03/02/2021
With Biden’s admin focusing on quite a few things, I wanted to explore the $15 minimum wage arguments and policies.
Like a lot of political arguments in the US, minimum wage seems to cycle in and out and honestly, I’m tired of seeing the same arguments over and over again.
Personal goals/questions I want to explore/answer:
Examine who benefits from the increase.
Would a higher wage mean decreasing subsidies in programs like SNAP and WIC? Is that more effective at cutting government spending than paying low wages?
How would this increase really affect businesses bottom lines? Is it as impactful as some say? How do businesses adjust during normal times and what are generally their biggest expenses? What are the costs they face for offering health insurance and why?
How would wages impact national inflation? Would it lead to disinflation instead? Why/why not? Are people immediately thinking of hyperinflation? What factors lead to hyperinflation?
Should the federal mandate leave it up to states to exert implementation? What are some things we’ve done that with in the past and are those fair comparisons? Why are certain states perpetually poor and what decisions are they making at a local level or is it something else?
Who is really deciding the value of human labor and why isn’t it the workers?
How do landlords feel about cost of living and how do they set their prices? If they set their prices to something like rent should be 30% of your yearly income, why isn’t that a guideline for the government?
What’s the state of the economy pre-Covid in terms of average wages, commutes, income strata in the US, it’s make up, and how does that all look in a Venm diagram?
Job markets: what do they look like and how many people are underemployed in the US economy?
And more I probably haven’t thought of.
