Originally posted by heckinglovato

The $15 minimum wage is totally conceivable, everywhere.

In many of those places where the $15 minimum wage plan has been planned to be implemented over the course of the next few years, it’s been shown that the cost of living there would even command way more by the time they’re fully implemented (in some of these cases, a $15 minimum wage is even way too low right now, and needs to be higher).

My problem with people opposing the $15 minimum wage is that many of their concerns are just too late to be taken care of right now, and many of them just lack the deep understanding of the fact that a federal minimum wage will not be adopted at the same time rates in all regions across the country, and certainly won’t be adopted in tight periods that would wreck the economy in places with low income rates.

Let’s be as objective as possible and go straight to employment: on this aspect of the argument, we’re backed by the facts and statistics, which seemingly show that big increases in local wage floors has absolutely no discernible effect on employment; not positive, not negative, but essentially no effect. From a very unbiased point of view, this is more than enough to assure that while there will probably be more negative aftermath about a minimum wage implementation on a federal level, yet it won’t be resounding enough to originate major concern right now. Even giant American multinational investment banking firms like Goldman Sachs have come out to admit that economic literature hasn’t discovered any passive or negative effects of raising the wage floor in past times, and the only way to be able to note out large-scale concerns is if we actually begin to put the increase into action.

The fluidity of a minimum wage increase strategy needs to be recognized; $15 an hour won’t be achieved at the same intervals of time in Arkansas as it would in Connecticut, adjustments to the federal plan will most definitely be made once analysts and statisticians weigh in when proposals are being set. Different adjustments would also take care of the type of businesses the increase is targeting, including setting different standards for how many employees an enterprise can have before being eligible to comply under the act. For example, in New York, the law that was recently passed would affect business with 10+ workers, that number should be altered to suit different areas with different economic abilities.

My main issue is, In places like Rural West Virginia, one of the poorest in the country, a single parent with a child would still need an average hourly wage of $19.5-$20, minorities and women there would need to work for like, double, triple, quadruple the time they do now in order to get to that living wage. Even single individual adults with no children in Rural Georgia, a very poor region as well, are on the verge of crossing the $15 hourly wage needed for a “modest yet adequate standard of living”, according to EPI. Let’s not even get into places like VA Suburbs, Burlington VT, Massachusetts Metro area, etc. where a single adult needs something along the lines of $18-$19 an hour, $33 if they have a child and that is IF they work 40 hours a week (if we go by the current average working hours, the numbers may surge to as high as $22 for a single individual, $41 if they have a child in those kinds of wealthy places). So now, to shift away from the highly-opinionated altercations and back-and-forth bickering between standpoints, let’s just recognize that the current inevitable demand for a $15 federal minimum wage increase is gradually leaving no more room for economists to get into further argumentations on the issue, but rather have legislators and executives work into consensus to find the most sensible adjustments to the $15 policy in different areas of the country and begin trying out an arrangement that is unavoidably needed so that the damages in the working class are less prominent over the next years, so that an average family in an average state like Oregon isn’t struggling with an average of 30k yearly deficit in needed income to secure a "modest yet adequate" standard of living. It’s just too late for this, that’s my take on it.