Advocates make case for $15 minimum wage in Minneapolis (St. Paul, Bloomington: city hall, job market)

[Arushan]

Supporters of a $15 minimum wage in Minneapolis say they plan on delivering 20,000 signatures to City Hall this week in hopes of putting the measure on the ballot this fall.

Advocates make case for $15 minimum wage in Minneapolis | Southwest Journal

What's your take? Too high given the COL? Or needed?

[MN_Ski]

Wage increase, definitely.

$15 an hour, not yet.

The COL in Minneapolis is so low compared to many other major cities. I also found that there are plenty of well paying entry level jobs out there for people who look for them. Seriously, the job market and COL are so great in Minnesota.

If this was a coastal city, or a city experiencing a major surge in COL from economic boom (Houston, Austin, Denver, SF, NY, etc) I would say totally...but it's Minneapolis, and I feel like most people don't realize just how great they have it there.

[Citykid3785]

I'm in favor of high wages, I'm not in favor of a government dictated wage mandate. The market should determine the appropriate wage. If $8.25 is really such an atrocity, then no one would apply for those jobs and business owners would need to raise wages to fill positions. I feel like we have seen some of this. Even if I quit my white collar job today, I could still find hourly jobs that pay well above minimum wage.

Out of curiosity, and this is a genuine question.....who are these people that are working for minimum wage? Can they genuinely not find a job that pays $10-12/hr instead, because everywhere I go has a "help wanted" sign nowadays?

[Glenfield]

Now that we've basically eliminated jobs for teens we might as well destroy the job market for poor people, too. If Minneapolis raises its minimum wage, employers who can will move to St Paul or the suburbs. Service jobs will be eliminated and replaced with self service kiosks. And why stop at $15? Why not raise it to $20 or $25 an hour? What's the case against raising it to $30?

[pvoyd]

Originally Posted by Citykid3785

I'm in favor of high wages, I'm not in favor of a government dictated wage mandate. The market should determine the appropriate wage. If $8.25 is really such an atrocity, then no one would apply for those jobs and business owners would need to raise wages to fill positions. I feel like we have seen some of this. Even if I quit my white collar job today, I could still find hourly jobs that pay well above minimum wage.

Out of curiosity, and this is a genuine question.....who are these people that are working for minimum wage? Can they genuinely not find a job that pays $10-12/hr instead, because everywhere I go has a "help wanted" sign nowadays?

My 15-year old sun has a summer service job paying minimum wage. It was very difficult for him to get it - applied at many places, got few interviews. Got the job through a connection - a friend's coworker was hiring.

[rcsteiner]

I'm sure this will be implemented in a slow phased approach as it has been in many (if not all) locales.

[MplsTodd]

I agree that there is a major problem with livable wages in this country. However, I think it would be foolish to enact such a significant increase in wages only in Minneapolis. A phase-in to $12.00 may be better, if enacted on a metro-wide basis. Because the proposal is is only on a municipal level, as Glenfield pointed out above, this will just encourage businesses to relocate or expand in localities not subject to such a minimum wage, be it in Edina, Bloomington or St. Paul, or Sioux Falls, or Monterey, Mexico!
The amount of the increase could also lead to elimination of lots of jobs, as firms elect to automate rather than use people. I think automation (and all its associated trends such as e-commerce supplanting stores, driverless cars threatening truck drivers) along with globalization is the primary source of economic stress in our society. Apps, robots, and technology are now so productive that it has rendered large swaths of our labor force as surplus labor. Most of the wealth generated by all this technology accumulates to the shareholders, owners and employees of Silicon Valley tech firms.

20- 50 years ago, if one lacked a strong education, it was still possible to get a decent wage by working in a factory. While, these options do still exist, they are much harder to find in today's economy.
I can't say that I have a good solution to this problem. Perhaps a transition tax on apps or new technology may slow the transformation and allow new jobs to be identified.

[Eli34]

Originally Posted by Citykid3785

If $8.25 is really such an atrocity, then no one would apply for those jobs and business owners would need to raise wages to fill positions.

And what, starve? People work for minimum wage because they have no choice. The government is there to make sure they get paid fairly for the exchange of their labor. And the wages are set according to inflation and minimum amount needed to live.

If Employers can't afford to pay their employees a fair wage, then they really shouldn't be in business. For example Wal-Mart, they pay low wages and many of their employees are dependent on gov't services to make ends meet. That's a burden on tax payers. Paying decent wages is the cost of doing business in a first world, democratic civilization. If they don't like it, they can move to Mexico or China where their workers are treated like garbage.

[Minntoaz]

That'll be fun to watch many businesses go under...

You want nearly the double the national minimum wage... get a skill, get a trade or get a worthwhile degree.

I just don't understand how all of a sudden it is just expected that minimum wage should be increased. Was there some gold star awarded to the minimum wage workers that I was unaware of? Did they all get credentials that we should increase their pay?

As I'm sitting here after working my butt off to get a good education I'm supposed to be okay with people just for the sake of entitlement, getting a raise? No.

If you want to use the intellectual capacity argument let's talk about a family friend who is an HVAC (heating ventilation air conditioning) repair guy who rakes in money... The guy is hilarious but not the brightest bulb. That's neither here nor there as he made a wiser choice than most folks and went to trade school. Anyone can afford a trade school.

So what is the excuse now?

[pvoyd]

Will the workers who currently make $15/hour get a proportional (about 50%) raise as well?

Will the city of Minneapolis lower the property taxes on businesses to compensate for the extra wage expense?