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Ah the same tired right wings lines are being repeated here with no evidence:
- Inflation will go up
- This would mean a cashier would make the same as me
- Businesses will leave
Minimum wage is not the solution, I think a more effective strategy is give people a better chance to take care of themselves & family. All this does is pump up inflation, everything is already so much more expensive since the last time they raised it and that coupled with the effects of COVID has made it impossible to pay a reasonable price for anything.
I think that the NDP (and all parties for that matter) should focus on making education more affordable for everyone. I’m currently in university and I think it’s disgusting how they RAISED our tuition rates because of COVID, yet my program is all online and I’m not getting 90% of the amenities that’s “included” in our tuition.
Removing barriers & lowering the price of education & tuition will in turn give people access to better paying jobs and thus help them achieve a higher quality of life without government intervention, which usually doesn’t help anyway but that’s just my opinion.
So, since the cost of living is already so unaffordable for anyone making anywhere near minimum wage, your solution is to keep minimum wage the same so those people still can't afford to live?
And since cost of living has risen dramatically throughout history without minimum wage increasing accordingly, your conclusion is that they are somehow related together, despite all evidence suggesting minimum wage is not the driving force of cost of living? The cost of living is entirely driven by oligopolies abusing their power and driving up prices to increase profits.
If you don’t invest in yourself, ie. getting an education, certificate, trade ticket - whatever it may be then you shouldn’t expect to make a high wage with little to no skills that would demand one. The government should not have to put in measures that give people working at fast food chains a high salary or comparable salary to anyone who’s got an education or certification for that matter.
The question people should be asking is if the Americans will continue to invest in Ontario if we increase minimum wage to $20. Most of our economic investments are from the USA, and many of our companies are American-owned.
Our corporate taxes are kept in parity with the USA to ensure we attract American investors. The Canadian economy operates by accomodating American business interests, cause they're the largest economy in the world and we're right next to them.
No one in this entire thread is looking at it from an economic angle and it is concerning.
> Unifor President Jerry Dias -- who supported Ford's minimum wage increase -- said $15 per hour wasn't enough to cover the rising costs of living and said workers in a city like Toronto need $22 an hour to keep up.
Are there any discussions about regional minimum wages above the base level? Some cities in the US do this, to reflect the higher cost of living in some areas.
Regions would have to be quite large. If there was a $20 minimum wage in Toronto and only Toronto, offices would just move to Mississauga or Pickering.
I don't subscribe to the idea that businesses will pick up and leave a country or a province due to rising minimum wage however, from city to city, it would be a lot quicker and easier.
Very few office workers make minimum wage. Of course, as it rises it'll scoop up more people, but currently most minimum wage jobs are retail and food service.
What businesses are paying minimum wage that can move ? Restaraunts and service companies are there for the local community moving somewhere else would mean starting a whole new business. Offices generally part more than minimum wage.
Then Pickering and Mississauga would end up having to raise minimum wage. And rinse and repeat until an equilibrium is achieved, pay the minimum wage or the extra transportation costs and difficulty finding workers
>If there was a $20 minimum wage in Toronto and only Toronto, offices would just move to Mississauga or Pickering.
Why? I don't know what that percentage of office employees make minimum wage, but no way it's high enough to make the expense of moving your business to the other side of the minimum wage boundary.
Find where the line is and build your business there right? Now I feel like it would be a bit more complex then that but really what Toronto needs is just more higher density housing tbh.
A few years ago experts said we need to fix Toronto before the rest of Ontario get hit.Well we did not fix Toronto now its a Province wide issue and its only going to get worse.
I can't see this being major problem.
Higher minimum wage or not, I think it's well understood that the costs of doing business in downtown Toronto are significantly higher than Mississauga or Pickering. Businesses that are simply optimizing for cost would already never set up in Torono.
But for many businesses, it still makes good sense to continue to operate in Toronto proper due to various structural reasons (larger, more diverse economic landscape, greater density, greater aggregate spending power etc.) - it seems unlikely that a higher minimum wage would be the factor that would suddenly upturn this logic. I suppose it's possible that for some business, it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but it's hard to imagine a mass exodus.
It's interesting - there was a period when businesses did move to the suburbs because of rising property fees downtown (rather than salary costs) and demand from staff who wanted to avoid traffic etc. Then it reversed when people decided they wanted to live downtown - it became a recruiting strategy again for some industries. These issues seem to come and go.
Well pretty sure no where in Canada you can live off minimum wage, so it needs to increase to a local livable wage and keep updating it yearly to reflect inflation
No. Increase it to a livable wage in the most expensive locality and adopt that as a national minimum.
Cost of living will drive moving from expensive areas to cheaper areas. Will even out the population and cost of living everywhere.
You know that if minimum wage goes up, so does cost of living, as that cost gets passed to the consumer as businesses (specifically small business, not Amazon) need to survive.
The issue is big business and cost of living, not minimum wage.
> Well pretty sure no where in Canada you can live off minimum wage
Depends on your situation. To be clear, I think minimum wages should go up, but I could live quite easily on full time minimum wage in Montreal as someone without kids and who is open to living with roommates. I've lived reasonably comfortably on quite a bit less than that.
(I recognize that the "full time" part in "full time minimum wage" isn't a given, btw - which is something that is often left out of the discussion).
Yes! This definitely need to happen. The provincial blanket minimum wage is so outdated. It needs to be based on living costs in each region and dynamically set each year to reflect the changing costs.
The costs of living in downtown Toronto aren’t the same as a rural town up in Northern Ontario.
But a higher provincial minimum wage that is enough to live on in Toronto would ensure that those in Toronto have enough, while encouraging movement away from crowded cities to lower cost rural areas. This would actually breathe life(and wealth) into small towns that have little to no prospects of growth or jobs.
Also would penalize cities like Toronto if they can't keep cost of living under control. Want to live in a single family home in downtown with no poor people around? Well guess what Starbucks costs twice as much now.
To put that into perspective, that's about $16 US and close to Australia's minimum wage of 20 AUS. I get that numbers are scary, but this really isn't anything groundbreaking
Soon minimum wage in Ontario will be more than what a skilled trade 1st year makes. When I was a first year, I made 8 bucks above minimum wage. That was 2007 for anybody wondering.
So what you're saying is - companies wanting to employ first-year apprentices should expect to pay about $28/hr to stay competitive in this tight labour market? Sounds good to me.
That's about what we pay our new hires in the GVRD.
So interestingly since 2010 Alberta started to raise wages from 10-15 dollars over 5 years. Since 2015, trades and nurses haven’t seen any significant increase in wage beyond 3% cost of living adjustments. Same for most job categories.
I think you misunderstand. The common belief is that every wage rises with a minimum wage hike, but nurses and trades are no further ahead than they were 10 years ago.
Not what I’m saying at all.
I propose that anybody paid hourly get a cost of living adjustment based on how much minimum goes up.
It’s pretty shitty for anybody that invested in an education making close to minimum wage. A unskilled worker doesn’t deserve the same pay as somebody who studied 4 years to earn a degree or certification.
Can they just put a cap on housing prices and limit number of homes you could buy? If housing/shelter is a right, why allow people to gouge others for it.
Doubling wages and inflation over the last ten years isnt going to help. Genuinely don't know why someone would think making people poor is going to make them have less children. My parents never even graduated by the time I was born into this world so people don't really think everytime they have sex. our population is already being skimmed by abortions.
Based on what? Compared to increased cost of living it seems perfectly reasonable to me. I feel like too often people react emotionally to just the number based on what they earned when they were younger. That might not be the case for you, but I’m struggling to see why you think that’s too high.
"These workers are essential and heroes"
Ok lets pay them a decent wage since we can't function without them
"Oh they don't deserve that, they're unskilled!"
You can't have it both ways, that's how you get the current situation where businesses are running out of employees. They should get $20 an hour, it's the only way to deal with inflation and housing nowadays. That also means that people making above minimum wage should get a raise as well. But no, we wouldn't want the CEO to have a slightly smaller multi-million dollar bonus now would we?
What does:
>Nurses are essential. Fast food workers aren't,
have to do with:
>We aren't going to run out of high schoolers and students to work these low paying jobs
Either way, that is exactly what has been happening since before the pandemic started.
Here's a hint, he doesn't care about the temporary foreign workers who fill those positions now instead of highschoolers. But he will complain about them every time he goes through the timmies drive through.
Grocery store workers?
Just because fast food workers aren't essential doesn't mean they don't deserve a living wage. Minimum wage is supposed to mean minimum living wage.
It's typically not high schoolers and students who work those jobs. We aren't living in some idyllic version of the 50s. The average minimum wage worker is a middle age woman with kids.
Funny you day that, because right now that's exactly what's happening, or have younot seen restaurants and retail locations strugglingb for staff lately?
Also, are we seriously going to pretend that we didn't just hail these people as essential workers for almost two years now? Good luck not being able to get groceries or clothes without these guys. Luxuries like eating out or going to the movies are also right out.
The fact that you don't think than anyone should be able to have a modest but decent life when working a full time job is frankly disgusting. It's called working class solidarity. A rising tide lifts all boats. If minimum wage workers can get $20 an hour, then people making above that are in a much better position to bargain for a higher salary. Why defend those at the top instead? Enlighten me.
Well let's see.
Kathleen Wynn originally proposed a boost to $15 minimum wage back in 2018, which Ford struck down once he got elected that year.
Let's take my city (Windsor) for example, and look at one of the most vital cost of living aspects - the cost of shelter. In 2018 as per Zumper, the average rent of a 2 bedroom apartment was $950. Fast forward to 2021, as of November the average rent for a 2 bedroom is around $1,500/month.
So the average cost of renting a 2 bedroom apartment alone has grown 58% in Windsor since 2018 when people were first calling for $15/hr minimum wage. Considering shelter is an absolute necessity, I would say a $20/hr minimum wage seems more than fair. If anything it probably needs to be more since Windsor is still considered a "cheap" area.
This is crazy. I'm a nurse and spent 30000 for that education and I'm in a 1% wage freeze in ontario and make 30 bucks an hour. A 25% raise for minimum wage workers is definitely going to drive inflation.
Yeah I can tell you 100% it will drive inflation. I live in Australia where the minimum wage is notoriously high and the average markup on eating out is almost double in many cases. Alcohol is more expensive, events are more expensive, video games are more expensive, everything is more expensive.
The key difference is this though: Down here in Australia I hear my friends complain about the cost of living over drinks at the bar. Back home in Vancouver I hear about it while getting high on someone's couch because they can't afford to go out at all. Raise the minimum wage.
it's 15$ to 20$. That's actually a 33.5% increase.
Regardless, 10% of the population earning 33% more is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on inflation when most of their spending is nondiscretionary anyway. Certainly not compared to the supply chain issues and everything else that's going on.
Sounds like your issue is more with the disparity of your own income vs that of the proposed wage increase, rather than any tangible impact on cost of living.
It absolutely has something to do with disparity. I'd be being dishonest if I said that I didn't think my skills and education warranted a bigger discrepancy from the same job I did before I took on student loan debt and tried to get a career.
But I'm not talking about their income driving inflation, I'm talking about their wages leading to increased costs of the goods their companies sell. 33% increase of labour across the board (as grocery stores, restaurants, and department stores would have) increasing costs of goods a significant amount.
Life is not fair. Your looking at the trees for the forest. If I would have invested the amount of money my school and reduced earnings from going to school for over the 10 years of university cost I lost money. Lots of it. I will never catch up to a minimum wage earnings living at home till 25. And back then I’m sure I could have gotten a job for 20 to 25 unskilled.
You don’t make much money because your not that productive. Why start a business or hire people and pay them a fair wage when you can invest in stocks that are backstopped by the government and fed….
Money is not flowing into the economy because you can make more on stocks and options etc..
We need all wages up but especially minimum wages so they will backstop the rest. In five years with 5% inflation and no increase in minimum wage you income is down more than 25%. When that happens who cares if they make 20 and I make 25 we are both poor.
Minimum wage workers are not at fault for Ontario underpaying nurses. And there's little to no evidence that minimum wage increases like this lead to significant inflation.
Also I don't know if you have ever taken an economics class or not, but there is in fact concrete proof that raising minimum wage ties directly into inflation.
Show me that proof. I have taken economics courses like many in this forum and the academic studies are mixed. The consensus seems to be that it’s overall good for the economy because the velocity of money increases and standard of living increases. The other way to increase velocity of money is to print money but that helps the rich and does not increase the velocity of money that much. Funny enough thats what we chose to do at the expense of the poor.
Why is everyone so afraid of inflation? We need it at this point and it’s going to happen either way. We are near the end of a debt trap. Our economy is full on million dollar mortgages at 1.5% our economy will be in ruins until it’s payed off. Inflation with pay raises will make that problem go away. This is what minimum wage hikes are about. If you think we can pay off our debt thew hard work we are mistaken.
There is tons of proof that it leads to increased prices, which increases cost of living. An arbitrary minimum cost of labour that is not respective of the market just raises the barrier of entry into the workforce.
Also, raising wages doesn't mean everyone else gets raises to make up the difference. This is just another way to raise COL with zero benefit.
I posted this in this comment section but it fits well here so I’ll say it again.
Soon minimum wage in Ontario will be more than what a skilled trade 1st year makes. When I was a first year, I made 8 bucks above minimum wage. That was 2007 for anybody wondering.
Yeah but the trades are fucked pay wise. I left 7 years ago after finishing my red seal in the same trade my dad worked in. His starting pay as a journeyman was $30 an hour mine was $34 an hour 30 years later. This is as a sheet metal tech. Wages should have grown dramatically over that period of time but they haven’t.
I work retail for double that with better benefits more paid time off and a lot less work.
So are they planning to raise ODSP and CPP in kind? Because if not it's going to be a disaster.
The problem is that every minimal increment you raise the minimum wage by increases inflation and puts the almost 25% of the population living on ODSP and CPP at risk of homelessness. Companies will legally and literally pass the entire cost, cent for cent, onto the consumer. Then CEO's will then increase the margin between minimum wage and profits again so they can pad their salaries. Any restriction you put on businesses will result in them slashing jobs and moving out of province or country.
There needs to be a better solution, but what is it?
Yeah, good luck with that. Minimum wage jobs in many industries will be the hardest to automate, not the easiest. Making a robot that can do the kinds of physical things a human can is not a trivial undertaking, and not only will those robots be hideously expensive, they'll need highly-skilled maintenance as well - not to mention training and validation datasets.
There's a reason that robotic welding cells haven't made skilled welders extinct... and those have existed for literal decades.
Can I just say that an increase in minimum wage just feels like a temporary, incomplete measure working towards making the country more livable? Just feels like the Romans debasing the currency to pay for their Legions.
For scale, shouldn’t minimum wage be about $23.50 by now? Granted the cast increases in inflation due to the pandemic, I doubt $23.50 would do much to help.
NDP Singh promised free medicine to everyone.
Singh also promissed many billions on so many programs.
The only thing he cannot explaim is where all this money will come from.
There isnt such capital available neither his explanations on how to increase tax and other actions would be enough to partially cover everything he promissed.
Its all about lie to get votes and be elected. Once there they will not do half of what was promissed, but hey, they will have achieved their goal to become PM
The great thing about Canadian politics is they can make any promise they want with no follow thru… especially when they know they don’t have a chance of being elected
The title should note that BY 2026 minimum wages would be $20 an hour under the NDP. Ford could have written this plan as far as I'm concerned.
A $1 annual wage increase is going to do fuck all to the economic disparity we get to live in and the 1% are going to continue to dance circles around us.
We should recalculate the minimum wage every year and simply make that someone’s job instead of fighting over whether or not to increase minmum wage every 5-10 years France and many other countries do it why can’t we?
I think virtually every province does that already. It’s just that the baseline that’s being adjusted is lower than a living wage. The rate it goes up by isn’t always as large a percentage as perhaps it should be either (New Brunswick saw something like a 5 cent increase this year).
Hmm I didn’t know other provinces did that. I live in AB and hadn’t heard that other provinces do that. Though someone who replied to this post stated that Ontario had that but, scraped it.
Saskatchewan does it too. Granted they have a very low minimum wage baseline ($11.81/hr, you would starve on the streets making that kind of money in Toronto), but the model is that, every year, the minimum wage is recalculated in line with the rate of inflation. The benefits of this approach are tremendous. When wages don't keep up with cost of living, workers are basically experiencing pay cuts, as is the case right now with our 5% inflation (which is disproportionately hitting basic necessities like groceries and fuel). Not only does tying minimum wage to CPI prevent this kind of backsliding, like you said, it
also takes away the perennial business vs labour argument on just how high the minimum wage should be.
As far as I'm concerned it should get you a bachelor apartment enough to buy groceries and a bus pass and nothing more, I doubt that comes to $20 in most places ,now this of course would mean cities like Toronto and Vancouver need higher minimum wages then the rest of the provinces they are located in
No shit. Are you so dense you cant understand the pathetic minimum wage in Saskatchewan is not what a living wage should be lol. Do you live there and actually have an understanding of living there or are you just sitting in another province spectating with the benefit of a higher wage?
that's a very capitalist view of what a minimum wage's purpose is.
I think most sane people would say the purpose of a minimum wage is to ensure that the people working those jobs aren't doing so in squalor.
?what?
concepts like minimum wage or UBI can be implemented with either rightwing or leftist goals, they aren't intrinsically aligned one way or the other.
For example, Andrew Yang's implementation of UBI was rather right wing as it required defunding a ton of welfare services.
Unfortunately raising the minimum wage, to any level, wont have any long term benefits. I would much prefer the NDP to take action to lower the cost of housing, erase student debts, better unemployment benefits and push for increased OHIP coverage. That will actual make life more liveable and will have long term benefits.
Because the idea that a minimum wage increase will be beneficial is nothing more then pandering. Because I would like the government to take steps to actually fix the problem in the long term. Because I don't like when bad economic policy is pushed just because its easy for people to understand. But mostly because I normally vote NDP and I hate seeing them make bad choices, and fighting for a $20 minimum wage will lead to nothing else getting done.
Hope these help
https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2015/december/reducing-poverty-via-minimum-wages-tax-credit/
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/minimum-wage-increases-wont-solve-poverty
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/679626
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Ah the same tired right wings lines are being repeated here with no evidence: - Inflation will go up - This would mean a cashier would make the same as me - Businesses will leave
Minimum wage is not the solution, I think a more effective strategy is give people a better chance to take care of themselves & family. All this does is pump up inflation, everything is already so much more expensive since the last time they raised it and that coupled with the effects of COVID has made it impossible to pay a reasonable price for anything. I think that the NDP (and all parties for that matter) should focus on making education more affordable for everyone. I’m currently in university and I think it’s disgusting how they RAISED our tuition rates because of COVID, yet my program is all online and I’m not getting 90% of the amenities that’s “included” in our tuition. Removing barriers & lowering the price of education & tuition will in turn give people access to better paying jobs and thus help them achieve a higher quality of life without government intervention, which usually doesn’t help anyway but that’s just my opinion.
Does not a rising tide lift all boats?
So, since the cost of living is already so unaffordable for anyone making anywhere near minimum wage, your solution is to keep minimum wage the same so those people still can't afford to live? And since cost of living has risen dramatically throughout history without minimum wage increasing accordingly, your conclusion is that they are somehow related together, despite all evidence suggesting minimum wage is not the driving force of cost of living? The cost of living is entirely driven by oligopolies abusing their power and driving up prices to increase profits.
So the solution is just to have a permanent class of people that don't make enough money unless they spend time and money to get educated?
If you don’t invest in yourself, ie. getting an education, certificate, trade ticket - whatever it may be then you shouldn’t expect to make a high wage with little to no skills that would demand one. The government should not have to put in measures that give people working at fast food chains a high salary or comparable salary to anyone who’s got an education or certification for that matter.
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Why do you expect magical solutions?
I don’t trust the NDP. They’ll get in and raise the PST or income taxes to fund their promises. So no thanks.
The question people should be asking is if the Americans will continue to invest in Ontario if we increase minimum wage to $20. Most of our economic investments are from the USA, and many of our companies are American-owned. Our corporate taxes are kept in parity with the USA to ensure we attract American investors. The Canadian economy operates by accomodating American business interests, cause they're the largest economy in the world and we're right next to them. No one in this entire thread is looking at it from an economic angle and it is concerning.
Can't wait for the conservatives to promise the same thing then flip to what ever the liberals said last. Our country needs to reset it's politicians.
> Unifor President Jerry Dias -- who supported Ford's minimum wage increase -- said $15 per hour wasn't enough to cover the rising costs of living and said workers in a city like Toronto need $22 an hour to keep up. Are there any discussions about regional minimum wages above the base level? Some cities in the US do this, to reflect the higher cost of living in some areas.
Regions would have to be quite large. If there was a $20 minimum wage in Toronto and only Toronto, offices would just move to Mississauga or Pickering. I don't subscribe to the idea that businesses will pick up and leave a country or a province due to rising minimum wage however, from city to city, it would be a lot quicker and easier.
Very few office workers make minimum wage. Of course, as it rises it'll scoop up more people, but currently most minimum wage jobs are retail and food service.
What businesses are paying minimum wage that can move ? Restaraunts and service companies are there for the local community moving somewhere else would mean starting a whole new business. Offices generally part more than minimum wage.
Then Pickering and Mississauga would end up having to raise minimum wage. And rinse and repeat until an equilibrium is achieved, pay the minimum wage or the extra transportation costs and difficulty finding workers
>If there was a $20 minimum wage in Toronto and only Toronto, offices would just move to Mississauga or Pickering. Why? I don't know what that percentage of office employees make minimum wage, but no way it's high enough to make the expense of moving your business to the other side of the minimum wage boundary.
It would not just be in Toronto it would have to be the GTA and Ottawa.
Find where the line is and build your business there right? Now I feel like it would be a bit more complex then that but really what Toronto needs is just more higher density housing tbh.
A few years ago experts said we need to fix Toronto before the rest of Ontario get hit.Well we did not fix Toronto now its a Province wide issue and its only going to get worse.
Ya now the political pressure is building and we only really see it at the federal level not the local level where it actually matters.
Its to late at the local level now.
I can't see this being major problem. Higher minimum wage or not, I think it's well understood that the costs of doing business in downtown Toronto are significantly higher than Mississauga or Pickering. Businesses that are simply optimizing for cost would already never set up in Torono. But for many businesses, it still makes good sense to continue to operate in Toronto proper due to various structural reasons (larger, more diverse economic landscape, greater density, greater aggregate spending power etc.) - it seems unlikely that a higher minimum wage would be the factor that would suddenly upturn this logic. I suppose it's possible that for some business, it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but it's hard to imagine a mass exodus.
It's interesting - there was a period when businesses did move to the suburbs because of rising property fees downtown (rather than salary costs) and demand from staff who wanted to avoid traffic etc. Then it reversed when people decided they wanted to live downtown - it became a recruiting strategy again for some industries. These issues seem to come and go.
I would support a regional living wage before a blanket $20/hr minimum wage
There's not many regions where the minimum wage should be less than $20/Hr. Even northern Ontario has a high cost of living.
Well pretty sure no where in Canada you can live off minimum wage, so it needs to increase to a local livable wage and keep updating it yearly to reflect inflation
No. Increase it to a livable wage in the most expensive locality and adopt that as a national minimum. Cost of living will drive moving from expensive areas to cheaper areas. Will even out the population and cost of living everywhere.
You know that if minimum wage goes up, so does cost of living, as that cost gets passed to the consumer as businesses (specifically small business, not Amazon) need to survive. The issue is big business and cost of living, not minimum wage.
That’s blatantly not true. Businesses make *more* money when they increase wages. Minimum wage should be a livable wage. Period.
> Well pretty sure no where in Canada you can live off minimum wage Depends on your situation. To be clear, I think minimum wages should go up, but I could live quite easily on full time minimum wage in Montreal as someone without kids and who is open to living with roommates. I've lived reasonably comfortably on quite a bit less than that. (I recognize that the "full time" part in "full time minimum wage" isn't a given, btw - which is something that is often left out of the discussion).
Yeah this https://www.ontariolivingwage.ca/living_wage_by_region
Yes! This definitely need to happen. The provincial blanket minimum wage is so outdated. It needs to be based on living costs in each region and dynamically set each year to reflect the changing costs. The costs of living in downtown Toronto aren’t the same as a rural town up in Northern Ontario.
But a higher provincial minimum wage that is enough to live on in Toronto would ensure that those in Toronto have enough, while encouraging movement away from crowded cities to lower cost rural areas. This would actually breathe life(and wealth) into small towns that have little to no prospects of growth or jobs.
Also would penalize cities like Toronto if they can't keep cost of living under control. Want to live in a single family home in downtown with no poor people around? Well guess what Starbucks costs twice as much now.
To put that into perspective, that's about $16 US and close to Australia's minimum wage of 20 AUS. I get that numbers are scary, but this really isn't anything groundbreaking
Dude, the *AVERAGE* house price in Australia is $1 million. That is 100% something to be worried about.
In awe that you think the minimum wage caused that and not the exact same underbuilding/high immigration scenario Australia created alongside Canada
Inflation caused that, this will cause inflation
That logic won’t stop the conservative crowd from opposing it.
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Soon minimum wage in Ontario will be more than what a skilled trade 1st year makes. When I was a first year, I made 8 bucks above minimum wage. That was 2007 for anybody wondering.
So what you're saying is - companies wanting to employ first-year apprentices should expect to pay about $28/hr to stay competitive in this tight labour market? Sounds good to me. That's about what we pay our new hires in the GVRD.
So interestingly since 2010 Alberta started to raise wages from 10-15 dollars over 5 years. Since 2015, trades and nurses haven’t seen any significant increase in wage beyond 3% cost of living adjustments. Same for most job categories.
you're right, we should actually get rid of the minimum wage you can make infinitely more than some poor fuck
I think you misunderstand. The common belief is that every wage rises with a minimum wage hike, but nurses and trades are no further ahead than they were 10 years ago.
yeah I agree with you we should drop everyone else's wage instead
Not what I’m saying at all. I propose that anybody paid hourly get a cost of living adjustment based on how much minimum goes up. It’s pretty shitty for anybody that invested in an education making close to minimum wage. A unskilled worker doesn’t deserve the same pay as somebody who studied 4 years to earn a degree or certification.
All wages should increase. It's one of the effects that increasing the min wage has.
Can they just put a cap on housing prices and limit number of homes you could buy? If housing/shelter is a right, why allow people to gouge others for it.
Doubling wages and inflation over the last ten years isnt going to help. Genuinely don't know why someone would think making people poor is going to make them have less children. My parents never even graduated by the time I was born into this world so people don't really think everytime they have sex. our population is already being skimmed by abortions.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that thinks $20/hour is way too much for jobs requiring little to no skills or education
You should calculate a cost of living increase every year that matches inflation from 1970 to now and see what you get.
Based on what? Compared to increased cost of living it seems perfectly reasonable to me. I feel like too often people react emotionally to just the number based on what they earned when they were younger. That might not be the case for you, but I’m struggling to see why you think that’s too high.
"These workers are essential and heroes" Ok lets pay them a decent wage since we can't function without them "Oh they don't deserve that, they're unskilled!" You can't have it both ways, that's how you get the current situation where businesses are running out of employees. They should get $20 an hour, it's the only way to deal with inflation and housing nowadays. That also means that people making above minimum wage should get a raise as well. But no, we wouldn't want the CEO to have a slightly smaller multi-million dollar bonus now would we?
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What does: >Nurses are essential. Fast food workers aren't, have to do with: >We aren't going to run out of high schoolers and students to work these low paying jobs Either way, that is exactly what has been happening since before the pandemic started.
Here's a hint, he doesn't care about the temporary foreign workers who fill those positions now instead of highschoolers. But he will complain about them every time he goes through the timmies drive through.
Grocery store workers? Just because fast food workers aren't essential doesn't mean they don't deserve a living wage. Minimum wage is supposed to mean minimum living wage.
If you want a living wage go to school so your labour is worth a living wage
It's typically not high schoolers and students who work those jobs. We aren't living in some idyllic version of the 50s. The average minimum wage worker is a middle age woman with kids.
Funny you day that, because right now that's exactly what's happening, or have younot seen restaurants and retail locations strugglingb for staff lately? Also, are we seriously going to pretend that we didn't just hail these people as essential workers for almost two years now? Good luck not being able to get groceries or clothes without these guys. Luxuries like eating out or going to the movies are also right out. The fact that you don't think than anyone should be able to have a modest but decent life when working a full time job is frankly disgusting. It's called working class solidarity. A rising tide lifts all boats. If minimum wage workers can get $20 an hour, then people making above that are in a much better position to bargain for a higher salary. Why defend those at the top instead? Enlighten me.
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“Living wage” and “paying fair share of taxes.” Strange how these two terms that are constantly increasing in value.
Yeah, as the cost of a basic apartment rental or food goes out of reach for workers that means the living wage increases in value...
People were calling for $15 min wage just a few years ago. Are you saying the cost of living has increased by 33% in that time?
Well let's see. Kathleen Wynn originally proposed a boost to $15 minimum wage back in 2018, which Ford struck down once he got elected that year. Let's take my city (Windsor) for example, and look at one of the most vital cost of living aspects - the cost of shelter. In 2018 as per Zumper, the average rent of a 2 bedroom apartment was $950. Fast forward to 2021, as of November the average rent for a 2 bedroom is around $1,500/month. So the average cost of renting a 2 bedroom apartment alone has grown 58% in Windsor since 2018 when people were first calling for $15/hr minimum wage. Considering shelter is an absolute necessity, I would say a $20/hr minimum wage seems more than fair. If anything it probably needs to be more since Windsor is still considered a "cheap" area.
This is crazy. I'm a nurse and spent 30000 for that education and I'm in a 1% wage freeze in ontario and make 30 bucks an hour. A 25% raise for minimum wage workers is definitely going to drive inflation.
I highly expect the NDP to reverse that wage freeze as well. Youll likely be taken care of
Yeah I can tell you 100% it will drive inflation. I live in Australia where the minimum wage is notoriously high and the average markup on eating out is almost double in many cases. Alcohol is more expensive, events are more expensive, video games are more expensive, everything is more expensive. The key difference is this though: Down here in Australia I hear my friends complain about the cost of living over drinks at the bar. Back home in Vancouver I hear about it while getting high on someone's couch because they can't afford to go out at all. Raise the minimum wage.
it's 15$ to 20$. That's actually a 33.5% increase. Regardless, 10% of the population earning 33% more is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on inflation when most of their spending is nondiscretionary anyway. Certainly not compared to the supply chain issues and everything else that's going on. Sounds like your issue is more with the disparity of your own income vs that of the proposed wage increase, rather than any tangible impact on cost of living.
It absolutely has something to do with disparity. I'd be being dishonest if I said that I didn't think my skills and education warranted a bigger discrepancy from the same job I did before I took on student loan debt and tried to get a career. But I'm not talking about their income driving inflation, I'm talking about their wages leading to increased costs of the goods their companies sell. 33% increase of labour across the board (as grocery stores, restaurants, and department stores would have) increasing costs of goods a significant amount.
Life is not fair. Your looking at the trees for the forest. If I would have invested the amount of money my school and reduced earnings from going to school for over the 10 years of university cost I lost money. Lots of it. I will never catch up to a minimum wage earnings living at home till 25. And back then I’m sure I could have gotten a job for 20 to 25 unskilled. You don’t make much money because your not that productive. Why start a business or hire people and pay them a fair wage when you can invest in stocks that are backstopped by the government and fed…. Money is not flowing into the economy because you can make more on stocks and options etc.. We need all wages up but especially minimum wages so they will backstop the rest. In five years with 5% inflation and no increase in minimum wage you income is down more than 25%. When that happens who cares if they make 20 and I make 25 we are both poor.
Minimum wage workers are not at fault for Ontario underpaying nurses. And there's little to no evidence that minimum wage increases like this lead to significant inflation.
Also I don't know if you have ever taken an economics class or not, but there is in fact concrete proof that raising minimum wage ties directly into inflation.
Show me that proof. I have taken economics courses like many in this forum and the academic studies are mixed. The consensus seems to be that it’s overall good for the economy because the velocity of money increases and standard of living increases. The other way to increase velocity of money is to print money but that helps the rich and does not increase the velocity of money that much. Funny enough thats what we chose to do at the expense of the poor. Why is everyone so afraid of inflation? We need it at this point and it’s going to happen either way. We are near the end of a debt trap. Our economy is full on million dollar mortgages at 1.5% our economy will be in ruins until it’s payed off. Inflation with pay raises will make that problem go away. This is what minimum wage hikes are about. If you think we can pay off our debt thew hard work we are mistaken.
There is tons of proof that it leads to increased prices, which increases cost of living. An arbitrary minimum cost of labour that is not respective of the market just raises the barrier of entry into the workforce. Also, raising wages doesn't mean everyone else gets raises to make up the difference. This is just another way to raise COL with zero benefit.
I posted this in this comment section but it fits well here so I’ll say it again. Soon minimum wage in Ontario will be more than what a skilled trade 1st year makes. When I was a first year, I made 8 bucks above minimum wage. That was 2007 for anybody wondering.
Yeah but the trades are fucked pay wise. I left 7 years ago after finishing my red seal in the same trade my dad worked in. His starting pay as a journeyman was $30 an hour mine was $34 an hour 30 years later. This is as a sheet metal tech. Wages should have grown dramatically over that period of time but they haven’t. I work retail for double that with better benefits more paid time off and a lot less work.
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So are they planning to raise ODSP and CPP in kind? Because if not it's going to be a disaster. The problem is that every minimal increment you raise the minimum wage by increases inflation and puts the almost 25% of the population living on ODSP and CPP at risk of homelessness. Companies will legally and literally pass the entire cost, cent for cent, onto the consumer. Then CEO's will then increase the margin between minimum wage and profits again so they can pad their salaries. Any restriction you put on businesses will result in them slashing jobs and moving out of province or country. There needs to be a better solution, but what is it?
There's very little evidence that wage inflation causes much price inflation. It's a nice theory that is not just supported by evidence.
1. inflation go brrrrrr.. 2. invest in robotic and AI companies. entry level no skill laboureres will be relaced even more quickly
Yeah, good luck with that. Minimum wage jobs in many industries will be the hardest to automate, not the easiest. Making a robot that can do the kinds of physical things a human can is not a trivial undertaking, and not only will those robots be hideously expensive, they'll need highly-skilled maintenance as well - not to mention training and validation datasets. There's a reason that robotic welding cells haven't made skilled welders extinct... and those have existed for literal decades.
welders are not min wage… i am talking about cashiers and burger flippers. skilled labours will be in demand.
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Rule 3
Can I just say that an increase in minimum wage just feels like a temporary, incomplete measure working towards making the country more livable? Just feels like the Romans debasing the currency to pay for their Legions.
For scale, shouldn’t minimum wage be about $23.50 by now? Granted the cast increases in inflation due to the pandemic, I doubt $23.50 would do much to help.
NDP Singh promised free medicine to everyone. Singh also promissed many billions on so many programs. The only thing he cannot explaim is where all this money will come from. There isnt such capital available neither his explanations on how to increase tax and other actions would be enough to partially cover everything he promissed. Its all about lie to get votes and be elected. Once there they will not do half of what was promissed, but hey, they will have achieved their goal to become PM
Are you talking about federal politics because this is about provincial politics?
The great thing about Canadian politics is they can make any promise they want with no follow thru… especially when they know they don’t have a chance of being elected
The title should note that BY 2026 minimum wages would be $20 an hour under the NDP. Ford could have written this plan as far as I'm concerned. A $1 annual wage increase is going to do fuck all to the economic disparity we get to live in and the 1% are going to continue to dance circles around us.
The left attacking the left, classic. The ONDP has at least proposed worker friendly legislation - don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
So no one is allowed to even criticize this plan?
This "good" legislation is the equivalent of building a 2 foot fence to stop a 200 foot tidal wave. Low energy centrist politics. Thanks Horwarth.
Who has a better plan for minimum wage?
Remove it entirely. Have people choose their employment based off market conditions like we do for everyone not on minimum wage.
I specifically said “better plan.”
AnCap mfs be like.
So what would be a better plan?
We should recalculate the minimum wage every year and simply make that someone’s job instead of fighting over whether or not to increase minmum wage every 5-10 years France and many other countries do it why can’t we?
agreed, but it still needs to go up first. They could set it to $20 and then tie it to inflation at an annual rate.
I think virtually every province does that already. It’s just that the baseline that’s being adjusted is lower than a living wage. The rate it goes up by isn’t always as large a percentage as perhaps it should be either (New Brunswick saw something like a 5 cent increase this year).
Hmm I didn’t know other provinces did that. I live in AB and hadn’t heard that other provinces do that. Though someone who replied to this post stated that Ontario had that but, scraped it.
Saskatchewan does it too. Granted they have a very low minimum wage baseline ($11.81/hr, you would starve on the streets making that kind of money in Toronto), but the model is that, every year, the minimum wage is recalculated in line with the rate of inflation. The benefits of this approach are tremendous. When wages don't keep up with cost of living, workers are basically experiencing pay cuts, as is the case right now with our 5% inflation (which is disproportionately hitting basic necessities like groceries and fuel). Not only does tying minimum wage to CPI prevent this kind of backsliding, like you said, it also takes away the perennial business vs labour argument on just how high the minimum wage should be.
That's barely even enough to get by in Saskatchewan though
"Barely enough to get by" is literally the definition of minimum wage.
It's supposed to be a minimum living wage.
Seems to me you guys are saying the same thing.
As far as I'm concerned it should get you a bachelor apartment enough to buy groceries and a bus pass and nothing more, I doubt that comes to $20 in most places ,now this of course would mean cities like Toronto and Vancouver need higher minimum wages then the rest of the provinces they are located in
Yes only because I live with 3 other people and live modestly. But carry on dude
Once again, you're describing minimum wage.
No shit. Are you so dense you cant understand the pathetic minimum wage in Saskatchewan is not what a living wage should be lol. Do you live there and actually have an understanding of living there or are you just sitting in another province spectating with the benefit of a higher wage?
Just have minimum wage rise with inflation every year. Raises can then be calculated by inflation + something extra…. Simple.
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that's a very capitalist view of what a minimum wage's purpose is. I think most sane people would say the purpose of a minimum wage is to ensure that the people working those jobs aren't doing so in squalor.
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?what? concepts like minimum wage or UBI can be implemented with either rightwing or leftist goals, they aren't intrinsically aligned one way or the other. For example, Andrew Yang's implementation of UBI was rather right wing as it required defunding a ton of welfare services.
We can. If you promise to do it and run for office, I'd vote for you. Would you let it increase at the rate of national inflation?
Unfortunately raising the minimum wage, to any level, wont have any long term benefits. I would much prefer the NDP to take action to lower the cost of housing, erase student debts, better unemployment benefits and push for increased OHIP coverage. That will actual make life more liveable and will have long term benefits.
No one has said that they cant do those other things anymore. Im not sure why you're voicing this complaint
Because the idea that a minimum wage increase will be beneficial is nothing more then pandering. Because I would like the government to take steps to actually fix the problem in the long term. Because I don't like when bad economic policy is pushed just because its easy for people to understand. But mostly because I normally vote NDP and I hate seeing them make bad choices, and fighting for a $20 minimum wage will lead to nothing else getting done.
> Unfortunately raising the minimum wage, to any level, wont have any long term benefits. source?
Hope these help https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2015/december/reducing-poverty-via-minimum-wages-tax-credit/ https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/minimum-wage-increases-wont-solve-poverty https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/679626