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Barbara Lee is running for Senate with this promise here in California. While it may be fringe absurd at this point, I would have thought the same about $20/hour minimums for restaurants passed here recently.
For decades, we've had relatively benign inflation. Thanks in part to the Fed. Thanks in part to USD dominance and thanks in part to free trade. There was also at least an attempt to keep budgets somewhat reasonably close to inflows....whereas we don't even pass a budget now. We talk about tariffs. The industrial dominance of the US has long passed and the dollar as the currency of choice for international trade, gold and oil is slipping.
When I first started working, I made minimum wage as a kid at $4.25 an hour....or $4.15, I can't recall exactly. With minimum wage already 5X that (locally) and there really not being a plethera of new markets with tons of cheap labor anymore for free markets to develop (Mexico, then Eastern Europe, then Asia). I can't help but wonder how much I should really have saved for retirement. Is retirement going to remain an option?
Are any of you planning alternatives? I'd hoped to retire in a few years, but I wouldn't have to.
If this were ever to become reality minimum wage workers would be no better off than they are today. It would REALLY kill off the senior citizens living on a fixed pension or trying to live off their investments and social security. I just checked her bio and she majored in Psychology and social work. She probably never attended a basic economics course and has no understanding of what would happen OR she is just pandering to her political base.
One thing I love about Asia is that generally cost of living is vastly cheaper than the US and they don't have minimum wage at all. You can get a meal, a ride, place to live, and entertainment all generally more affordable for all income brackets there than in the US where everything cost so much. And I've never bought anything in Asia that has a sales tax.
One thing I love about Asia is that generally cost of living is vastly cheaper than the US and they don't have minimum wage at all. You can get a meal, a ride, place to live, and entertainment all generally more affordable for all income brackets there than in the US where everything cost so much. And I've never bought anything in Asia that has a sales tax.
Not necessarily. I worked in Malaysia for 17 years and bought a house there. Paid taxes, managed programs, recruited students, met with government officials. Yeah, I was pretty embedded. Your comments about vastly cheaper and no minimum wage are simply incorrect.
In some places, wages are lower than the USA, and local food is cheaper. But if one tries to eat like a westerner, the prices are similar to that in the west. Cars are more expensive, with the government slapping a tariff on foreign cars to protect their own production, which are poorly built. Malaysia has implemented a minimum wage in many sectors.
Housing? Some live in hovels; others own mansions. It was in Malaysia where I first encountered generational mortgages: 50- to 60-year loans to make monthly mortgages affordable. In other words, a son and father, or mother and daughter would sign off on a mortgage together. That shows that wage growth has not kept up with the cost of housing.
People who haven't lived in Asia in the recent past are unaware of how quickly those countries have come up the income ladder. Singapore has a higher standard of living than most parts of the USA. If I were to try to live there, I would need a 15-20% premium on my USA salary. And for the most part, many expat packages are on the wane as locals can do the work as well as an expat.
Their language abilities far exceed ours. My friends and colleagues in Malaysia knew at least two languages fluently, and most knew 3 or 4. I eventually reached fluency in Malay, but if I had been a top level manager -which is what most expats are- I would have had to rely on a translator for several years before I could navigate the language and culture.
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