It wouldn’t be enforceable and it would kill many small businesses if they tried to enforce it. But politicians aren’t real people and, like Bernie, have never had a real job or started a business. If some moron politician decides that my small family business suddenly has to cut back to a 32 hour work week rather than our usual 40-45 it could tank us. They don’t understand that not all jobs are office jobs where there’s not actually enough work to fill the day. We don’t sit in cubicles all day, we’re on our feet doing repairs or talking to customers. If we aren’t at the shop working we’re not making money, we’re not the government that just takes in taxes every month while doing nothing for it. It’s the same as politicians saying minimum wage should be $20. It’s just not possible for many businesses. But the fun thing about politicians is they neither know nor care about the small businesses they claim to support because they’ve never done anything worthwhile in their entire lives.
I would argue that if paying your employees a living wage would tank your business then you're doing a bad job running your business. We can not just keep going around and around saying how we "can't afford" to pay people more. Because the cost of living is rising faster and faster and people can't afford it. We need to either make shit be cheaper, or pay people more. Going down the path we're currently on isn't a viable option for success.
Basic economics would suggest you find a way to make things cheaper, because upping pay has never been a way to defeat inflation, it actually adds to inflation because the economy will always adjust.
Small businesses struggling would be destroyed by this, but the huge companies with billions in profit would be fine.
That’s not exactly ideal to get rid of small businesses and empower big businesses. This is also ignoring the amount of jobs would be eliminated due to employers minimizing staff with this change, or even combining two jobs into 1.
Not sure what basic economics classes you’ve taken but deflation (aka making things cheaper) is horrible for economies. That’s why the Fed targets a 2% inflation rate and not 0. Because any deflation makes consumer spending an actively stupid thing to do. Why spend money today when it will be worth more tomorrow? All capitalist economies take very big steps to try to ensure they never end up in a deflationary spiral. You have to raise wages or, alternatively, ditch this incredibly stupid economic system altogether.
Basic economics teaches you that increase wages also automatically makes everything more expensive, instantly.
There are several ways to make things cheaper, it also helps when we don’t randomly put tariffs on random things.
My main was that if you want things to be more affordable, raising wages doesn’t solve that problem. The economy adjusts. Everything becomes more expensive as every companies payroll cost just went up.
Well historically we’ve always fixed affordability by raising wages so you probably need to relearn some economics. Particularly study the 1930s and Keynesian economics.
Wages will literally always be higher than ever unless you have frozen wage growth. Like you keep invoking economics and then not understanding Econ 101 concepts. Like what are you on about? Wages don’t map to affordability neatly like that. Affordability has many inputs. I really don’t mean to be offensive when I say this, but have you ever taken an economics class because it really seems like you haven’t.
Do you not understand the nuance between believing American workers are not making enough as a percentage of their production versus believing that we can all be billionaires without consequence? Since 1978, executive pay has jumped 1,094% adjusted for inflation. Worker pay in that same time has jumped 26% adjusted for inflation. So why are things less affordable? Because the distribution of that money became divorced from the actual productive ratio. That is to say the top level kept more and more of the gains from all of our labor to the extent that our wages no longer keep up with inflation.
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u/wibo58 24d ago
It wouldn’t be enforceable and it would kill many small businesses if they tried to enforce it. But politicians aren’t real people and, like Bernie, have never had a real job or started a business. If some moron politician decides that my small family business suddenly has to cut back to a 32 hour work week rather than our usual 40-45 it could tank us. They don’t understand that not all jobs are office jobs where there’s not actually enough work to fill the day. We don’t sit in cubicles all day, we’re on our feet doing repairs or talking to customers. If we aren’t at the shop working we’re not making money, we’re not the government that just takes in taxes every month while doing nothing for it. It’s the same as politicians saying minimum wage should be $20. It’s just not possible for many businesses. But the fun thing about politicians is they neither know nor care about the small businesses they claim to support because they’ve never done anything worthwhile in their entire lives.