of lousy applicants is a mile deep.
I may have implied something magical about $15 but there is no floor price. It is your labor and time and it is up to you to set the exchange rate.
It is completely unethical to use compulsion to prevent someone from working - at any price - if they agree voluntarily to do the work.
Would it surprise you to know that I run a midcap software company on the West Coast? Some of us farmboys end up in the C-suites, you know...of course, you’d have no idea, since you have no idea how businesses run.
You are why the GOP is dead.
...and you’re the reason they have to put instructions on shampoo bottles.
Praying that Trumps starts a new party.
If you’re a great developer, you can have a job tomorrow at a great salary. If you are a good developer, you can have a job in a month at a good salary. If you’re a lousy developer? Well, I guess you’ll just whine and post on FR about how you were “shafted by globalist sellouts...”
Define "great" salary. LOL..
Depends on the skill set. For C++, $190k to start. If you have embedded and kernel, it’s more. Agile required and a signing bonus + reloc are typical. Top candidates would go for a premium over this, obviously.
I have no problem with the rising cost that might occur by raising the minimum wage. The end of the day, I think it’ll be a mere fraction of what you suggest, probably not even noticeable overall. Because most credible employers already pay decent wages. We’re only talking about the lowballing bottom feeders that don’t like to pay livable wages.
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