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by xienze 315 days ago
Doesn't the fact that 98.9% of all workers earn more than the minimum wage kinda highlight that it's really not necessary for the federal government to increase it? Clearly it's nearly impossible except in limited circumstance to actually _find_ workers who'll accept the minimum wage, hence the fact that hardly anyone is paying it.
2 comments
agent_turtle 315 days ago
7.26 is technically more than 7.25. Further, a low floor acts as a weight, depressing wages generally.

"Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift wages for over 33 million workers": https://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-15-by-2025/

(For the record, 33 million is ~6 million more than the population of Australia)

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xienze 315 days ago
A federal-level minimum wage doesn't make sense, precisely because what is considered minimum wage in LA isn't the same as what's considered minimum wage in rural Louisiana, and vice-versa. The fact that 98.9% of workers manage to receive more than the minimum wage strongly suggests the market forces have done a pretty good job of determining what a viable minimum wage for various parts of the US is (including apparently parts where $7.25/hour works).
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TimorousBestie 315 days ago
> But is anyone _actually_ getting paid the minimum wage these days?

Yes.

> Clearly it's nearly impossible except in limited circumstance

No, you exaggerate. It’s a large number of people. I wouldn’t say it’s nearly impossible to find someone from Indianapolis (pop. 879k, 2024 est.), and the number of Americans is much larger than the number of working Americans.

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xienze 315 days ago
> No, you exaggerate. It’s a large number of people.

It's 1.1%, an incredibly small portion of the entire working population. There's never any follow up like "where in the country does this occur?" which may reveal that it's actually a livable wage. Or other follow up questions like, "does this number include illegal aliens who are happy with being paid $7.25/hour tax free?"

You're also ignoring _how_ it came to be that 98.9% of all workers manage to get paid higher than the minimum wage without it being mandated. Are the companies doing this out of the goodness of their hearts or have market forces instead found what the _actual_ viable minimum wage for various localities truly is?

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TimorousBestie 314 days ago
> There's never any follow up like "where in the country does this occur?"

Are you serious?

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2023/

Table 3. Their methodology is addressed in the technical notes.

> You're also ignoring _how_ it came to be. . .

No. You asked a specific question and I was bored enough to help you look up a result. I’m not here to engage with whatever ideological problems you have going on in the subtext.

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