Alt Left: That $15/Hour Minimum Wage

The Democrats are trying to push a bill that will raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour. This is part of the Push for Fifteen movement sponsored by labor and the Left in general, especially the Bernie Sanders crowd.

This is part of the Democrats’ $1.9 billion COVID relief package. I generally support this, and the $1,400 is certainly much needed, especially around these parts, as in, my humble abode.

However, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, the  two most conservative Democrats in the Senate, vow to oppose the $15/hour minimum wage. Well, good for them! See? Here I am, rooting for the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. I think that shows more than anything else how insane and extreme the modern Democratic Party is on so many issues. I never support conservative Democrats on anything!

Manchin somehow always manages to get re-elected in a state that Trump won by 39 points in 2016 and 29 points this time around. But West Virginia has a long tradition of electing conservative Democrats. Remember Robert Byrd? Sinema managed to win in purple Arizona, long a very conservative state, home of Barry Goldwater after all. She probably won by billing  herself as a conservative Democrat. Just to show you that conservatives are as woke as liberals nowadays, Sinema is openly bisexual. The Culture War is over. The Left won. Time to pull down the flag and go home, social conservatives.

Manchin and Sinema are proposing an $11/hour minimum wage. Well that lifts families of one and two persons out of poverty at least. It leaves families of three $1,000 short and families of four $4,500 short. I don’t mind this compromise. I’d prefer $12/hour, but I will settle for $11. Anything’s better than $7.25/hour.

Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton (Tom Cotton! He’s one the most rightwing people in the Senate!) are proposing a slow increase in  the minimum wage to $10/hour in 2025. I guess it raises at ~60 cents an hour. That seems awful meager.

And it’s also linked to E-Verify, and mandates all employers to use it. I believe it submits the worker’s Social Security # if he even has one and sees if they are eligible to work in the US.

You realize that illegal aliens engage in mass identity theft of other people’s social security #’s, right? You all think that’s ok? Why is that ok? How would you like it if some crook who sneaked into your country illegal was using your SS# to steal a job from an American citizen or legal immigrant.

This E-Verify is utterly reasonable. How this is unreasonable is beyond me. Insanely, the ACLU went to court to put an injunction on E-Verify at the federal level, apparently because it messes up sometimes. Oh, my God! Something doesn’t work right all the time! So let’s throw it out and never use it!  Try applying that to every object you own and see how that works.

I completely support full implementation of E-Verify at the federal level. Maybe then we can get a lot of these damned illegals to self-deport.

For some insane reason, the Democratic Party is opposed to E-Verify! Why?! Do illegal aliens automatically have a right to work in this country? No other country on Earth allows such nonsense. Go to any country on Earth and try to work if you’re not a citizen or a legal immigrant. Good luck with that. But we are America, and the whole damn world has a right to sneak in here anytime they want!

Biden also opposes E-Verify. Why, for God’s sake? What in the Hell is their reason? What good reason is there to oppose such a completely reasonable measure?

The present minimum wage is way too low. It’s $ 7.25/hour. It’s been stuck there since 2009. Obviously it needs raising. Question is by how much. It is stated that the present minimum wage is not a living wage. I haven’t the faintest idea what a living wage even means. What in the Hell does that mean?

$7.25/hour definitely puts a single worker above the poverty line. That’s all I think the minimum wage should do. Poverty level is ~$13,000/year for one person. Try living on that sometime. Good luck!

Family of two? $17,420. With the present federal minimum wage, a family of two would live in poverty. That’s not ok. You would need a minimum wage of $9/hour to lift that family out of poverty.

Family of three? $23,000. Well, you would need a minimum wage of $11.75/hour to lift them out of poverty.

Family of four? $26,500. You need a minimum wage of $13.50 to raise that family out of poverty.

What is the purpose of a minimum wage? If it is to keep one person out of poverty, the present wage is fine. If it is to keep a family of two out of poverty, we need to go up to $9/hour. If it is to keep a family of three out of poverty, we need a minimum wage of $11.75/hour to raise them out of poverty. Is it to raise a family of four out of poverty? Then we need to raise it to $13.50/hour.

We can also go by the historical minimum wage. It was at its highest level in 1968, when it was the equivalent of $12.20/hour. I say to raise it to that level. Raise the minimum wage to $12.25/hour to match it with the highest it ever was in the past.  Reasonable, right? It also lifts a family of three out of poverty, though a family of four is still $2,000 below the poverty line.

Someone needs to tell me what the ideal purpose of the minimum wage is? To raise a family of one out of poverty? A family of two? A family of three? A family of four?

Here in California, we have a minimum wage of $12/hour. That’s $24,000/year. That seems like quite an acceptable minimum wage for these parts. I would certainly be happy to make that much money.

I’m quite dubious about a $15/hour minimum wage. That just sounds way too high. Why not raise it to $50/hour then if we are going to keep jacking it up. Why stop at 15?

Please follow and like us:
error3
fb-share-icon20
20
fb-share-icon20

2 thoughts on “Alt Left: That $15/Hour Minimum Wage”

  1. I believe in a graduated minimum wage. For people under 18 and over the retirement age, there should be no minimum wage and no social security taxes. For people who are 18 and 19, there should be no social security taxes and the minimum wage should be 2/3 of the full minimum wage. For people aged 20 and 21, there should be no social security taxes and the minimum wage should be 5/6 of the full minimum wage.

    1. Not sure I go along with that, although already there is a sub-minimum wage for minors under 18. As a soon to be senior, I’m not real keen on the idea of there being no minimum wage for me if I decide to work again.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)