Comments by "Dennis" (@Dennis-nc3vw) on "The Case For A $20/Hour Minimum Wage" video.

"46% of the companies that hire home care workers can't find the staff" Sooo they can't even hire the number they need at $15 an hour, and that's a case for raising minimum wage to $20 an hour?
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Exactly. In Connecticut a studio apartment in Stamford is twice what it costs in Bridgeport, and those cities are only 20 minutes away. "Cost of living" varies tremendously even within a state, probably more than between them.
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Exactly, I'm so sick of this gobbledigook. No one who works in 40 hours a week should live in poverty? Hogwash, we should all be able to work zero hours a week and live like kings! Guess what? Economics is not about what should and shouldn't be. It's what works and what doesn't work.
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How about we create a world where everyone can live like a king without working at all?
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No, the solution is to motivate productivity, because only a greater abundance of goods and services will lead to greater purchasing power. And what motivates productivity? Capitalism. Leftism makes sure everyone gets a piece of the pie. Capitalism bakes more pie.
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What does "fair" even mean? That's gobbledygook. Some people don't even make tips. Who are you say what's "fair"? Your great grandfather at your age likely lived in 500 square foot house and had a life expectancy of 45 while working 50-60 hours a week. You live like a king compared to him while working less hours. Is that "fair"?
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10 years ago people would think this was a joke. Just goes to show the "Slippery Slope Fallacy" is not a fallacy at all. I am so grateful to live in Texas. Even in Austin the minimum wage here is $7.25 yet even Taco Bell pays $15.50.
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Do you think cost of living just falls out of the sky? Higher wages = higher rents because people are bidding for apartments with more money in their pockets. Why do you think it costs more to live in Manhattan than Pigsknuckle Arkansas? Also this is for the whole state of New York, isn't it? A studio apartment in Utica is probably about 20% of that.
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@Obiwancolenobi Seattle is one of the wealthiest cities in the country. A $15 minimum wage in the entirety of America is like a $45 minimum wage in Seattle.
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@Obiwancolenobi Okay, fair. But the median household income in Detroit is about 1/3rd of what is in Seattle. So a $15 minimum wage in Detroit would be like a $45 minimum wage in Seattle.
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 @Isa.esthetics If you really want to trade places with your great grandfather, you can easily afford his life style on half your salary.
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And guess what? Those states have some of the lowest homelessness in the country. New York has some of the highest, as does DC and California, all states with very high minimum wages.
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@royharper2003 Exactly, where do people think prices come from? They come from the cost of labor. Crab costs more than rice because you have to pay crab fishermen a crabton (*rimshot*) of money to do their jobs.
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@royharper2003 These people never notice the places with the highest wages always have the highest cost of living.
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Pretty sure that statistic is disingenuous and cooked up in the following way: imagine I work at a bakery and make pies. In return, I am given 1/12th of every pie I create. Now what if I make a pie three times as big. Do I deserve 3/12ths of that pie now? Because that would be 9X as much pie, not 3X as much. But they get that $22.88 number by employing what I will call the 3/12ths fallacy. A worker in 2023 already has about 3X as much purchasing power as his counter part in 1960. That's why, for example, the median house size is about twice as large as it was back then, life expectancy is about ten years longer, the percentage of income spent on food is about 1/3rd today of what it was in 1960, etc.
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Pricing everyone out of the market? What does that even mean?
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@bane3991 Why is it in the interest of landlords to charge prices customers can't afford?
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Walmart runs a profit margin of 1.1%. If Walmart paids its employees decent wages, Walmart would become more expensive or go into the red ink.
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We have gotten out of the way. Look what's happened to all the states that raised their wages. They're not one iota happier, and they have more homelessness and unemployment.
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That will never work. Where do you think "cost of living" comes from? Do you think it just falls out of the sky? Everything comes back to the price of labor. There's a reason "cost of living" is always lowest in places that pay the lowest wages.
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@monkeyking908 Companies aren't increasing wages? The Taco Bell I live near pays $15.50 now. The one I worked at only a few years ago only paid $11.00 an hour.
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@monkeyking908 What does "fighting tooth and nail" even? And less than what they used to pay? What?
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Erm, no, if we're keeping up with inflation it would be $11 an hour at most. Christ alive, the average America's salary is $35 an hour! The only way to make that minimum wage would be to put everyone's salary in a pot and divide it up equally!
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It's not magic. The cost of labor is where the price of everything comes from. Why do you think crab costs more than rice? Are people who sell crab just greedier? No, it's the fact that crab fishers demand higher salaries than rice farmers.
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There is no such thing as a "living wage." First off, the price of everything always comes down to the price of labor. Why do you think places with the highest wages are the most expensive to live in? Second, even if that weren't true, what is "living", exactly. In 1950, the life expectancy was 65, the median house size was 1000 square ft, and the average family spent 30% of their income on food. Yet we say those were "the good old days." Our perceptions of a "living wage" comes solely from how well our peers are doing.
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They have to increase in tandem. The cost of everything comes back to the cost of labor. Have you never noticed the places that pay the lowest wages (McDonalds, Walmart, etc.) offer the cheapest goods and services?
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New York has some of the country's 1) Highest homelessness 2) Highest unemployment 3) Highest minimum wage That's not a coincidence.
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No one "hoards" money, that doesn't make any sense. The closest thing billionaires due to "hoarding" is investment, which is to say they spend money on the things that let you have a job in the first place. Even if you put money in a bank account, the bank invests it.
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