Beware the Ides of March -- U.S. Politics March 2021

Sinema is fucking revolting, and that little floppy dance makes it undeniable. She needs to be primaried out of existence. Does she think she's cute in her boots and her idiotic backpack? WTF with this shit. AZ voted in Mark Kelly. They don't need this crap.

Bully pulpits work in 2020? Bully pulpits work when you've got (a) earmarks (b) a conspiratorial electorate ready to believe your messianic fantasies.

*2021 lol

It's important that Biden not rock the boat now by pressuring Manchin and Sinema, because he will need their votes on the John Lewis VRAA, public option, PRO Act and many other bills that will never make it to the Senate floor because of the filibuster.

xps look i'm mad at sinema too but can we dial back the misogyny a notch or two

so last weekend i was in a very small town in the southern utah desert. there is a coffee shop there that has managed to survive over the past 15 years. it's a mom and pop store. they made a point to be very friendly to us (a gay couple) and were a delight to talk to. i asked how business was over the last year and they said that they were holding on, but one thing that would absolutely shut them down would be a $15 minimum wage. she said that she believed people should be paid that but that they wouldn't survive it. i know we all hate small business owners but it would truly be a travesty if this coffee shop in green river utah were gone. do yee oh wise ones of ilx have a response to this kind of scenario.

one would think you could still put public pressure on senators in states where these objectives poll extremely well (i.e., all of them. literally every single state), but it’s possible that people are so inured to the failure of our elected leaders to actually govern that they figure hey why bother.
extremely bad look though imo.

Low wage workers put their money directly into the economy, an actual 'rising tide lifts all boats' scenario because now more people can afford a $5 cup of coffee.

A $15 minimum wage increase would come over the course of four years, allowing the coffee shop owner's circumstances to adjust, with predictable increases going forward. (I'd also be incredibly surprised if a coffee shop's labor costs weren't well behind raw materials, utilities and rent in expenses.)

xpost yeah if you can’t pay an employee then do the work yourself

Part of the reason our economy is perpetually on the verge of crisis is that half the country doesn't have money to spend unless they use credit cards with usurious rates of interest.

ty milo

Part of the reason our economy is perpetually on the verge of crisis is that half the country spends all their money on chai lattes, iirc

i asked how business was over the last year and they said that they were holding on, but one thing that would absolutely shut them down would be a $15 minimum wage.

My problem is that this has so long been a knee-jerk response to any call for increasing the minimum wage from "small" business owners that it is really hard to take seriously at this point. Undoubtedly it may be true in some cases, but I need more than just because it might be hard for them to figure out, tbqh.

The important part of the minimum wage missing in most discussions: you're not required to pay the $15 now or else shut down! It's phased in over a few years.

i knwo a non-zero amount of people whose daily livelihoods equals foreclosing their futures to scrape by today.

it was even worse when credit cards were allowed to charge overlimit fees. that shit used to put me in a cycle I couldn't escape when I was in college, to where I couldn't afford my books one semester

I was working construction when gas prices hit $4.25 regularly, doubling the price per gallon for work trucks that didn't get amazing fuel economy left a lot of contractors queasy on a lot of nights.

If the minimum wage had risen $.50 per year for the last two decades, that kind of shock wouldn't be an issue.

(The White House seems to be floating a desire to bring Republicans to the table for less than $15 (lol but maybe) but anyone who defends that should be heaped with abuse.)

Fwiw, map, I'm not trying to shut you down or dismiss the very real fears for small business owners. It's more that we've just heard that from so many business owners (legit small ones and "small" ones that use it as an excuse) with the intention of ending any and all discussion about giving people a reasonable living wage that it grates to hear it, no matter the intention. The answer, unfortunately, is to not base the decision on the businesses operating on the slimmest of margins, no matter how much we may all have examples of those we want to survive.

Low wage workers put their money directly into the economy, an actual 'rising tide lifts all boats' scenario because now more people can afford a $5 cup of coffee.

A $15 minimum wage increase would come over the course of four years, allowing the coffee shop owner's circumstances to adjust, with predictable increases going forward. (I'd also be incredibly surprised if a coffee shop's labor costs weren't well behind raw materials, utilities and rent in expenses.)

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Friday, March 5, 2021 8:00 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm realizing there is also a vicious trap that these tourist towns get into where they just rely more and more on a tourist economy, pay transient workers and no one roots down to develop the *actual* on-the-ground economy of the town. sort of similar to boom and bust of extraction economies. if businesses are paying their employees suddenly more people can afford to live and spend in the town without needing to be a wfh-er.

xp i don't care if you want to shut me down or not jon but tbh you aren't engaging with my question by offering a substantive response, just a glib one

like i was asking, what would you say to this person - pretty sure "we're sick of worrying about you" is a shitty thing that you would never have the guts to actually say to anyone irl

Sen. Maggie Hassan wouldn’t answer when I asked her why she voted against an effort to raise wage to $15. “I have long been supportive of increasing the minimum wage,” she said.

I asked her what was wrong with this one, and her aide interjected and said she’s late for a meeting

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 5, 2021

Veep energy

If the filibuster stays intact, which seems all too likely rn, then any increase in the minimum wage would require Republican votes. While I recognize the force of the argument that inadequate stopgap measures diminish momentum toward a genuinely workable solution, I think there are millions of workers mired in minimum wage jobs who'd accept an inadequate raise in wages as a very good thing, even if it's only to $10/hr.

As many of us have experienced, when you live hand to mouth, every dollar you earn has a vital purpose to perform at once. For anyone in that position, the argument that the strategy should be $15 or bust, even after you know $15 is a dead letter for two more years at least, is going to be met with incredulity.

xpost - I never said I was "sick of worrying" about folks like that. Nor is that remotely the truth. I want to improve our system for everyone, so no one has to teeter on those margins.

I don't think it's "glib" to point out that we can't just give up on a livable minimum wage because it might hurt some businesses. Of course it sucks to lose more independent, small family run businesses and I absolutely sympathize with someone who might be on the verge of losing their dream. But I don't have the answer.

Fuck off, aimless

no thanks. perhaps you'd like to.

Manchin having a fucking great time being a shitty ass attention whore, huh?

sorry haven't been able to follow much today

If your dream relies on rock-bottom wages for your employees, it’s actually a nightmare.

I don't know I'm so angry about map's response, but jfc. I grew up and lived in small towns most of my life so I don't need to be condescended to about the value of small town businesses.

But for fuck's sake, I'm not going to say, "gee, sorry 608,000 factory workers, you guys can't get a livable wage because Joe from Joe's cafe says he can't pay his two part time high schoolers $15 an hour."

The fallacy here is that small businesses and Fortune 500 companies absolutely need to be treated the same.

If you can't afford to run a business without underpaying your workers, you can't afford to run a business. Even if you're a nice old couple who's friendly to visiting gay couples.

How is that a fallacy? So the single mom working at a McDonald’s franchise or coffee shop needs a pay increase less than a AT&T worker?

unperson otm

i know we all hate small business owners but it would truly be a travesty if this coffee shop in green river utah were gone. do yee oh wise ones of ilx have a response to this kind of scenario.

― map ca. 1890 (map), Friday, March 5, 2021 7:56 PM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've had this convo with small business owners and I don't have the answers either. They look at their thin margins and feel attacked by the messaging that they're not paying people an honest wage and ultimately they have to take home less in their own pocket. I do want to acknowledge that if you thought that was a good business model, to some degree it’s because you were told it was. You learned it and watched others be called successful for doing it. It doesn't mean you "failed." It might mean that your business model is flawed though, and artificially expanded beyond its capabilities.

The fallacy here is that small businesses and Fortune 500 companies absolutely need to be treated the same.

But the minute you start carving out exceptions for the "little guys", the big guys immediately figure out how to utilize the loopholes to their advantage so they can continue underpaying their workers.

A guy who owned a deli/catering businesses where all his workers are either family members or Latinx immigrants, told me angrily that if min wage went up to $15, he would have to pay the dishwashers 15, and then the more valuable employees would need to get THEIR wages raised, and pretty soon he'd be out of business. I mean, I hear what he's saying but also his Latinx employees' kids were the demographic of 30% of my school and a lot of them were living in circumstances that "small business owners" would never consider living in to save money.

suzy otm.

some small businesses will go bust - not that many, per the analysis i linked upthread - but small businesses go bust every day of the year.

there’s also this paper, which rounds up a recent wave of research into the effect of the minimum wage on low-wage employment: https://cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf

It’s called “Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?” and it’s from 2013.

it notes that “The employment effect of the minimum wage is one of the most studied topics in all of economics.”

The knock on effect is a big part of why Biden’s desire to negotiate down with Republicans is an unacceptable failure. $15 in four years ultimately changes the lives of half the working population of the country.

How is that a fallacy? So the single mom working at a McDonald’s franchise or coffee shop needs a pay increase less than a AT&T worker?

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Friday, March 5, 2021 3:44 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was not talking about workers.

Just the companies they work for? There is no fallacy in treating small businesses and Fortune 500 companies the same when it comes to labor law.

SMEs can be provided with relief to cushion for the increase in wages.

They already have that relief, a multi-year phase in. Paying businesses directly to 'cushion' their labor costs and hoping they pass it on is just socializing risk and privatizing profit once more - and immediately falls prey to evasion by large businesses who want to get that free money.

AT&T needs a multi-year phase in? Ok.

Yes, that's what I said, exactly.

Well if small businesses need a multi-year phase in, I would argue some corporations don't. Hence, there's a difference of treatment between SMEs and large corporations/businesses.

I'm just going to repeat what I keep on repeating: nothing less than $15 is acceptable, and even that amount is much too low. $20 should be the figure that we should be fighting over, as has been mentioned numerous times.

Nothing that any sMaLl bUsInEsS oWnERs say changes that, nothing that anyone says changes that.

If you can't afford to pay your workers a living wage, then you and your business can get fucked. Period.

What if you can't afford your workers a living wage because overall workers aren't paid enough to buy enough of your services/products?

volume =! margin

There are about 10 posts answering that particular concern-troll in the last 50 posts.

The way to avoid this exact scenario was to flip at least 1-2 more Senate seats in November. We didn't, so here we are.

Want to lessen Manchin/Sinema's power? Flip more seats.https://t.co/RBZCw4GCNi

— Charles #GetCovered-ba (@charles_gaba) March 5, 2021

Feel like now is not the right time to play the "give us money so we can have a majority so good things can happen" card, since they have a majority.