October 31, 2005

US Congress Defeats Minimum Wage Increase It's $5.15 per hour, and has been since 1997. Everything else is more expensive now though.

I'm looking for the vote so you'll know how your representative stands. You probably have a good idea though. Ah. Here we go • The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2005 would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three steps: • $5.85 60 days after enactment; • $6.55 one year later; • $7.25 one year after that

posted by petebest 18 years ago
  • In other news, House Republicans voted to cut student loan subsidies, child support enforcement and aid to firms hurt by unfair trade practices as various committees scrambled to piece together $50 billion in budget cuts. Good thing we have a poorly run, ill-advised, unwinnable conflict in the middle east to drain the country of money and make Halliburton rich.
  • Out of curiosity, what's the republican take on this?
  • Out of curiosity, what's the republican take on this? Same as any other politician, they vote the way the people who gave them the most money want them to.
  • /spit. Disgusting.
  • The record shows two Republican senators voted for the bill, the rest didn't. All the Democratic senators who voted, voted for the bill.
  • The irony is, many minimum-wage earners probably voted for these idiots to keep fightin' the muslims and keep the gays from marryin'.
  • Minimum wage by State. Most follow the Feds but some are higher. Also, I don't have the link, and I dislike Walmart but their average hourly wage is something like $10. Not a princely sum but well above the Federal Minimum.
  • mmmyep. It's one of the few points on which vaguely libertarian me and ultra-conservative dad agree: the public believes that the current administration is Just Folks, just like them, and that this is fairly terrifying. It's a tremendous marketing coup. That said, I do wonder what the public statement is, to these people they're screwing over. Probably "we're doing our part to protect freedom." Where "we" is "you", of course. And seeing the page title on the sidebar first made me really worry. I'm too gullible, I guess.
  • their average hourly wage is something like $10. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that that's a company-wide mean average, including executives working in the main center. Give me that figure alongside a median average, or give me the average hourly wage of store employees, and then we'll have a more accurate portrait. Not to mention that most of their store staff is part-time, in order to cut down on the payment of benefits. Wal-Mart has announced it's going to lower its insurance premiums so that store employees can actually afford to have it, but the catch is that the deductibles and copays have skyrocketed to a point where it's not worth having, for most of them. I don't like the kneejerk Wal-bashing either, but compared to companies like Costco, them bitches ain't shit.
  • Here's a republican who believes that minimum wage should be pegged to the average inflation rate of the previous 5 years. There are several economic constraints that allow wages to be artificially low, rather than requiring employers to actually compete with one another on the wage/benefits question, generally through tax breaks, subsidies, and non-enforcement of many laws. And what rocket88 said.
  • In other, other news On a party-line vote, a Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives committee voted to cut food stamps by $844 million on Friday, just hours after a new U.S. Agriculture Department report showed more Americans are struggling to put food on the table. Terra terra terra!
  • mct.... You are correct. Doing a bit of digging it seems that the average for a salesclerk is $8.50.
  • That second link showing the votes by rep/state is a good one, pete. Four repubs voted for it, but repubs were the only ones who voted against it. It failed by just three votes - I see that five reps didn't vote at all... there's a good chance that had they not sat it out, it would have passed. In California, we've got a $6.75 per hour minimum wage, which hasn't changed since 2002.
  • Being in the south, I'm curious how many Bush supporters this will alienate. Or maybe the ones that put Bush in office are mostly a little above the minimum line? In any case, yes, if the GOP can piss off as many people as they can, this will bode well for 2006 elections.
  • Here in MA our minimum is $6.75 and I had the bad fortune of having to take temporary interim employment last year at that rate. As an unmarried young guy with no kids, cheap rent split with roomates, and no frills like cable and such, I was blown away by how close I was to not making rent/eating once a day/etc. It really boggles my mind how someone can possibly come even close to living on minimum wage, especially with a family. Much power to them. This sure is a slap in the face though.
  • i wonder why the story is buried. The link i found was the first i'd heard of it.
  • Really, no kidding. In the minute I took in between projects to look at MoFi and go over to Google News I can't seem to find anything about it except stories about Wal-Mart and Fiji's minimum wage.
  • that's exactly what I did too - I had to include "-Wal-Mart" to find one letter to the editor in Albany, NY and a reprint of the same article I already had.
  • Doesn't Kennedy submit this bill every year (and every year it's rejected)?
  • The Republican argument is that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. I enjoy that argument: So places like McDonald's have extra people working just for the fun of it. If we raise the minimum wage, then McDonald's will lay people off and only use the workers they really need. This is one of the issues that anger me the most. Someone above asked how the poor who vote Republican will respond to this. The answer is that most of them do not know about it and they will not know about it. It is the kind of issue the Democratic presidential candidate has to shout at the top of his lungs during the election period.
  • Eamon, the Republican spin on this is basically trickle-down economics and social darwinism. The argument goes something like - if they want to be paid better than can go to college/switch to a better job/improve themselves in a million other ways. Which fails to take into account that people _are_ working jobs which pay minimum wage, probably quite a lot of people in fact. And companies would _love_ to pay minimum wage to all their employees if they thought they could get away with it. Needless to say I think a 5.15 minimum wage is despicable, though I've made less than that myself working a few shitty jobs.
  • You know, they only pay you the minimum wage because they can't legally give you any less. If they could, they would.
  • They have parents who both work and make minimum wage and are trying to just pay off the house and put a bit by for retirement. They go to work after high school and make minimum wage. Where are are they going to get all this money to "go to college/switch to a better job/improve themselves in a million other ways?" Asshole Republicians.
  • You know, they only pay you the minimum wage because they can't legally give you any less. There are plenty of people working below minimum wage. Even here in Canada, where we's supposed to be all progressive. Some folks in Toronto Chinatown work for $3 CDN/hour.
  • $3 an hour! Boy, those Canadians better hope they don't get sick and have to be hospitalized, or they'll be financially ruined! ...oh, wait. Never mind.
  • Zanshin: that Walmart article you linked to was rather absurd. I'm no fan of Walmart, but demonizing the company for wanting to raise the minimum wage because it will force its competitors to pay above minimum wage too just doesn't make sense. It may be true that that's their tactic, but what makes Walmart's competitors any more worthy of defense? One way to describe the wage problem in this country is that 'competitive' and 'humanistic' are far less compatible than most of the of people on top would like us to believe.
  • Goddammit. I'm back in this country one day, and this is the first news I get. Goddammit...
  • StoryBored, that's why i added the 'legally' qualifier. We're all aware of illegitimate employment.