Topic: Will Biden raise the federal minimum wage from 7.25 USD per hour to 15 USD? (Read 570 times)

First of all if there is a job that gets tips on top of that 15 dollar per hour, let them be, that is their right and that is how it should be done, there is no reason why people should not make more money, there is literally zero argument to be made that people should be making less money than they possibly can with this, like I said any business that can't handle 50 year inflation and can only survive by paying 1970 wages to not fire people should bankrupt and owners should be so broke that they end up working for 7.25 dollars themselves to understand the problem.

However the unemployment is just a ruse that rich people use to show you how it is not the right time, believe me this is the right time, the grocery store type places, amazons, walmarts, targets and many other places made combined 1.8 trillion profit in 2020 thanks to pandemic, their workers got extra pay for just one month. Believe me the money is there, if companies start firing people that is because they are greedy not because they can't afford it.

There are jobs where the staff receive tips, for example restaurant waiters. If the $15 per hour minimum wage is made applicable across these sectors, then it will impact very negatively on the business. Also, the main question is whether $15 per hour as minimum wage is fair or not. The question is whether the timing is right. The unemployment rate is at all time high, and this move will just worsen the unemployment crisis in the United States.

Everyone who thinks 15 dollars is "impossible" should realize that if the federal minimum wage kept up with the federal inflation, it should have been 23 dollars right now. Which means every business should be earning enough to pay people 23 dollars per hour, and if they do not offer that and they will "go bankrupt if they pay 23 dollars" that means they didn't increased their prices according to the inflation neither, and that is the wrong part.

We have tens of millions of jobs that corporations pay as minimum as possible, specially working people under 40 hours but do not make them work 10-20 neither, they make them work 39 hours exact so they do not have to give them benefits, and in the end we are talking about is 15 too much. 15 is not too much, 15 is exactly what every business has to pay and the ones that can't should not exist because they are failed business' if the only thing that makes them stay afloat is 7.5 dollars per hour difference, a good business would survive that and even more.

That doesn't make any sense. Because you can't have a group of people paying 12% tax, and another group paying 50%. It will eventually result in high-income group moving to other countries. The solution is to remove the loopholes used by the super-rich to avoid paying taxes. Because if Jeff Bezos pays no tax, then he will continue to do so even if the tax rate is increased to 50% or even 80%. On the other hand, those who pay their taxes honestly will be negatively impacted. To put it simply, there should not be any tax write-offs and exclusions for charity donations. Everything should come under the tax umbrella.

Then how come most businessman have already recovered to the damage that the pandemic caused, the big companies are still earning big money and I think that it is a justifiable thing to do because they are also the people responsible for never increasing the minimum wages, what it really means when they say that their business is not ready is that they are not ready to get their big profit being cut for taxes. You are right about this megachurches they are some of the biggest legitimate criminal in the world, preying on the hope that God is there by their side.
Yes, I want that to increase, you know the reason that they are still rich? That is because of their tax write off and charity donations which nullifies their tax payment and if the rich is really paying tax then how come Jeff Bezos pays almost 0 in taxes?
Because we are still tied to the archaic notion that church and the state is separated. This means that the church can't intervene with state affairs and in return the state will not involve them in their affairs, but those are just words that are meant to be broken.

Higher income house holds are already paying almost half of their income as tax, and you want to increase this further? It will be a historic blunder to penalize wealth creation. Already there are tax slabs in existence in the US, and the large majority of the households pay only 12% or lower rates as tax. On the other hand, the rate for the topmost slab is 37%. The so called "rich" are already paying 3-4 times more tax in proportion to the others. Increase it any further and they will just pack their bags and move to some country where the tax laws are more favorable.

BTW, I am of the opinion that the churches should be taxed. Why there should be an exception for them while others are paying their taxes? Also, there is hardly any positive contribution coming out from these institutions.

I want to agree with your last statement. Some of these people are just using the name of Church to avoid paying taxes and they are also the ones continuously receiving donations even in times of pandemic. They don't get hungry as they have always money. I believe there are a lot of these "Pastors"  or Church Leaders that are just using the name of the Church to live comfortably. But raising to more than 200% I believe is not the right time as businesses are not yet ready for that big raise.

This should've happened a long time ago, the gap between inflation of daily items and the daily household of a minimum wage earner is so big right now that workers do not have the time to do something better, and to make it more better, their administration should impose big taxes on the higher income households and companies, and they should stop giving megachurches a tax free living, you see how Osteen is living a mansion and all he does is preach the Lord and receive tithe.

What other countries are you talking about?
UK with The Guardian and The Sun?
France with L'Humanité  and La Croix ? 
Or about Russia with Russia Today and that's all as all the papers and tv station are owned by Kremlin?
Give one example where the top 5 TV stations and newspapers are not biased, one!

Back to the 15$ plan, seems like is not going to happen, even Sanders has doubts:
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-senate-rejects-raising-15-minimum-wage-during-pandemic-2021-2


I wonder how his voters feel right now.

That is not the case. The media is not neutral anywhere in the world. Even here in India, the media is divided on the basis of political affiliation. We have channels such as Republic TV, Zee News.etc who support the right-wing ideology, and on the other side we have channels such as NDTV, India Today, Aaj Tak.etc with the left-wing ideology. Same is the case in the United States as well. They have channels such as Fox News which support the Republicans, and CNN, MSNBC.etc which support the right-wing.

That is because unlike other countries in which the media is neutral and for the most part is just informing the public about what it is happening through the country, the media in the US is partisan and the majority supports the Democrats, a small minority supports the Republicans and I have yet to find a single source that is neutral, so get used to it, whatever Biden does is going to be celebrated no matter how bad it is for the economy and whatever goes wrong will be blamed on someone else.

I don't understand this president and why he got 80 million votes. He canceled the Keystone XL pipeline that makes lots of people lost their job in this pandemic, and adding this minimum wage increase will only make the situation worse.

But the worst thing is still the media. The complete sucking up to this administration is so blatant. Biden canceled the pipe = great, Biden raise the minimum wage = awesome, The US economy tanked = that's because of Trump.

I guess he should be raising wages knowing he is adding more taxes to his constituents. Especially in times like these which thr people arr having a hard time making a living. Let's see what he dors for the better, we are waiting good news, all around the world is watching for the goodness of America and it's people.

Totally agree with you. It can not happen in just a step like that. $7.5 to $15 is 100% in increase. This firmly changes the whole situation of the country. $10 is more realistic than this one

A long process of applying new minimum wage should be held by now if BIden really wants to double it. And as you mention, this increase definitely damage different businesses and make them soon bankrupt. But the say thing is that it only impact small and medium businesses while BIG GUYS are still invulnerable.

Yes he will. It is already set. But will be gradually and will take years. US business will not suffer a bit. Companies will invest more in automation so the easiest jobs will be made by robots and people will take more complex jobs and be paid accordingly.

The minimum wage increases are just a political move and nothing more and it will continue to do so unless you could afford a normal life with that wage, as I have said before the markets decide what it is the value of things, and just like the price of bitcoin the value of our time is decided by the market, minimum wage is an attempt to create a floor for the value of human labour but the more they raise this for things that the market does not believe are worth it you will see alternative solutions being employed, so at the end those that are supposedly being helped by this measure will not be as businesses find ways to avoid paying for it.

Obviously, sooner or later, in all states, the minimum hourly wage will be $15, but if the law on increasing hourly wages is passed now, it will still gradually increase the hourly wage, as it was before. In NY and California, in my opinion, it is imperative to raise the minimum hourly wage to $18, since there are completely different living conditions, everything is much more expensive than in other states.

Well, it may depend from state to state, but from my own experience raising minimum wage never solved or even reduced financial problems in my country. It has only political marketing effect instead of practical effect in citizens lives. Actually a minimum wage isn't enough to live anywhere I suppose. A minimum wage here is about 200$ dollars and someone can't afford home, food and another basic expenses with such amount of fiat, but the minimum wage keeps increasing every new year...

In my opinion rather than increasing wages the living costs should decrease and that is possible through technology advancement and adoption, like alternative sources of energy, for an example. But the government doesn't look very interested in this kind of political platform.

Politicians for the most part do not understand or do not want to understand the economy, on the surface this may seem like a good move to help those that earn less, but you know what is it really going to happen? Businesses are going to either fire half of their staff and those that keep their jobs now need to work twice as hard, the second option is they could reduce the hours of their staff so they can pay less, or finally automate most processes and replace most of their employees as technology becomes cheaper than them, there is no way to force businesses to pay more if they do not want it and this measure could be counterproductive and produce even more unemployment in a moment where jobs are more scarce than ever.

The purchasing power changes from state to state. There are already states with 15 bucks an hour, some of them very expensive places and some of them are not so much, there are also places with under 10 dollar minimum wage, some of them again expensive while others not so much.

Basically it all comes down to public situation, could a $15 per hour increase the prices? It definitely can for some places, but doesn't have to do that in every single state, some states will just continue like nothing happened.

But this is about basically preventing starvation wages, because let's be honest 7.25 per hour is starvation, people work 39 hours a week in most cases so that companies doe not have to give full benefits, that means 1131 dollars per month, there are no states, no cities, no towns that you can live with 1131 dollars and survive, that is barely enough for food and I am not even talking about other expenses. So to justify 7.25 is not enough, because you can't justify starvation.

Yeah right, it's only 7.75$.
Multiply this by the number of workers and the days in a year and if that is peanuts to you feel free to send me that amount to my bitcoin address.
I love how people are so giving when it's not their money, but I bet you're not willing to pay somebody when it works for you that generously, typical socialist behavior, easy to talk about spending when your not spending a dime out of your own pocket.

You say so easily that business could go bankrupt, how about people not willing to work for low ages and quit their jobs and seek a better one?!
I'm willing to bet that a large number of businesses closing down ain't going to relieve the pressure on the jobs market right now, you're just adding fuel to the fire and throwing a bit of gas on your house too.


Exactly.
His whole program is aimed at buying votes from the poor while keeping them captive in their current state.
The same strategy as in 3rd world countries, poor people will be willing to vote for them on those empty promises not realizing that they will get paid twice while everything goes up in 2.5 in price. I've seen this shit so many times in Europe I'm getting tired of it.

That means passing it to Congress first.
It's not just Biden that can decide everything even if he is the president.

Congress means owners of businesses or friend of friends of business owners that will argue about it.
I doubt it will be passed that early without an economic breakdown or even if they will be bountiful for the next year.
They would rather give that stimulus check over and over rather than have a law of giving out $15 per hour which will last for a long time.

And what is the purpose of such a step? Benefit?
For example, I understand that raising the minimum level, the owners will be forced to reduce their profits and turnover funds, as well as pay more taxes, which will almost certainly lead to a wave of bankruptcies. People's incomes will grow, consumption will theoretically grow, but bankruptcies will lead to a reduction in the filling of the market with goods and services, which means there will be a shortage of goods. In one word, dubious benefits

Do not be worried about the economy of these places that had to close shop during covid, or would have to close shop during the period where they are not making money, you know why? Because if they can't afford to pay their workers 15 bucks an hour, they shouldn't be a business at all.

Can you imagine a company that bankrupts all because instead of paying 7.25 to their workers, they paid 15 bucks and that was all it took, they are all gone and they are done and they can't survive and first they lay off workers and then they bankrupt? That company should be gone anyway, why should there be companies like that? Let them get lost and there will be bigger and better places trust me.

Amazon is not even paying 15 bucks, they are paying more in many places, and they find workers in bunches, like people line up to work there, let the small unsuccessful ones go away and let their owners become amazon workers instead. That is what you get for not being capable of running with 2020 budgets and offer 1970 salaries to people.

California implemented mandatory minimum wage hikes to $13 in january 2020. With catastrophic results.

Many small US businesses are taxed and regulated so heavily. Mandatory wage hikes force them to file bankruptcy and close businesses down.

This is one of the driving forces behind residents and business owners fleeing california for other US states.

I don't really know how their system works but I know American doesn't belong to a party system, it has been either the Republicans or the Democrat.
This is about national adjustment that need so thorough investigation before they are pass on an even if they are, ot everyone would like to pass the vote in the House for the first hearing.
I love Biden but I just feel his soft feeling will cause him more harm than good

That is pure populism. The minimum wage is raised, but the costs of everything else rises proportionally, if not more than the minimum wage itself. I mean you can increase the minimum wage, but it doesn't mean you are increasing the purchasing power.

Furthermore I will give an example: if I'm a business owner and have to raise my employees' wages I will raise my services costs to customers so I can dilute this *loss* and keep my profit intact. In the end the customers (who are also earning 15$ hourly) will have to pay more for the same services they were paying cheaper before.

USA used their stimulus checks to buy enough btc and it is proven that during their phase 2, we saw so much buys from their side. If their wages will increase, so their expenditures too will not remain the same because either they will look and go for a change in their lifestyle or higher inflation will take place which will balance their new wages with the expenses they used to pay less when they had lesser wages, so an equation may be seen.

Raising the minimum wage will strongly affect the lives of everyone living in the USA, especially when they double the amount like this. This improvement deeply ameliorates the society where workers and normal citizens are given more money to spend on anything that they want and I do believe that some of them will choose to buy bitcoin.

However, we are still very far from this implementation since it is just the beginning of Biden's term. Hope that he will do a lot to change the country, most of all, repel the attack of covid-19

These sort of statements will make the Democrat base happy and Biden is only concerned about that. Any increase in minimum wage will be having a catastrophic impact on the businesses, at a time when the pandemic has wiped out most of their business. If they are forced to increase their wages, it would mean only one thing. Many of the fringe workers will lose their employment. Either the businesses will be forced to cut the strength, or they will be forced to declare bankruptcy. If implemented, this will be the most ridiculous pandemic-era policy.

IMO $15 is unrealistic, but the Democrats & Republicans can reach an agreement around $10-$11 as it's not increased for more than ten years.

$15 is too high for more of the pooper states and could lead to many business bankruptcies.

I don't think business owners will suffer huge losses from paying their employees fairly. If anything, this allows the people to have more power in their hand especially those in the borderline poverty whose forced to work for multiple jobs to make ends meet. I don't think it's unfair for them to earn more yet still fairly for a fair day's pay.

That's 100% of the present minimum wage, I think it needs to be carefully evaluated since it requires a lot of budget for that to be realized. Politicians always gives promises but sometimes not all that promises will be fulfilled once they are already setting in their position, that's the sad truth,  so let's see how this goes.

theres more than meets the eyes here. easy to say but there will be a lot of steps to go thru before this will be a reality. Jawhead already listed some of the significant factors if this will just be done in haste. so nope, i dont think they can increase the min wage in a snap. great to hear but not easy to implement. we are still in pandemic crisis, so not favourable to the employers. unless, they want to close down most of the businesses here...

Biden doesn't have the ability to raise the federal minimum wage.  It will take a new law passed by the Congress in order to do so.  The best Biden can do is advocate for it and attempt to broker a deal to get enough Republican support to pass it.  Although now that Democrats control both houses and the presidency, this is more likely than it was under Trump.

I doubt that it could go from 7.25 to 15 that easily. I feel like Bernie Saners being the head of budget committee will be a great addition to this Biden presidency, it is very easy to lose the senate, democrats won it very very difficulty even after 4 years of trump hate, we are talking about 4 years of mocking, hating, humiliating and everything you can find against someone who has committed literal crimes that would put you in federal prison if you did it as citizen, and in the end there was a storming of capitol which would have resulted with people killing elected officials (we literally saw people with zip ties to get elected officials as hostages) and yet senate is 50-50 right now.

This is a clear indication that democrats could lose senate in 2022 on the next elections, which means they have a very limited time to take the federal minimum wage higher, and if they do not act quick, they are going to fail.

I would first single out the way Biden said it (if the text is correct in OP), and these are the following words:

-"President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday said he will ask Congress.
- “There should be a national minimum wage of $15 an hour”.

I will ask someone about something, and there should be something are very common words of politicians, but in at least 90% of cases it is pure populism, because one of the skills of politics is to say what people want to hear. If it was something Biden could do without Congress or the Senate it would be a whole other matter - he has a proposal that depends on a lot of interest, and we all know that lobbying has been brought to perfection in US politics.

I wonder why go with the idea of a 100% increase right away? It is something that will definitely be approved by the workers, but how will the employers deal with it? I assume that employers have to get some tax relief or some other benefits in order to be able to pay a worker a minimum of $15 per hour - or maybe the state will co-finance workers' salaries?

The increase is doubled from the current wage, this will be make many significant factors changed in US.

1. Inflation, money will go brrrrrrr and become worthless.
2. Small business will be bankrupt soon since they can't pay the employees or fire their employees.
3. Imbalance of economy since the labor cost is changed, so they need to set new price.
4. Increasing unemployment.

Yes it should be though since USD value will be decreased due to inflation, so it's more safe convert to Bitcoin or Gold.

I will bet on the second.
If raising the minimum wage was such a good solution, why not raise it to 100$?
Everybody would be happy, have thousands of dollars to spend...on a 100$ pizza since now if the pizza boy takes 20 minutes to deliver your order just his wage before takes is 5$, not adding all the taxes and the profit the company has to make. Go to a car wash, 100$ as there are two guys taking care of your car for an hour, and suddenly you will realize that you make triple but all the prices have tripled also.

Why has all the manufacturing gone to China, Vietnam, and a lot of other countries in Southern Asia?
But no problem, now you will have more money to spend on stuff produced by others while you produce nothing but debt, how could this utopia fail?  
Germany had no minimum wage till 2014 yet people from all over the world wanted to come there to work.


Down with the kulaks and their greedy profit fueled capitalism..
But when you seek a product and it's cheaper on Amazon you forget about everything and place your order.

Socialist principles in a capitalist society can lead to negative consequences. 

In fact, enterprises will have to pay high wages to workers.  But who, amid the global economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, can guarantee high profitability to small and medium-sized businesses?  It turns out that Joe Biden's ideas are populism (destruction of the economy).  We are now seeing the destruction of the market economy in the United States. 

This will likely lead to an increase in the price of Bitcoin.

Shutting small businesses is not a great idea because they are also the ones contributing to the tax economy of every country so I don't think increasing wages won't happen all of a sudden. There are chances to increase it step by step and maybe that wage rate will be achieved in the next decade while the inflation overcomes the increase due to loss of purchase power so nothing going to be changed at all.

Welcome to socialist America. The first thing it will do is make small businesses that cannot afford the wage to fire their employees. Unemployment will rise significantly due to covid and this policy.

Well, I agree with Thomas Sowell more than leftist economists/politicians who said the minimum wage is good because his rationale was straightforward.

Increasing the minimum wage with such percentage is not a thing any government can embark on without due considerations and consideration of what the effects the increased purchasing power that will happen as a result be on the market. If care is not taken, that might result in general inflation which will in return bring about reduction in the value of money except proper policies that will absorb the cashflow the increment will cause is put in place.

We don't know and this one needed a deep study since it can possibly hurt the business profitability since not all of the company are capable to pay such huge amount to their employee's. Remember their are small businessman so before conducting a raise a proper assessment should be done since if that amount would be approved we can possibly some of the worker lose their jobs since for sure many companies will do a cost reduction and that will be the consequences of this actions.

There has been a war on small businesses. The Covid lockdown hurt small businesses more than big businesses. And now if they increase the required minimum wage it will hurt small businesses more than big ones.

Sure, why not? When it starts driving businesses into bankruptcy en masse, the Fed can just keep the printer on, keeping corporate America afloat via the bond market.

So what if zombie companies become the new norm? Japan did it.

Which means everything will become more expensive. And then the cost of living for minimum wage earners has not changed. They are now just paying more for stuff. So it cancels out whatever raise they received. And then they will just keep increasing it until we hit hyperinflation?!

Yes , because many businesses are suffered also in pandemic then if Biden did not pair for this happen many businesses are going to close and shutdown.

I dont know if Biden and her fellow partners do the promise in US but if we do, there are many bad effects to the economy of the US.
About that we dont know because if American Worker know about Bitcoin why not , if im a worker then my salary increased because of Biden promises i then i buy more Bitcoin to hold.
Yes , the increasing of wage can affect mostly in businesses , this time we need be fair to businesses and workers. Biden need to study more if what is the good in their county.

Agree, For the small companies which have a smaller margin. Many of them simply cannot afford to absorb the impact of high minimum wages. In fact there are small business owners out there who if they hire full time workers at 15 dollars an hour those workers will actually make more money than the owner. Someone said that if the government raises minimum wage too much he will shut down his cleaning business and apply for work at a larger company. But then of course he will then have to compete with hundreds of other unemployed people.

The sudden increase in wages may cause demand and supply shock and people won't be willing to do business if they aren't making enough profits.

If a country wants to shine then they need to support the entrepreneurs as well as the workers. So increasing the profits making opportunities to the owners should be done first before increasing the wages or else it will end up in a mess.

Well, Promises are just promises for the political leaders so don't have hope that will become true.

I don't think the employers of labor in the U.S. are going to suffer, the thing in business is about making profits and if the minimum wage is increased, businesses that prolly can't afford to pay all their workers that particular amount will have to make some changes, cutting down on workers is one option, or increasing the cost of the service they render to their customers, one way or another a business must make profit or else it's going to close down. So by and large, the increase is good for the workers, whilst their employers will seek a means to get the most out of this too.
Prolly those who are already Bitcoin Investors, yes, they could prolly increase their stash if they earn more money, which increases their spare cash, and it could go into buying more Bitcoin.

We are again expectant that Biden will do the most and fulfill his campaign promises. we are certain and hope that he will do his best to make policies that will put smiles on the faces of the American people. Bitcoin enthusiasts like I, hope strongly that his tenure will be super favourable for our darling btc.

US business have been in the comfort far too long, those wage raise are needed, if they are planning on increasing the taxes then they should make the wages a little bit higher, it is not a question of whether this will hurt business, it is a question of when will this abuse of labor will end, you know how tipping in restaurant services is almost a norm in the US? That is because they want to cover up the fact that they underpay their workers and abuse their labor by paying an unlivable wage for longer hours.
I do not know much about US Politics as I am not living there but one thing that I know and hopefully everyone that has reach the age of reason and rationality is that politician's promise is nothing more than just words.
I won't say that this question is stupid but this is actually a good question to be honest. My theory is if there are more money for this workers to spare, I think that they will be considering saving money or investing but with the coming administration trying to put a short leash on bitcoin, I think that it will be difficult to get a definite answer.
If the wages are made to be livable, I think that productivity will increase which is good for business because you will be able to get more product output into the market if you have a productive staff and laborers, look at Dan Price, with his company having a good wages for his workers, the productivity increased which in turn made a good profit for company. The only people who will consider increasing the wages of their workers will cost them profits are the greedy capitalist of USA, like Bezos and other uber rich businesses.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/14/biden-calls-to-raise-the-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-per-hour.html


Will the US business suffer from the increased labor costs?
Will Biden and the democrats keep their promise?
Stupid question:Will the American working class buy more Bitcoin,if they have bigger salaries?
Some economists say that the current federal minimum wage is way lower than the labor productivity,so increasing the minimum wage will lower the profits of the business,while boosting the consumption of the working class.