 Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news as well So the good news is that House and Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to increase the federal minimum wage From $7 and 25 cents per hour to $15 per hour This is really phenomenal news considering we haven't seen a federal increase to the minimum wage since 2009 It's been 12 years almost. So this is long overdue The bad news, however, is that this isn't actually going to fully take effect until 2025 which is bad because We're not actually getting to a point where workers are getting a living wage now at face value I think that it's smart the way that Democrats constructed this legislation because they're making it so that way gradually the minimum wage goes up Each year now they're doing this so that way They don't hurt small businesses and the economy and the way that it's going to work is if this passes It'll increase immediately to $9 and 50 cents per hour and then $11 an hour the following year then $12 and 50 cents an hour by 2023 $14 an hour by 2024 and finally we'll arrive at $15 an hour by 2025 now it makes sense The way that they're doing this because what they're doing is they're modeling this after Seattle which is a case study that proves how effective and successful You know cities can be and how great it can be for workers if we actually do increase the federal minimum wage the issue is that Modeling it after Seattle. Well, you know, it sounds good on paper. They did this Seattle did this in 2012 Whereas we're doing this now in 2021, which is a very different story So if Democrats actually want to solve the problem long-term then I could digest this easier if they raised it to $20 an hour for example over a longer period of time or they kept this same exact time frame and They just attached Everything after 2026 to inflation So, you know the minimum wage would automatically increase every single year to keep up with inflation But they're not doing that so the ask here isn't great and especially considering what workers are owed This really it doesn't seem sufficient to me. Now having said that though, it's better than nothing, right? It is better than nothing even if it doesn't take effect until 2025 a 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that even if the minimum wage wasn't increased until 2025 That would lift 33 million workers wages on the other hand though This study was conducted pre-covid. So the economic situation that workers are in currently is Far different than it was back then so we don't necessarily know that it will have the same effect But overall we know that the aggregate effect that this will have will be positive The question rather is will this be enough now? We'll get to some of the criticisms of raising the minimum wage that we see from Conservatives and some liberals But here's why I think that Democrats need to fight for more first of all the federal living wage as of 2020 at least Was $16 and 54 cents per hour for a family of four So if a family of four was not making this they are not considered to be making a living wage And if you look at productivity Well, if the minimum wage kept up with productivity currently the minimum wage would be $24 an hour so on one hand it is positive that they're going to raise the federal minimum wage The issue however is that it's still not good enough and assuming that we don't see another minimum wage increase for more than a decade We're always going to be in this perpetual state of trying to play catch-up Always trying to gradually increase the minimum wage because you don't want to hurt the economy Whereas what we should be looking to is a long-term solution where again you tie the minimum wage federally to inflation or a living wage because the goal ultimately is to get closer to a living wage And while this certainly helps with that objectively speaking gets us closer to a living wage Still what we need is for people to actually have purchasing power in America and long term What I really want leftist to think about is what do we actually want like how do we solve this problem permanently? How do we actually empower workers and you know when you think about this? It's really hard to still be a capitalist It's why I am not a capitalist because in this exploitative capitalist system that we live in Workers only have barely enough to get by and as it is currently it looks like that's always going to be the case Whereas if workers actually owned the means of production things would be a lot different So this article by Forbes from 2014 it shows that if Apple were to be converted into a worker cooperative The lowest salary that workers would have would be above $400,000 per year So in this capitalist system that we have workers produce wealth but they don't get to enjoy the fruits of their labor and What's sad is that even a minimum wage increase knowing that that's insufficient at $15 an hour by 2025 You still see folks who are against it You see these boomer memes on Facebook not all boomers believe this but you know You mostly see it from your conservative aunts and uncles where they'll share like this image of a self-ordered menu at McDonald's and they'll say Oh, well you want $15 an hour peasant well meet your new replacement a Robot and the folks who claim to be capitalists don't know anything about capitalism because that is an inevitability If it were cheaper by tomorrow for every single fast food restaurant and multi-billion dollar company to replace their workers With robots, they're gonna do that immediately because they don't care about workers. They care about increasing profits So they're not just gonna like out of spite replace their workers with robots Because they ask for a wage increase or unions. That's not the way that capitalism works It's all about profits And so the minute that robots becomes a cheaper solution to labor That's what these companies are going to opt for now the minimum wage in Seattle There was a lot of fear mongering about this because at first preliminary studies showed that there was kind of a negative effect for workers Well, you know the study showed that some workers benefited what businesses did in actuality was in Response to the minimum wage being increased. They just reduced their workers hours. So overall they'd kind of like Weasley get out of paying their workers more you just cut their hours So they're still making the same poverty wages, but overall when you look at more studies Collectively Seattle proved why the minimum wage overall is a net benefit for workers So in 2019 Matthew Zetlin of Vox explained generally those business owners who threatened to leave Seattle This is one of the main fear mongering tactics that we saw to evade the new wage Haven't been following through surprise surprise the restaurant industry moans and groans about minimum wage increase But the Seattle newspaper every month has a story about 40 new restaurants opening Said Jennifer Romic a University of Washington social policy researcher According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the number of jobs in restaurants and bars in the Seattle area has grown from 134,000 to 158,000 since 2015 Surveying employers Romic and other researchers found the most common response to the wage increase was to raise prices or Fiddle with workers hours and a very small percentage worth thinking about withdrawing or leaving the city So that's one of the complaints about the minimum wage, but they continue the story for employees is much more varied The minimum wage for large employers jumped from 11 to 13 dollars an hour from 2015 to 2016 The economists observed the impact of the hike in 2017 and found it had dramatic effects on the low wage workforce and Employment not all of them were good They found that the policy reduced hours worked in low wage jobs by six to seven percent while hourly wages in such jobs Increased by three percent consequently total payroll for such jobs decreased That means the total amount that employers paid to workers was less with the new minimum wage in place Then projected payroll if the policy hadn't gone into effect the data researcher marks you long explained Suggested a tipping point between eleven dollars and thirteen dollars an hour when it comes to less tenable to keep Work in the city critics were quick to point out that this likely wasn't solely due to the minimum wage policy Seattle's labor market continued to heat up during that period reducing the number of low wage jobs compared to high wage jobs overall But a year later the team published another paper that complicated their findings They looked at the same time period and same wage increase But this time broke down the actual take-home pay of workers They found that workers who were already employed at the low end of the wage scale in Seattle enjoyed significantly more rapid hourly wage growth Following wage increases in 2015 and 2016 those who were already working more hours before the wage increase saw essentially all of the earnings Increases while the workers who had fewer hours saw their hours go down But wages go up enough so that their overall earnings didn't really change They theorized that a slowdown in new hiring for low wage jobs could explain their earlier findings that overall payroll had gone down Ultimately workers already employed either saw their take-home pay go up or stay roughly the same while working fewer hours So overall what the data tells us is that raising the minimum wage produces a net positive Either wages increase predictably or if employers respond by cutting hours Well the increase in their wage makes up for the the loss of hours So overall it's a net positive Raising wages of workers is good and I would argue that you know It's good for the economy overall because when poor people and working-class people have more money have more purchasing power What do they do? They stimulate the economy. We go buy Xboxes We go to the movies when there's not a pandemic, but when rich people have money They hoard that wealth in bank accounts usually offshore, so it's tax-free So trickle down economics has been a colossal failure And I think that it's obvious that the answer is making sure that normal working-class people have more money That's good for everyone including these large businesses like it or not because you know these capitalists They want to exploit their workers But nobody can buy the products produced by capitalists workers if they don't actually have money in the first place So overall, this is a really good thing I'm glad that Democrats are raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and they're not backing down to $12 an hour Which is kind of what I thought so in a way. I'm pleasantly surprised But at the same time we have to push for a permanent solution so that way workers aren't always behind and Making less than a living wage and that means you've got to tie this to inflation Or at least account for the likelihood that we're not going to see another federal minimum wage increase for more than a decade Assuming Democrats lose control in 2022 and 2024 overall. This is good But we've got to push for more always ask for more because workers need this right now We are in an unprecedented crisis in America or at least the crisis that we haven't seen since you know a hundred years So now is the time to go big or go home And I'm glad that Democrats are doing this but in my opinion it is not good enough not anywhere near good enough And we've got to push them to do better