Make the minimum wage $10 an hour.

[OceanEcosystem]

One of the biggest benefits of doing so would be that calculations would be extremely easy and simple.

You worked for 8 hours at minimum wage? You earned $80.


How much do you get for working eight hours at a minimum wage of $7.25? Fifty-eight dollars. Not many people could calculate that in their heads in a short time.

Even working eight hours at $9 an hour makes for $72; not the easiest of arithmetic - it does still take a moment or two.




$10 an hour would be one of the simplest minimum wages to understand. Perhaps it could stay in place for a long time.

[Drale]

1. It might seem that easy but it never is

when you add taxes taken out to that you don't get such round numbers but I agree but I would go further minimum wage should be 23 dollars an hour. If it had kept up with CEO pay it would be.

[OceanEcosystem]

4. $23 an hour is much too high for a minimum wage.

That would be well over $40,000 a year for someone who works eight hours a day, takes weekends off, and ten holidays off a year (not taking vacation time into account.)


How many workers do you think employers would be willing to, or could afford, to hire, with such a very high minimum wage?

[Drale]

9. Wow really WOW!!

Are you sure you on the correct site 40,000 a year for only working 8 hours and takes weekends off? OMG They might actually be able to buy a house, a car and afford to feed their kids. Workers deserve to be making more than the CEO's who's only job is the steal money, decide how to cheat the government out of taxes and make the work place dangerous for their employees. Without said employees the CEO and the company would not be making any money, so your damn right it should be 23 dollars and hour or more. I would be willing to bet think Unions are the problem to? The Unions that fought and bleed for those 8 hour work days and weekends off.

[OceanEcosystem]

15. What about small businesses?

I think you're thinking only in terms of big companies. What about small businesses?

The bottom line is, how many workers would employers be willing to hire at such a high minimum wage? That's the fact that matters at the end of the day.


How many small business do you really think could afford to pay their workers $40,000+ a year apiece? The net result of such a very high minimum wage would likely be that employers would keep hiring to a bare minimum, and the employees that did work would probably be under the burden of having to shoulder a lot of work - think 20 employees being assigned to do the work of 30 employees.

And what about people with relatively little skills - high school dropouts, the homeless and the like? Good luck persuading a business to hire them for $40,000+ a year.


This idea of yours sounds like a real recipe for high unemployment.

[Orrex]

20. We already subsidize wages for business small and large

Every employee who earns less than a livable wage is equivalent to a big fat susidy to the employer, whether we're talking about Walmar or the mom-n-pop paint store on the corner.

Pay the worker a livable wage, and the economy as a whole will benefit hugely.

[Drale]

23. Its very simple really

Pay workers a living wage and they can afford to spend money at said small businesses. If people are payed well everyone benefits. Trickle down does not work, money moving from the bottom to the top however works and everyone is happy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. You surely noticed that Wallmart had an issue with the core

of it's customers NOT able to shop at Walmart...

Now, here is one for you to mull... if Wallmart raised pay to 15/hour for ALL of it's employees, it would run Wally World 1-2 billion. But, but, that is a lot of money... it is... you know how much they are expected to get back in business, aka money spent right back at Wallmart? 7-9 Billion.

Raising pay to a living wage actually... makes business sense.

And this keep minimum wage low, is a RW, regressive, RW economic policy.

[FreeJoe]

2. not quite

If you want to know your spendable income, you'll need to subtract 6.2% for Social Security, 1.45% for Medicare, your federal, state, and local income tax withholding, and any other deductions for things like 401k, medical benefits, etc.

[OceanEcosystem]

7. That's unavoidable, regardless of the $ per hour, but

I think people in general tend to think of their income in terms of gross income before taxes, not net income.


Most people are more likely to think, "I make $30,000 a year before taxes" than they are to think, for hypothetical instance, "I make $24,000 a year (or however much) after taxes."

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. We do our math in how much we have AFTER taxes

not before taxes...

[frazzled]

3. Since the Republicans will block any raise, why not make it $25?

I appreciate your argument based on the easy math (I'm pretty math deficient myself), but when you're earning that little, it can be a little dispiriting to think you're earning $80 and then find after FICA, etc., your paycheck is a lot less than that—and an uneven number, to boot (like 67.45). So the math is still hard.

[PDJane]

5. If the fruits of labour were shared equally, the minimum wage would be almost 22.00 per hour.

I believe there is no such thing as an unskilled job; everything requires skills of some sort. It would be better for all of us if wages kept pace with increases in productivity and the cost of living. Skip the math; if we taught people arithmetic, this wouldn't be a problem either.

[OceanEcosystem]

8. How many employers could afford to pay a $22/hour minimum wage?

If you ran a fast food restaurant, do you think you could afford to pay every single employee $22 per hour?



Probably not unless you sold $12 hamburgers, or something like that........

[JaneyVee]

13. Why would a hamburger be $12? If everyone was making $22/hr at MINIMUM

then that fast food restaurant would probably have triple the amount of customers therefore lowering prices.

[OceanEcosystem]

19. By that logic, why not make the minimum wage $100 an hour?

You'd have ten times as many customers!

[JaneyVee]

21. Because if the minimum wage was $100/hr no one would eat at fast food restaurants.

ETA: No one is asking for $100/hr, no one is even asking for $21/hr, but billion dollar companies and small businesses can afford to pay a slightly higher wage.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

22. she is applying more logic than is shown in the OP

because raising the minimum wage to make the math easier make ZERO sense.

sP

[KamaAina]

6. We did it in San Jose.

San Francisco's is even higher.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

10. so your logic is to raise the minimum wage

to make it easy to do math? holy shit...

sP

[OceanEcosystem]

16. Not just for the easier math. Since the minimum wage needs to be raised anyway,

why not raise it to a number that just happens to be highly convenient and easy to calculate.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

17. because picking a wage on the idea

that the math should be easy to calculate is fucking ridiculous.

sP

[petronius]

11. And we need to switch to the metric system at the same time

No more of this 'how many goddam feet are in a goddam mile!?1!!?' crap...

(I completely agree that the minimum wage needs to be raised, but simplifying math is no kind of argument, IMO...)

[OceanEcosystem]

18. Ah yes, trying to multiple a number by 5,280 feet. n/t.

[RC]

29. 'how many goddam feet are in a goddam mile?'

Depends on how many people are walking to and from work, plus how many street people there are living along that mile.

[petronius]

32. There you go - it's not just calculus, you've got to know anatomy and demographics

and economic patterns and who knows what else in order to use this mucked up system...

[JaneyVee]

12. $15/hr

[PasadenaTrudy]

33. +1

[mythology]

14. The minimum wage should be raised,

but it also should be tied to inflation. Just raising is a good thing, but it's a diminishing value over time. Whereas there's no downward pressure on the very highest income/wealth accumulations.

I doubt it would be legal, but tying the minimum wage in a company to the wages (including things like stock options etc) of the executives would be an effective check on the accumulation of wealth or at least force the labor to benefit from the greed of executives.

[RC]

30. Tying the minimum wage to inflation? You mean like they did Social Security?

Minimum wage does not apply to the management, only the hourly workers. In any case that is another fraud case scandal. Promoting someone to 'supervisor', with slight raise, then increasing his hours to 60 or 80 hours a week, for the same pay.

[Coyotl]

24. That is a stupid reason for a good idea. If they can't multiply times 9, don't hire them.

I thinbk it should be higher than $9 because that would be more economic stimulus. But a plan must be developed so the increase is staged until the appropriate level is reached, and then the inflation index kicks in.

[Cleita]

25. At the very least, the minimum wage should be $18 an hour, which would constitute a living wage,

one that would pay rent, food, transportation and insurance. No one realizes how much a bite insurance takes out of your wages for health care, car insurance and property insurance. Of course I consider them the biggest parasites around but until we come up with a better system for health care access and disaster coverage, we are stuck with them.

[Quantess]

28. I disagree with your argumentation.

Who care about how easy the math is?
But I agree that 10.00 per hour is a good minimum wage.

[Gorp]

31. Even $10/hr is too low. You can't live on that. You just can't.

[virgogal]

34. That's one of the strangest reasons I've ever seen for changing the minimum wage,

easier to calculate.

By your logic a $1.00 per hour minimum wage would be ideal.