General News California legislature approves minimum wage increase bill

California state Legislature approves bill to raise minimum wage - The Daily Californian

I think this is pretty good news! The minimum wage has been eight dollars for years and hasn't kept up with inflation for a while. Although, I don't think the increase is fast enough. It should be ten dollars by July 2014 and 11-12 dollars by January 2016.

California houses are pretty expensive compared to other states, especially in SoCal (where I live) since that's where most Cali residents live. If you were to take a 4 bedroom and 3 bathroom house that is 100-200k in Texas and put it in SoCal, the price would be almost 400k or even more depending on the schools.

Although, some increase is better than none at all so we would have to make do.

What do you guys think about this?

 

Wow. California's cheap compared to Canberra. :lol: The raising of the minimum wage is a good thing. Does California have much labour-intensive industry?

 

I've heard that Australia's minimum wage is about $14-16 USD ($15-17 AUD). The U.S federal minimum wage is about $7-8 dollars so yeah, we look very cheap. There's people in our country that strongly believe minimum wage increase would increase unemployment because the merchandise would be more expensive and no one would want to spend their money.

Our agricultural labor industry is very prominent in California. We provide about 80% of the fruits and vegetables for our entire country.

 

The people who are against raising minimum wage think that minimum wage should be set below poverty level to encourage people who work at KFC to get a "real job." Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-La-La land) says we should get rid of minimum wage altogether because that would "Enable businesses to hire as many people as they needed and we'd have zero unemployment!"

Don't know about you, but I'd rather not work for ten cents an hour, and the 13th Amendment bans slavery.

Then they say that companies won't hire anybody if minimum wage goes up. That only happens in America. Wal-Mart scrapped its plan to build 3 stores in Washington, DC because DC raised its minimum wage to more than $12/hour. Wal-Mart has thrived in Canada since 1994, when it bought out a chain of about 120 retail stores and converted them all into Wal-Marts. Minimum wages in Canada are:

Alberta-$9.95
BC-$10.25
Manitoba-$10.25
New Brunswick-$10.00
Newfoundland-$10.00
Northwest Territories-$10.00
Nova Scotia-$10.30
Nunavut-$11.00
Ontario-$10.25
Prince Edward Island-$10.00
Quebec-$10.15
Saskatchewan-$10.00
Yukon-$10.54

So this stuff about "We'll have to lay everybody off!" is a crock of shit.

 

Yeah. The ones who are against raising the minimum wage only think about ending unemployment and the rich people, but they don't think about the roofs over their employee's heads. The ones who think the minimum wage should be like a dollar have their minds stuck back in the 50's because that was when a dollar meant big bucks.

 

Hell, back when my parents were growing up, being a grocery bagger was a viable career option!

The problem with American corporations is the amount of pure greed. Wal-Mart turned a $15.7 billion profit in 2012, a 4.6% decrease from 2011. And they really "can't afford" to pay their employees more than $8 an hour?

Costco on the other hand pays their cashiers $11.50 an hour to start, and in five years, it's up to $19.50. Costco in 2012 made $1.7 billion in profits.

Now Republicans would whine "Wal-Mart is then losing $14 billion in profits!!!"

Well no, Costco is a lot smaller than Wal-Mart. Costco has 622 stores, Wal-Mart has 8,970 stores, whether it's Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, or otherwise. So if you multiply Costco's profit by 14.42, to roughly equal how many more stores Wal-Mart has than Costco, that would give Costco a profit of $24,514,000,000.

In other words, Costco would make MORE MONEY than Wal-Mart while still paying their employees almost DOUBLE what Wal-Mart does!

 

I'm shocked at the minimum wages you have, though the US is cheaper, on average. And AwesomGaytheist, does Wal-Mart even meet the standards set by the government, or are the government (and state governments), really so lax about workers' rights?

 

My friend who worked there says that they pay $7.80 an hour or minimum wage to start, whichever is higher. In Illinois, it's $8.25 an hour, so that's what you would make.

Workers have no rights in red states. In Wisconsin, the Republican governor Scott Walker and the Republican legislature have led an all-out assault on the public sector workers, banning collective bargaining and such, which led to a recall effort.

In the recall election, Democrats won control of the Wisconsin Senate, enough to stop Walker's agenda, however the voters were stupid enough to keep Walker in office, mainly because the Koch brothers poured millions into running pro-Walker ads.

In November, even though President Obama carried Wisconsin, the Wisconsinites have developed a case of Stockholm Syndrome, and gave control of the Senate back to the Republicans.

So now the police and firefighters who were exempted from the collective bargaining ban are also going to be stripped of their right to collectively bargain, and right to work could be up next.

That's what happened here in Michigan, in a lame-duck session, Republicans realized they had lost the votes they'd need to pass Right-To-Work-For-Less, so they rammed it through against the will of the voters. In a big GM, pro-union state.

America is one of the worst countries to work in. The "Socialism" that Americans have been trained to fear for decades would put thousands more in their bank accounts every single year.

 

I can't believe the US qualifies as a first-world nation (by the new interpretation).

 

The ones who oppose raising the minimum wage believe that it will increase unemployment, but you guys have a lower unemployment rate than we do (5% compared to 9%). Walmart pays low wages to make up for the low prices in Wal-Mart. I've heard they barely meet the requirements. But in their defense, merchandise in Australia are usually at least ten cents more expensive than the U.S. However, the higher prices do put more money in the circulation.

Worker rights really depend on what state you live in. The Western and Northeastern states are typically in favor of helping out our hourly workers. The rest of the states are either apolitical or don't give a damn (but the majority of the U.S citizens live in the Western States and Northeastern states)

Our president has pushed to increase the federal minimum wage to be $9.00, but it fails since the federal legislature couldn't get the required majority, so we have to rely on our state governments to increase the minimum wage instead.

---------- Post added 21st Sep 2013 at 06:56 PM ----------

Yeah, I have to agree. We're so behind compared to Canada, Australia, and the EU.

 

Progress.