SkyDekker 1,465 #51 July 31, 2019 1 hour ago, billvon said: That would be a good alternative to propose, along with a link to the cost of living so that we don't have to fight over this every 10 years. Yup, if you want some actual wage growth in your country, tie it to inflation plus 25 basis points on an annualized basis. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
turtlespeed 220 #52 August 2, 2019 On 7/21/2019 at 10:40 AM, wmw999 said: Where I live there's an effort among a lot of locally-owned businesses to have as many jobs as possible be "living wage" jobs. I.e. not minimum wage. The food co-op where I do most of my shopping, and the garbage pickup co-op that takes our trash and recycling both do this -- the food co-op is mostly there, the trash co-op is there. So are lots of other businesses, at least for their full-time jobs, because there's a realization that there are, in fact, people who rely on these jobs for their actual livelihood, and housing is expensive here. But this is a liberal enclave, where that kind of social experimentation is generally (obviously not entirely) accepted. Obviously Walmart doesn't partake, but since we have a significant percentage of locally-owned businesses, it's still noticeable. We do have a lot of people who deliberately shop locally, which helps the local economy. So, it's anecdotal, but it seems to be a good stretch goal, as long as one honestly works towards it. In Massachusetts, insurance is pretty much always there (we have the state model for ACA, championed by Romney when he was governor), so health care is under slightly better control than some other places. This is no panacea; we have a fairly high opiate overdose rate in the general area (not our town necessarily, but there are others). And this particular town is a higher-end town, as in it has those locally-owned businesses, and higher cost of housing. This seems to correlate with a higher percentage of people with better jobs, who are less likely to OD. Go to the ore depressed towns (Greenfield, Athol, Orange), and it's a different story. And people do have trouble finding affordable housing in our town. So there aren't any easy answers, but anecdotally speaking, there are different paths besides the "keep business costs as low as humanly possible to maximize profit, and remember that employees are interchangeable company assets, not individual humans who are contributors to the company" Wendy P. Didn't you just kinda say that your town is gentrified? How is that ok? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tkhayes 348 #53 August 13, 2019 https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-restaurant-industry-thriving-after-15-dollar-minimum-wage-2019-8?fbclid=IwAR20qZHb5XaEL1jYj9EveLWItn5CPK8TfvAy0FCtUyNX18OHS-gUZWY7yOE contrary to the Forbes report/article earlier. And oddly, 3 CA cities are used as data in this article, also contradicting the Forbes story: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2018-09-07/minimum-wage-increases-didnt-impact-jobs-in-6-us-cities-study-shows Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
