Honestly, if minimum wage goes up, the cost of living goes up with it, putting us back to where we started. We need the cost of living to go down instead. Maybe we should force certain business sectors to be non-profit businesses, ones that match with the 4 needs: shelter, food, water, and air. If they can’t profit by a large margin, then there won’t be monopolies, duopolies, etc, it will create more small business competition, and the competition will hopefully drive prices down.
EDIT: Getting more attention than I expected tbh. I’ve lived through and experienced several minimum wage increases, and rent constantly going up. The latter is due to greedy landlords knowing they can leech another dollar off of you, so they do until you’re destitute. I’m not saying that other factors can’t also increase rent.
The suggestion above is meant to attack those profiting by an unnecessarily large amount, which you’d think more Lemmy users would be behind, but somehow this is being seen as “pro-billionaire” rhetoric, which it isn’t. Attack the profiteering of landlords first, as well as others areas in which we need to live and get by (list above is not fully exhausted, but a good starting point imo), and then balance out cost of living with raising the minimum wage after. You raise minimum wage beforehand, you’re just shifting money from the billionaire paying your paycheck to the billionaire profiting off of necessary life expenses instead.
Someone mentioned how this didn’t happen in Mexico, which is interesting. I still need to read up on it and maybe see what factors contributed to rent not increasing.
the cost of living goes up with it, putting us back to where we started.
That’s the common argument, but that’s not what happened down in Mexico. They drastically raised the minimum wage (among a bunch of other reforms) and it had the result of lifting millions out of poverty in six years.
That’s a fair argument. In my personal experience, California raised the minimum wage by a fair amount, but rent skyrocketed soon after so a lot of people were back at square one.
EDIT: How this got -14 points is astonishing to me lol. I need to read about why this same thing didn’t happen in Mexico because that’s very interesting. Are you referring to this year’s minimum wage increase?
Landlords know they can squeeze another dollar out of you, so they do. Landlords shouldn’t be able to make a massive amount of profit, if they were forced to be non-profit then they’d probably not exist at all.
If the minimum wage in Texas does go up, who’s to say that the rent won’t go up even more? My claim was never that “rent only goes up if minimum wage goes up” but rather “if minimum wage goes up, rent goes up too.”
Like I said, feel free to move there then. Rent went up anyway so there’s no point keeping the wage low if it goes up anyway - might as well just raise wages.
That’s still not addressing the point of combating them from being able to raise the rent further. Why not address that issue first and then raise minimum wage after? That way the minimum wage will actually be a living wage. This problem arose from 50 years of shitty legislation and shitty people abusing the system. It requires a long term solution, simply chasing after short term gains isn’t good enough. What’ll happen a year after the minimum wage is increased? You think the leeches in the top .1% won’t try to find a way to suck every penny out of your bank account? You’re just transferring the money from the billionaire you work for to another billionaire instead.
That’s weird. It’s almost like greedy landlords used that as an excuse to jack up rent! I know housing skyrocketed in many places where the minimum wage remained flat. I’ve also personally witnessed it…
Exactly - They know they can squeeze another dollar out of you, so they do. Landlords shouldn’t be able to make a massive amount of profit, if they were forced to be non-profit then they’d probably not exist at all.
Okay, so a lot of people don’t think billionaires are the problem, so let’s do it like this. We hang every single billionaire, all their money is divided fairly to all the workers who created the wealth. And then we see wether that helped people or not. If that doesn’t work, we publicly appologise to the billionaires and go on with our lives as if nothing happened.
Inflation is actually not tightly coupled to wages, it’s a very small contributor compared to all other spending. As long as there’s enforcement against profiteering and market collusion, and monopolies / oligopolies are broken up, you don’t see immediate price prices (which is possible because average productivity per capita is going up over time)
Wonderfully said! My point was more about attacking profiteering landlords (as well as others that really shouldn’t be able to create massive profits off of like water and food) and not so much inflation. We need more enforcements like you mentioned. I was just attempting to bring up an idea of what one of those enforcements might be, and it’s potential benefits. It’s at -30 ish points right now, so I guess no one cares about all that.
Honestly, if minimum wage goes up, the cost of living goes up with it, putting us back to where we started. We need the cost of living to go down instead. Maybe we should force certain business sectors to be non-profit businesses, ones that match with the 4 needs: shelter, food, water, and air. If they can’t profit by a large margin, then there won’t be monopolies, duopolies, etc, it will create more small business competition, and the competition will hopefully drive prices down.
EDIT: Getting more attention than I expected tbh. I’ve lived through and experienced several minimum wage increases, and rent constantly going up. The latter is due to greedy landlords knowing they can leech another dollar off of you, so they do until you’re destitute. I’m not saying that other factors can’t also increase rent.
The suggestion above is meant to attack those profiting by an unnecessarily large amount, which you’d think more Lemmy users would be behind, but somehow this is being seen as “pro-billionaire” rhetoric, which it isn’t. Attack the profiteering of landlords first, as well as others areas in which we need to live and get by (list above is not fully exhausted, but a good starting point imo), and then balance out cost of living with raising the minimum wage after. You raise minimum wage beforehand, you’re just shifting money from the billionaire paying your paycheck to the billionaire profiting off of necessary life expenses instead.
Someone mentioned how this didn’t happen in Mexico, which is interesting. I still need to read up on it and maybe see what factors contributed to rent not increasing.
That’s the common argument, but that’s not what happened down in Mexico. They drastically raised the minimum wage (among a bunch of other reforms) and it had the result of lifting millions out of poverty in six years.
That’s a fair argument. In my personal experience, California raised the minimum wage by a fair amount, but rent skyrocketed soon after so a lot of people were back at square one.
EDIT: How this got -14 points is astonishing to me lol. I need to read about why this same thing didn’t happen in Mexico because that’s very interesting. Are you referring to this year’s minimum wage increase?
Minimum in Texas has been the same since Obama raised it nearly 20 years ago yet rents have still gone over triple in that amount of time.
Feel free to move there if you really believe your claim.
Landlords know they can squeeze another dollar out of you, so they do. Landlords shouldn’t be able to make a massive amount of profit, if they were forced to be non-profit then they’d probably not exist at all.
If the minimum wage in Texas does go up, who’s to say that the rent won’t go up even more? My claim was never that “rent only goes up if minimum wage goes up” but rather “if minimum wage goes up, rent goes up too.”
Like I said, feel free to move there then. Rent went up anyway so there’s no point keeping the wage low if it goes up anyway - might as well just raise wages.
That’s still not addressing the point of combating them from being able to raise the rent further. Why not address that issue first and then raise minimum wage after? That way the minimum wage will actually be a living wage. This problem arose from 50 years of shitty legislation and shitty people abusing the system. It requires a long term solution, simply chasing after short term gains isn’t good enough. What’ll happen a year after the minimum wage is increased? You think the leeches in the top .1% won’t try to find a way to suck every penny out of your bank account? You’re just transferring the money from the billionaire you work for to another billionaire instead.
That’s weird. It’s almost like greedy landlords used that as an excuse to jack up rent! I know housing skyrocketed in many places where the minimum wage remained flat. I’ve also personally witnessed it…
Exactly - They know they can squeeze another dollar out of you, so they do. Landlords shouldn’t be able to make a massive amount of profit, if they were forced to be non-profit then they’d probably not exist at all.
This is some class Stockholm syndrome shit right here
How so?
Maybe instead of blaming poor people we ought to kill billionaires
Okay, so a lot of people don’t think billionaires are the problem, so let’s do it like this. We hang every single billionaire, all their money is divided fairly to all the workers who created the wealth. And then we see wether that helped people or not. If that doesn’t work, we publicly appologise to the billionaires and go on with our lives as if nothing happened.
Wasn’t blaming poor people in my comment, so not sure where that came from.
Inflation is actually not tightly coupled to wages, it’s a very small contributor compared to all other spending. As long as there’s enforcement against profiteering and market collusion, and monopolies / oligopolies are broken up, you don’t see immediate price prices (which is possible because average productivity per capita is going up over time)
Wonderfully said! My point was more about attacking profiteering landlords (as well as others that really shouldn’t be able to create massive profits off of like water and food) and not so much inflation. We need more enforcements like you mentioned. I was just attempting to bring up an idea of what one of those enforcements might be, and it’s potential benefits. It’s at -30 ish points right now, so I guess no one cares about all that.