“ends up costing the individual more”
Just because Lazy Larry won’t justify getting paid $10/hour doesn’t mean leaving the fate of 10 million people to the mindset of businesspeople who all get the idea from a leading business journal to pay low-skilled labor no more than $5/hour.
It’s not your beliefs that matter, it’s not your business’s cash flow that matters, it’s not Lazy Larry’s lifestyle that matters, it is the mathematics of federal cash flow that matters.
On Biden’s ballfield, every game will have to be played by his rules. Would you like to help set those rules?
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.