Agreed. No minimum at all is the best policy, but that’s politically nonviable. Next best would be allowing your municipality to set its own minimum at something more sane like $7 or $8/hr rather than having $15/hr mandated by the Feds. That $15/hr might be reasonable elsewhere, like NYC or DC for example, so those localities should be able to set the minimum at a level that makes sense there.
Agree totally
Our region is so different economincally from New York that we could be different planets.
economically
This country used to have no minimum wage - and people would work their whole lives with nothing but rented room & board to show for it. I don’t know what the right figure is (it might even be lower than the current minimum wage), but labor was organized in this country in response to business owners’ outright exploitation of workers. Along the NY/NJ border are several former mining settlements where people worked six and a half days per week, twelve hours per day, and when the mines closed many had to flee at night because they owed the company money for their rented shacks and the food with which they fed their families. Don’t believe we can’t go back to those days; in some fields we are already well on our way. The 40 hour workweek is increasingly becoming a thing of the past for more and more American workers; Uber and airbnb seem to be acknowledgment that car or home ownership are only possible if the “owners” share those assets...
This minimum wage debate wouldn’t even occur without the artificial standard of living afforded to those on public assistance; rather than trying to gauge the minimum value of an hour’s work it seems they are just trying to put the wages slightly higher than that of those that breed for a living.