this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025

93 points (97.0% liked)

Progressive Politics

3420 readers

288 users here now

Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)

(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

TokenBoomer@lemmy.world

Blue states should put $15 minimum wage on the ballot and ban voter purges 180 days from the election (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by DarkBluemetal@lemmy.world to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 20 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 36 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

People have been pushing for a $15 minimum wage since 2012. At this point, due to inflation since 2012, that number should be about $21.

That said, adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage has never been above $15 in 2025 dollars. It came close in the 60's. The current inflation adjusted minimum wage is getting close to the lowest it has ever been since it was first enacted.

[–] whiwake@lemmy.cafe 27 points 1 week ago

Sweetie, it’s $20 now

[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

It would need to be $25 to be what we were pushing for when we started the fight for 15.

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

yhea, as if democrats cared about people or democracy

[+] JargonWagon@lemmy.world -38 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Honestly, if minimum wage goes up, the cost of living goes up with it, putting us back to where we started. We need the cost of living to go down instead. Maybe we should force certain business sectors to be non-profit businesses, ones that match with the 4 needs: shelter, food, water, and air. If they can't profit by a large margin, then there won't be monopolies, duopolies, etc, it will create more small business competition, and the competition will hopefully drive prices down.

EDIT: Getting more attention than I expected tbh. I've lived through and experienced several minimum wage increases, and rent constantly going up. The latter is due to greedy landlords knowing they can leech another dollar off of you, so they do until you're destitute. I'm not saying that other factors can't also increase rent.

The suggestion above is meant to attack those profiting by an unnecessarily large amount, which you'd think more Lemmy users would be behind, but somehow this is being seen as "pro-billionaire" rhetoric, which it isn't. Attack the profiteering of landlords first, as well as others areas in which we need to live and get by (list above is not fully exhausted, but a good starting point imo), and then balance out cost of living with raising the minimum wage after. You raise minimum wage beforehand, you're just shifting money from the billionaire paying your paycheck to the billionaire profiting off of necessary life expenses instead.

Someone mentioned how this didn't happen in Mexico, which is interesting. I still need to read up on it and maybe see what factors contributed to rent not increasing.

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

the cost of living goes up with it, putting us back to where we started.

That's the common argument, but that's not what happened down in Mexico. They drastically raised the minimum wage (among a bunch of other reforms) and it had the result of lifting millions out of poverty in six years.

[+] JargonWagon@lemmy.world -14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

That's a fair argument. In my personal experience, California raised the minimum wage by a fair amount, but rent skyrocketed soon after so a lot of people were back at square one.

EDIT: How this got -14 points is astonishing to me lol. I need to read about why this same thing didn't happen in Mexico because that's very interesting. Are you referring to this year's minimum wage increase?

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Minimum in Texas has been the same since Obama raised it nearly 20 years ago yet rents have still gone over triple in that amount of time.

Feel free to move there if you really believe your claim.

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Landlords know they can squeeze another dollar out of you, so they do. Landlords shouldn't be able to make a massive amount of profit, if they were forced to be non-profit then they'd probably not exist at all.

If the minimum wage in Texas does go up, who's to say that the rent won't go up even more? My claim was never that "rent only goes up if minimum wage goes up" but rather "if minimum wage goes up, rent goes up too."

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Like I said, feel free to move there then. Rent went up anyway so there's no point keeping the wage low if it goes up anyway - might as well just raise wages.

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

That's still not addressing the point of combating them from being able to raise the rent further. Why not address that issue first and then raise minimum wage after? That way the minimum wage will actually be a living wage. This problem arose from 50 years of shitty legislation and shitty people abusing the system. It requires a long term solution, simply chasing after short term gains isn't good enough. What'll happen a year after the minimum wage is increased? You think the leeches in the top .1% won't try to find a way to suck every penny out of your bank account? You're just transferring the money from the billionaire you work for to another billionaire instead.

[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's weird. It's almost like greedy landlords used that as an excuse to jack up rent! I know housing skyrocketed in many places where the minimum wage remained flat. I've also personally witnessed it...

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Exactly - They know they can squeeze another dollar out of you, so they do. Landlords shouldn't be able to make a massive amount of profit, if they were forced to be non-profit then they'd probably not exist at all.

[–] Bristlecone@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is some class Stockholm syndrome shit right here

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

How so?

[–] whiwake@lemmy.cafe 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Maybe instead of blaming poor people we ought to kill billionaires

[–] MBech 10 points 1 week ago

Okay, so a lot of people don't think billionaires are the problem, so let's do it like this. We hang every single billionaire, all their money is divided fairly to all the workers who created the wealth. And then we see wether that helped people or not. If that doesn't work, we publicly appologise to the billionaires and go on with our lives as if nothing happened.

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago

Wasn't blaming poor people in my comment, so not sure where that came from.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Inflation is actually not tightly coupled to wages, it's a very small contributor compared to all other spending. As long as there's enforcement against profiteering and market collusion, and monopolies / oligopolies are broken up, you don't see immediate price prices (which is possible because average productivity per capita is going up over time)

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Wonderfully said! My point was more about attacking profiteering landlords (as well as others that really shouldn't be able to create massive profits off of like water and food) and not so much inflation. We need more enforcements like you mentioned. I was just attempting to bring up an idea of what one of those enforcements might be, and it's potential benefits. It's at -30 ish points right now, so I guess no one cares about all that.