While some may be surprised that I do not support it, it is for other reasons. It should be $18-20 an hour and it should take affect within two years with four 6-month steps. There should also be an automatic inflationary COLA every year.
If they pass a Federal $15 an hour minimum wage, it won’t take fully affect until 2025. What’s the point?!
There is also a lot of misinformation out there about how this will kill businesses and cause mass unemployment. Not the case, when states have raised their minimum wages they did see an initial hike in unemployment, but in low wage jobs, after a year they actually saw economic growth and the GDP in the state rising. Believe it or not, when you pay people more, they spend more, and it helps the economy. What an amazing concept!
You also need to understand that this only affects large businesses who participate in interstate and international commerce. Like Walmart or Amazon. Ma an Pa’s Ice Cream Parlor in Bumf’ck Indiana won’t have to pay those wages.
And now for the obvious reasons this is the right thing to do. The large corporations who can afford an $18 an hour minimum wage, CAN AFFORD THE WAGE. They make Billions while paying very little Federal income taxes then turnaround and expect the very taxpayers who do pay their taxes (us) to subsidize their low-wage workers in the form of Medicade, SNAP and and housing. It was once estimated that because of the low wages Walmart pays its workers, EACH store costs taxpayers $1 million a year in worker subsidies. Why not just pay workers a living wage?
The upside is a boon in economic growth because instead of the top 1% sitting on all the wealth in our country, the workers would be spending it!
I guess I have never understood the argument that we need to starve workers while the top 1% sit on loads of money they will never be able to spend. It’s NOT a socialistic concept, it’s just good economics.
McDonald’s workers in Denmark get paid $22 per hour and vacation time, why not here?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/us-denmark-economy.html
Over twenty years ago, my wife managed a fast food restaurant in this town. Twenty years ago, she paid her entry level workers $10 a hour, which was a good fast food wage back then, while most then made $6 a hour at other fast food places at the time. And guess what happen, too, she got better workers, they were retained, and thus offered better service. My wife used to always win bonuses as a manager, too, except she never got the labor bonus because her labor costs were higher than other stores within the company, but its fair to say the higher wages made the other bonuses possible, and thus, success for her store and her own pocketbook.
There should be a minimum wage increase. However, it must be initiated with the Biden stimulus package. There are lots of unemployed who will work now for less. It’s not a livable wage but it can get food on the table. Once there’s economic improvement and signs of the pandemic end, then focus on wage improvement. Then, $15 is not enough. How about $18.
There are gas stations hiring at 14 bux an hour out here in Rapid City, GAS STATIONS! Yeah 15 seems light.
Ah, yes, make it even MORE harder for those with little to no work experience to be employable because employers won’t see them worth the inflated wage. Also wonderful idea to increase the cost of living while also wanting to reduce employees hours to make up for loss of profit. Brilliant plan.
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Erica,
The ‘Brilliant plan’ worked for Henry Ford.
I agree with you, but someone making less than $15 would be happy to get a bump up.
IS CONSTITUTIONAL FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO ENFORCE MINIMUM WAGE LAWS – all federal statutes, codes, and regulations are created to govern only the territory of the District of Columbia, and any incorporated territory owned or witin the jurisdictional boundaries of that ‘territory’.
Examples of this “territory” would be the District of Columbia itself, any Foreign Held Territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, Federal U.S Military Bases; and any Federal Enclaves of the Federal Government itself such as Federal Court Buildings, Administration Buildings (I.R.S, Social Security, Medicare, Post Offices, etc), National Parks, Nature Reserves, Federal Employment Staff.
Anywhere outside that jurisdiction, is up to the “people” of each State Republic to govern ‘wages’ as they wish, unless a “State” passes a minimum law to govern any form of ’employment’ within their borders, there can be no minimum wage enforced on anyone.
Meaning, if you are not doing business anywhere within the boundaries of the District of Columbia, or are contracted to do business with that government anywhere thru out the United States and the 50 States respectively, you are not forced to pay the Federal Minimum Wage.
So long as you partake in business activities inside your State, and there are no federal contracts involved in hiring those employees, you are entitled to pay any select wage you wish for, below or above the federal requirement established by statute.
The State’s themselves can pass their own minimum wage laws as they pertain to commercialized activity doing business inside State. This is done by the people either directly thru petition drives, or indirectly thru their legislators to pass statutes.
Constitutionally, minimum wage statutes are only designed for government workers, or more commonly referred to as “public employees” of the government itself.
In fact;
In order for the “government” whether the Federal, State, or Local Entities to contract to, or employ an individual, they had to no less guarantee that worker a minimum set of compensation (wages).
Anyone whom is ‘exempt’ from this statute would be anyone not contracted to work for the government(s), or employed by those governments (i.e private sector of individuals).
The problem, over the past 75 years, beginning in the 1930’s – the government(s) have made it so you have to get a “license” in order to do business within the Federal or State jurisdictions of doing business, so you are now hereby ‘agreeing’ to act as contracted individuals to that government.
That government based on that license, and all the codes, and regulations that go with governing that license, can now control your place of business, thus obligating you to a minimum set of rules, codes, regulations.
As per the South Dakota Codified Statutes –
S.D.C.L 20-1-1. Obligation defined. An obligation is a legal duty by which a person is bound to do or not to do a certain thing.
So, by those license, permits, codes; they trap you to do a specific thing or duty within the jurisdiction of their control.
And that brings us back to the Federal or State Minimum Wage requirements, only those whom are exempt from that jurisdiction is ‘free’ from those controls;
The Definition of the word Exempt is – free from an obligation or liability imposed on others.
If you are freely acting outside that jurisdiction, or boundary, you are free to pay anyone whatever ‘wage’ you wish to pay them.
Examples of showing your legal status, is anyone not residing in that jurisdiction is anyone whom hold a ‘land patent’ that codifies a specific surveyed boundary of land to be your own territory, where you are free to own the land free from taxation, free to make your own rules, and are the king or queen of that domain.
The most commonly of these examples today are Native American Reservations, legally referred to as “Sovereign Territories”, where they can act outside the State’s jurisdiction, but federally protected by by federal statutes.
Most of the lands in South Dakota were granted to Americans by the a) the 1862 Homestead Act; or b) were granted to Native Americans, allowing them to build homes, till the land, and prosper from the land as they wish. They were “exempted” from any Federal or State statutes, codes, or regulations, any activity within those boundaries, they were free to govern their properties as they wished free from any federal or state taxation, code, regulation.
Whereas you now begin to go beyond those boundaries, doing commercial activity outside those boundaries, and into the jurisdiction of the Federal or State jurisdictions – you are not governed by the Statutes of those areas, meaning you are to obtain a license, permit to partake in such activity to employ anyone outside that ‘box’ – meaning by obligations, by contract, you now must pay the Federal or State minimum wage, collect a tax, or let alone abide by the regulations of doing business in that territory.
This is how our minimum wage laws work, they are solely dependent on how you ‘obligate’ yourself to that government, let alone conducting yourself in any territories fully controlled by that government(s).
Under our ‘statutes’ today, the term “employee” is any individual whom contracts to work for the government, or any commercial entity contracted to do business inside the jurisdictional controls of that government.
License, Permits, those W-4’s, W-9’s, Corporate Documents are all forms of “obligated commercial instruments” that obligate you to such rules, codes, regulations thereof.
That is how the Federal or State Minimum Wage laws can be enforced, and now you know how to ‘exempt’ yourself from such laws.
Can you force anyone to pay you a select minimum wage? The constitutional answer is…No you cannot. But you can obligate yourself to participate within the commercial jurisdiction of the Federal or State Governmental boundaries by contracting yourself to them.
When you understand this, you now begin to fully understand what was really going on during the arguments that may have led to the Civil War…
Do we want to be a “regulated economy of free americans” or do we want to support a free capitalistic economic where ‘we’ are free from government controls?
The old age argument over Minimum Wage Laws can be a very complex one, depending on how you choose to reside right here within the United States of America.
Do we choose to be truly free, or do we wish to live in a statist form of governing our private source of daily activities today. Do we want governments to regulate our labor, or do we wish to tell that government that our labor is our own property, and we wish to govern it as we so wish.
Government has no constitutional basis of controlling your labor, your labor is ‘exempt’ from their controls, but it now becomes “you” who today has allowed yourself to give up that exemption, by obligating yourself to those rules, codes, taxes, regulations.
The very basis of a Federal and State Minimum Wage is well grounded in the processes of ‘controlling ones labor’ for the benefit of specific group of people or territory.
– Mike Zitterich