• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    4 hours ago

    The a Federal Minimum Wage has been raised twice since 1997, the last time in 2009, for a total of $2.10. It currently stands at $7.25 an hour.

    20 states are still at the Federal Minimum Wage, or LESS, with some at $5.15, and Oklahoma as low as $2.

  • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 hours ago

    “It’ll make costs go up! It’ll cause inflation! It’ll cause a wage price spiral!”

    NEWS FLASH! minimum wage hasn’t risen for over a decade and yet prices have risen faster than they did when we did raise minimum wage. Almost like, cheap minimum wages allows for more capital consolidation, and that in turn makes it easier for cartels, oligopolies and monopolies to form to enforce larger margins on low elasticity goods.

    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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      57 minutes ago

      The average person is willfully ignorant about inflation because they benefit more from networking with people who believe the bullshit.

    • BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 hours ago

      Capitalism requires a second class of people who are easily exploited and disregarded by the wider majority of workers in its system usually through propaganda. Racism existed before it but it certainly does benefit from making those different lesser so they can be easier exploited and dehumanized when needed.

    • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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      3 hours ago

      I went to school with the 90s versions- Tucker, Sean, Brad, Brady, Donny, and Clay. Tucker killed someone in a DUI, Brady took over the car dealership, Donny and Brad washed out in their college football efforts and are real estate agents, Clay is 44 and owns a college-age targeted night club he uses to predate on women. Sean turned out to be a decent guy at least.

  • khaleer@sopuli.xyz
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    7 hours ago

    I love the “we can fix the system built to fuck us up by only [writes a bible about how capitalism is full of loopholes and is basically made by and for billionaires]”. No. There is no way in reforming this corpse of a system.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    14 hours ago

    My hot take: Greedy rich companies and millionaires and billionaires will always try to take as much as possible from the consumer. Raising the minimum wage effects people that were making the minimum wage, and is less and less beneficial to those that were making more than minimum wage. If minimum wage jumped up by $5 to go from $7.25 to $12.25, anyone who was already making $12.25 isn’t likely to get a raise to $17.25.

    But because all these people are making more, the wealthy will up pricing of food and housing and utilities in order to keep making even more. This means inflation also rises faster. So while it helps things in the short term, it does nothing to help people in the long term, and it also hurts people closer to or already retired because the inflation will make their fixed incomes worth less.

    So raising the minimum wage alone is a shit idea that only puts a short term bandage on things and the rising inflation means you’ll constantly be “behind the eight-ball” and playing catch-up to keep trying to raise it as inflation keeps rising because the rich keep getting richer.

    The real fix needs to be lowering the top. Not raising the bottom. Tax the shit out of the wealthy with higher taxes as money made grows. Close the tax loopholes that let them hoard wealth. Make it so that so much of their money beyond like $5,000,000 in cash or assets increasing in value a year would be pointless to try and make because it would all just go to taxes. This will cut the legs out from under the wealthy and stop the needless ripping off of everyone else. If they can’t hoard money and increase their monetary value infinitely then the money will start going to the places it should. The inflation would stop, and upping the minimum wage could actually keep things livable.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
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      12 hours ago

      If they can’t hoard money and increase their monetary value infinitely, then their business will stop having any reasons to exist in the first place.

      Also, many industries are only efficient at scale, and so putting any limit to that is going to hurt the economy (and hence, you) big time.

      Capitalism, in any form, has this fundamental trouble where it either rips you, or has no reason to exist. Taxing the hell out of the rich is a step in the right direction, but ultimately even that is not sustainable. We need socialism, as in society/state owning means of production.

      • msage@programming.dev
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        59 minutes ago

        We don’t need most of what is being produced today.

        Most of those should die.

        For every useful thing there are mountains of plastic useless waste produced, sold, and thrown away just to keep the economy turning. Including many clothes.

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 hour ago

        That’s a negative on pretty much all you’ve said. Companies will keep growing. More people at the companies will max out at how much you can earn. No one will want to give all extra money to just paying taxes. Instead they’ll take that extra money and it will get dumped back into the company. More buildings, expansion, more employees, higher pay and benefits, r&d, etc. they’ll spend the extra money. You’re talking as if someone who was making $5,000,000 a year would just be like “meh. Not worth doing this”

        This was actually fairly close to how things where in the 1950’s when the US had everything going it’s way (if you were white, anyhow). Tax rates on the wealthy where over 90% at one point for over $250,000. Back when you could work at a grocery store and own a home and a car and not worry about drowning in medical debt.

  • binarytobis@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Kinda related: At some point I realized inflation is actually kinda good when you have no assets and large debt, because it effectively shrinks your debt. The problem is, I only thought about it well after paying off my debts and gaining some assets, so now I feel like the guys in the pic if I talk about it.

    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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      51 minutes ago

      Inflation is either expected or unexpected by the market.

      • If it’s expected, then it was already priced into your rate. The “tax incidence” of typical inflation falls on consumers, not lenders.
      • If it’s not expected, then the economy is failing and that’s not good for anyone.
    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 hours ago

      only if the interest rate you pay on the debt is lower than inflation. let’s say, if inflation is 3% and your interest rate is 5%, you still make additional 2% real debt every year. if however inflation is 5% and your interest rate is only 3% then you win.

    • pirateKaiser@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours ago

      This math only maths if your income keeps pace with inflation. Otherwise you’re getting priced out of living. Even if in relative terms your debt is shrinking, that doesn’t make you better off on its own.

      • binarytobis@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        Yeah, that’s where the kinda comes in. From experience, when you’ve got that much debt you tend to lowkey want to watch the world burn, so you’ve got that going too.

    • Absurdly Stupid @lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      … and just like that, you figured out what the FED is for, and that our world economy is based on debt, with inflation used to defraud the hordes of workers from adequate wages.

      Once the inflationary economy crashes, banks buy up those previously inflated assets at rock-bottom prices, and the process begins anew.

  • jbellows@piefed.social
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    12 hours ago

    Honestly, I’d hang with them. It’s the ones with the outfits AND the single unifying hair style that immediately mark them as chads. If you look, there’s a guy who’s asking himself why he agreed to this, and a dude who thinks this is both the dumbest but funniest thing they’ve done that week