This from one of the 2020 Democrat Presidential forerunners:
In 99% of counties in America, a person working a full-time job at the minimum wage can’t afford a 1-bedroom apartment. This is a crisis and folks deserve solutions. pic.twitter.com/W5SUlRrsG7
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) July 23, 2018
First of all, what is with the Democrats laser like focus on minimum wage workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2016 only 2.7% of the labor force received minimum wage, and half of those people were under 25 years of age. Minimum wage is earned by a small percent of workers at the beginning of their working life.
Raising the minimum wage might temporarily improve the lives of the minimum wage workers who are not laid off after the minimum wage goes up, but raising the minimum wage definitely hurts the working class people above minimum wage whose effective wages go down if they don’t get a corresponding raise. In addition is the increased cost to everyone as increased labor costs are passed on to consumers.
Really, and not to sound too cruel about it, but when it comes to the Democrats go-to “people raising a family on minimum wage” argument, why should I give a shit. Seriously, minimum wage employees are minimum wage employees because they lack the skills to do anything more valuable than minimum wage. We’re talking about people than can barely read let alone drive a nail through a 2×4. If you are in your 30’s or 40’s and raising a family and don’t have the skill set to earn more than $7.25 an hour, your life is a just a series of bad decisions and major fuck-ups. I really don’t believe that society should be restructured to accommodate the least productive among us.
But I digress…
Kamala Harris’ idea is based off a 2017 Joe Crowley bill, so now it seems that Ocasio-Cortez is only slightly more socialist than Crowley.
Taking the bill at face value, a family making less than $100,000, or $125,000 in some regions, and paying more than 30% in rent can get the additional money they pay in rent (everything above the 30%) back in their tax return. Supposedly, the highest earners will only get back 25% of the above 30% rent.
The median cost of a one bedroom apartment in New York City is $2,956/mo. In San Francisco it’s $3,334/mo. So a year’s rent is $35K – $40K. But this is aberrant. The median rent prices in Fresno and Bakersfield are $800/mo. Zillow is showing house rental prices that are on par with Huntsville only 90 minutes away in Stockton.
When I got my first job after grad school, my wife wasn’t working and my starting salary was $85K. My mortgage on a condo in the Chicago Suburbs was $1,450/mo or 20% of my pre-tax income.
So it is clear that Kamala Harris created her bill with the mindset that the norm in America is New York City and San Francisco.
I can only see one outcome of this bill: the total destruction of the housing market.
This bill will encourage people to rent way above their responsible price range because they will get back money from the goverment. At the same time it will encourage landlords to jack up prices of their rentals and then negotiate rates with tenants based upon income so the increased rental cost is payed by the government with a tax return.
Why should an owner ever sell a house when it can be used as a revenue stream by way of artificially high rental value. My mortgage is $1,500/mo. I could charge $2,500/mo to a family making $67K and they’d get a tax refund on their rent and I’d pocket $12K per year.
Irresponsible renting and inflated rental prices would make the sub-prime mortgage crisis look like a wet, sloppy fart by comparison.
This is apparently what Democrat Senators do to the housing market when they want to run for President. They propose feel-good legislation that will collapse it.
The target audience are those who aren’t good at maths and NEVER look any deeper into an issue than the sound bites they hear from CNN.
Progtards consider math raycisst. ‘Nuff said. 😀
There are other examples of Dems striving to destroy the economy. And that makes sense: they know that a good economy helps Trump, so if they can bring about a recession they figure it might help them get elected.
An example came up yesterday, when Schumer argued against support for farmers (calling it, of all things “Soviet style policies”). He’s a strong supporter of tariffs — but apparently only for the purpose of hurting people.
Sadly statistics tell us 10-15 percent of the population is at an IQ of 87[or 83 I can’t remember which] who aren’t able to join the military because they can not be a benefit to the military. Which probably means they can not learn skills above minimum wage.
“what is with the Democrats laser like focus on minimum wage workers”
It’s because a LOT of union contracts have wages indexed to the minimum wage.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/04/03/obamas-wage-compassion-means-poor-face-a-higher-effective-tax-rate-than-1-percenters/#6038a0754ea1
I think it started there, but it’s gone beyond that. They really seem to think that teenage, part-time jobs are for supporting families.
@crawford421:
Well, the Left has spent the last several generations aggressively attacking – and destroying – the American concept of family, with the result that more and more irresponsible (and usually younger) people are
popping out babies“starting families”, which they then have to find a way to support without the benefit of having built up a skill set.If you think all this isn’t intentional….
Related to this there are already people who get rental assistance who purposefully rent in high rent areas to get the most money possible but live in the shittiest properties available. For example I know of people who rent in Fairfield county and greenwich county CT because cash assistance is somewhere around $3000 a month. Guess what percentage gets spent on rent.
Also, income is related to where you live. We have a moron here in Maine ranting that workers only get 12-13 bucks an hour here and California the same jobs get 15-16. DUH, look at the cost of living in these areas. I didnt know the ones on minimum wage is only 2-3 percent.. i agree, fuk em. The idea of minimum wage was so people starting out wouldnt get screwed. Its never ment to be a “living wage” but dumbacrats base ARE dumb.
In my area they are dragging out the rent control idea again… Which sucks & doesn’t work of course… Never for a second questioning if perhaps the low income people who can’t afford to live in desirable areas should move somewhere cheaper or work harder so they could afford the rent. Oh no, solve your own problems? Not a chance.. The idiots who support & encourage them would never ask that.. They would also never mention maybe the reason there’s nowhere to live is because of their own shit Libtard policies… DACA, Rent Control, Zoning Rules, Section 8 & etc…
NOPE EVERYTHING IS WHITE SUPREMACY.
sigh…
Forethought is white supremacy.
Actually, that’s one of their claims. I’ve seen whackademics claim that “future orientation” is “white thinking”, and so thinking ahead to the probable outcomes of your actions is not something we should expect from non-whites.
And they have *gall* to call us racists!
99% of the counties in the whole country? Go to downstate Illinois, another democratic wonder state, and you can rent all kinds of places cheap. More democrat lies
I remember getting a call from a union rep a few years back (my job is represented by a union [think Janus v. AFSCME], but I’m not a member) wanting me to pledge my support for a $15/hour minimum wage, which the union supports.
I had a polite 20-minute discussion with him why it’s a terrible idea, not only because it devalues ALL OTHER UNION EMPLOYEE’S SALARIES, but because it’s not intended to be a living wage.
Two points I made: First, I said that $15/hour is a >50% increase over the current minimum wage ($9.50/hour in Oregon), and could the rest of us expect a 50% increase in our salaries to match it? The answer was “No”, with some hemming and hawing about how $15/hour was the stretch goal and not realistic (to which I followed up with, if they get $12/hour instead, could we expect a 20% increase? The answer to that was also, “No.”)
Then, I asked him when in his professional life he started making the equivalent of $15/hour (he was clearly older, so factoring inflation). He said he would have been in his mid-20s … AFTER graduating school, AFTER journeyman work, and AFTER being on the job as a professional for a few years. I then asked why employers should be expected to pay that amount to any teenager with no diploma and no experience.
In the end, I got the UNION REP to concede I had some very valid points and concerns. 😀
I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet that the whole idea of a Government-mandated minimum wage is horseshit. The economy should be supply and demand. If McDonald’s can’t get an entry-level worker to sign on at $6 an hour, because Burger King is paying $7 an hour, that’s the law of supply and demand. In order to compete, McDonald’s has to pay $7 an hour. But suppose they want to attract an above-average worker, they might pay $8 an hour to that worker. Of course, if they have plenty of good workers that are willing to start at $7, in order to have the chance of getting $8 if they measure up… well, that’s good old American competition, and supply and demand.
As an aside, our economy it ridiculously lopsided, and has been for many decades, because of the idea (of crazy economists) that inflation is good. I started working in 1969 at $1.60 an hour, which was the mandated minimum wage at the time. HORRORS! $1.60 and hour??? Well, at that time, a Big Mac cost 49 cents. A brand-new Corvette was $4,400. A freaking Lamborghini Miura was $28,000 dollars. How have things improved? Not a bit. It’s all relative in the economic world. Every time the Gummint raises the minimum wage, the price of EVERYTHING goes up.
Stupid people with no sense make laws to get themselves elected.
That’s an excellent point, I often think inflation is what is really going to do us in the in the long run.
Its just like health care-40million Americans dont have health care so lets fuk up the entire health care system so these 40 million can have health care. Its called collective punishment and libtards are famous for it