The United States Federal Minimum Wage

It's by province I believe

 

I've only spent half a year making a "living" off of $8.25 an hour when I had first started college and it was egregious. I was scheduled for 5-15 hours my first month. Then I had 20-25 hours for a few months, then finally 35+ my last few months with the company. The pay off with less hours worked was more time for studying/socialising with friends. The downside was less pay on my paychecks.

It was extremely difficult trying to balance school and the need to work 35 hour minimums just to pay off my rent/phone/utilities/vehicle insurance/gasoline for the month, and if I was lucky I would still be able to afford nutritious food. Life was depressing, I would take classes from 9am-3pm M-F then work from 4:00pm-11:00pm Th-M. All I basically got to eat was McDonald's at the end of my shift everyday.

Additionally only one other coworker and myself were the only college-aged workers. Most were over 30 years old with at least 1 child to support, the other co worker had already graduated with a 4 year degree and was there while finding a real career. I was very lucky to have been given a shot at the the job. When you work minimum wage you realize it's not mostly high scool kids or college freshman looking for extra cash it's adults that need to support their families.

As far as raising the minimum wage I'm undecided but mostly leaning towards raising it. The downsides seem to be that it takes a toll on small businesses, and also that it directly correlates to high school dropout rates; HS kids see $15 an hour as a viable alternative to gaining a college education. The only way to prevent the 2nd dilemna is competition. If retail/fast food places offered $15 an hour it would persuade college grads to work for them while trying to find a real career path, in the meantime it will dissuade HS students because they are far less competitive.

Sorry if this is hard to read haha, haven't written or taken part in a debate/discussion in a while over text so it's tough to organize my thoughts

 

this is a tough topic, especially when raising the minimum wage can kill startups who're already in large amounts of debt as well as cause large companies to outsource jobs to countries where both labor costs and corporate taxes are low, and striking a balance that makes living on or around the minimum wage feasible while preserving our jobs that these companies provide. When it comes down to it, The main issue is that raising the minimum wage makes items produced in America more expensive for consumers and also creates a loss of jobs from when companies leave the US choose instead to ship their products from countries where they can benefit from lower labor costs and no tax on their goods crossing the border. I personally don't have a solution, if I did I would run for a seat in the house. However, some good ideas are fixing broken trade agreements, offering incentives to companies creating more skilled jobs, I.E. clean energy development and maintenance, ect. From a business perspective, I can't see how raising the minimum wage would solve anything. However, I have worked a 9$ an hour job and I can say for myself that I could not support even basic needs just on that alone. So, even though we may not have a great solution for us now, what I can say is invest in yourself. Take every opportunity for free education you get, I've gotten 60 free college credits using a state sponsored program (actually faster and cheaper than if I were to stay in high school). Learn your way around the stock market and long term investing, as it will not only help you in retirement but also to build up a massive nest egg if you're smart, patient, and willing to sacrifice things like living large on your salary.
Note: sorry if i went off topic and rambled a bit, I should probably sleep but That's a luxury

 

There's times where I just want to grab the biggest book I can find and smash it onto your face.

And I think that time is right now.

 

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. According to the United States Department of Labor only 3.3 millions people are payed the federal minimum wage(Less than .01% of the entire US population). Of those people, 15% of them are teenagers and young adults. That leaves around 528,000 people who are married, have kids, and/or are working full time that live off of the minimum wage. This doesn't even account for people who still live with their parents at a late age, are going through college still, have multiple jobs, flunked out of school, have mental disorders, or are simply too lazy to get a stable job. I know the argument was that people are getting payed above the minimum wage but only by a few dollars and are struggling to get by. Unfortunately there is not much info on how many people are getting payed at different hourly increments but I think it's unfair to say that the majority of people looking for jobs flipping burgers or ringing up your groceries are adults who have families to support.

 

Idk, but $11 Canadian is $8.40 American, not less than $7.25.

 

I think it's also unfair to say that most of them are teens or young adults, using your own data. 15% is not a majority, the other 85% must then be considered older than young adults. I was merely making a quick generalization while also trying to share my experiences, of the 18+ people I worked with most of them were over 30 and many of them had at least 1 child to support. Sure not all of them had a family to support, but it definitely wasn't a majority of teenagers and young adults. In fact teens couldn't compete with the adults that had 5+ years in the service industry or 4 year degree holders. They basically stood no chance getting into the minimum wage market with the competitive factors.

Too bad your data doesn't include the 40+ states that have minimum wages set higher than the fed due to cost of living increases, the data sample seems too small to make any precise assumptions. To anyone reading they may take "only 0.1% of the US is at federal minimum wage" to mean that 0.1% of the population is living off Federal or State minimum wage, which are going to be totally different numbers.

 

Undecided on minimum wage raise itself.
It's absolutely stupid to implement a more-than-double increase in minimum wages immediately. It must be done gradually, if at all.
I'd much rather see a system of minimum wage keeping up with inflation, adjusted yearly in December.

 

People trying to make careers out of burger flipping and washing floors.
Those are minimum wage because they're for kids in school working their way up.
NO career in the US pays minimum wage that requires effort.

Just my 2 cents

 

It's eleven loonies, and a quarter where I am.

 

I mean, effort is subjective, right?

Personally, I'm concerned that a) a sudden increase in the minimum wage would drive inflation; b) small businesses would see adverse effects, c) what's left of US heavy industry would be outsourced as manufacturing companies would hire cheap labor overseas; and d) as Deljikho said, there'd be a lesser incentive to pursue higher education.

I mean, would you want to get a biology major, be buried under $80k of student loans, and be working as a lab tech for $9.25 per hour, or work in unskilled labor/services for $9.00 per hour with no student loans?

However, I do realize that it's extraordinarily difficult to sustain oneself, let alone a family, off the minimum wage.

 

Meh, only to a certain degree, based off of what is extremely difficult for the individual (I don't put much effort into school, it comes easily, but I put a lot of effort into baseball, because it doesn't come as easily, but the same might be true in reverse for someone else.)

But getting an engineering degree or something similar is hard for just about everyone, and is probably more effort and more taxing mentally than working as a barista in Starbucks.

 

If u raise the min wage... U will make it harder for people to get jobs because the Businesses will not be able to afford employees, ppl will end up losing their jobs

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 23, 2016, Original Post Date: Oct 21, 2016 ---

As it it with the 9$ min wage it took me forever to get a decent job. Lots of the places around have cut a lot of workers out, or moved to a different location.