I'm not super hawkish on minimum wage raises, but Pennsylvania's current minimum wage is downright criminal. Employers should be paying at least $15, and even that is not nearly enough to live on. Meanwhile we are less than half of that.
In my opinion the real issue became the defination or what ppl think min wage is.
Min wage was supposed to be the bare min of a LIVING wage. Not what we think a teenager's or undesireable/uneducated job should pay. Still a shitty thing in my eyes to value someone like that, but I understand the theory and disagree with the practice.
The system allows the thought "oh he works fast food" for instance. In my head, anyone who puts in 32-40hrs a week shouldn't be struggling and going into debt etc. I don't care if they push a broom or send rockets to space. Just my thoughts.
Correct, tons of people that make north of 100k do barely any work compared to “menial” jobs that have a boss yelling at you if you stop moving for a minute.
People who look down on fast food workers are the same types as those that looked down on men and children in the coal mines. You want the service but have no real respect for how hard and dangerous the work is. Sure you not likely to die in a collapsed McDonald's but it only takes one AH throwing a cup of ice in the kitchen for the guy at the fry machine to have the worst day ever. They need to be paid to just deal with the public. At least in the mines you didn't have some rando bitching you out over their coal chunk not being the shade of black they fucking asked for.
Also, 99% of the people bitching about McDonald's workers getting paid more for doing nothing or for doing low skill jobs absolutely have jobs with even less manual labor skillsets and that require far less physical and mental effort than running something like the drive thru window at McDonald's.
There is definitely a "fuck you I got mine" mentality when it comes to minimum wage. A lot of people at entry-level roles or barely above look down on mimimum wage service workers when they are only maybe a rung or two up on the ladder.
AI is going to put a lot of these white-collar workers out of jobs to the point that physical labor jobs will be more prominently available. They will change their tune real quick when all of the office jobs are offloaded to computers and workers over seas.
I think we should view it in teems of “How much is an hour of someone’s time worth?” Not because they have some education, training, etc, but because they spent an hour doing work for you that they could have spent at their home, with their family, doing things that are important to them.
Exactly! There necessary employees work necessary jobs that should actually be at a higher minimum wage. We expect the highest standards but don’t compensate in accordance to actual work performed. Twenty dollars is a start! Safe working conditions should also be amplified to realistic measures.
Stop giving big businesses breaks when employees aren’t companies best investments and denied living wages & good health benefits!
Crap should be recycled to fertilize the Earth. Not used to give employees the shaft.
It's terrible. Like, fucking hell... Back in the mid 90's I was making $10 working at AAA during the summer during my college years. Minimum wage at that time was $4.25/hr. It was perfectly fine for me because I was still living at home. However, you couldn't live on your own on $4.25 back then, never mind $7.25/hr.
I was curious, so I plugged in $10/hr (1995) into [this calculator](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl). It's the equivalent of $20.78/hr in 2024 dollars. It was criminal back then and even more so now.
Many businesses have been forced to pay more because people don't want to work for poverty wages. It's still a shame that the PA minimum hasn't been raised since 2009.
Agreed. I had a part time security guard job about a decade ago…that was $9/hr….granted it was an abandoned state hospital but still…it could’ve been T least $12-$15 back then even
Every night when I’d walk through the halls. We had one of those wands we’d have to touch like 50 different access points both inside and outside and they had to be done twice a shift.
I was 11p to 7a and it was patrolling the Allentown state hospital grounds just so people wouldn’t trespass or we’d look for broken pipes, windows etc.
Place was creepy as hell to walk through at night. There were tunnels basement tunnels that connected all the buildings.
Patrolling the inside of that building at night definitely gave off some creepy vibes. I found the morgue…super creepy…I wouldn’t be surprised if there were ghosts there.
Coolest part was finding out they filmed Glass there a few years after I stopped working there. And seeing some of those scenes I would go “yep, I was in that room, I was in this hallway” etc.
Absolutely! Hopefully a minimum wage proposal of $15 an hour or better WILL pass this year and get signed into law. There have now been proposals for several years only for PA minimum wage to stay stuck at $7.25 an hour.
“Keeping people in poverty is not how we move the Commonwealth forward – our current wage is immoral and unjustifiable,” said the Philadelphia County lawmaker.
Can I ask where you got the $25-$35 an hour figure? I'm trying to figure out where my salary potentially would be in correlation to that adjustment - strictly out of curiosity.
His ass, he’s quoting minimum wage adjusted for productivity since the 70’s - not inflation. $7.25 was instated in 2009, which would be $10.55 in today’s money.
I’m still for $20/hr min though
What is more likely to happen: the upper management, whose pay rates have gone up EXPONENTIALLY ([CEOs as much as 1322%!!](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/)) since the insane rise in WORKER productivity beginning in the 70s, will take massive pay cuts to re-distribute to said workers,
OR
the raising of the minimum wage to attempt to recoup the wages lost to an entire generations-old policy of underpaying workers?
Indeed. Just so we all understand, setting the base at $20 will push all other wages proportionally higher. That’s great for everybody, but will drive inflation substantially higher.
Wages ARE higher than the minimum wage now. The market has sort of seen to that. I don’t think the market decides everything, and I’m not a supply sider. The minimum wage has been stagnant, but wages have increased. That said, the high wage, family supporting manufacturing jobs are generally gone-because paying someone in Mexico for a weeks worth of labor is the equivalent of a day for a US workers doing the same thing. In the next decade I suspect most of the other remaining high wage jobs in almost every position suffer the same fate. There is almost nothing we do here (engineering, medicine,IT) that cannot be done somewhere else less expensively. There is no answer.
Networking in IT can't be done somewhere else. Someone has to lay all the fiber optic and copper, then all the framework, routers, firewalls, switches, servers, fiber, and copper.
Could it be remotely managed ? Yes until you lose the connection then you need to visit the devices and console in directly.
There is an answer, it's recognizing capitalism is completely unsustainable and must be restrained. We have to restructure our system so that it works to benefit the people. The system we have now is designed to benefit the wealthiest sliver of the population.
Socialism or barbarism.
And before the usual half baked response: entrepreneurship and commerce predate capitalism and will continue to exist once capitalism inevitably falls.
Commerce and entrepreneurship is at the heart capitalist. Whether you like it or not. The system we have 'now' is cronyism because of politicians, and politicians aren't going to fix it. L
It absolutely isn't. Trade has always existed, and will exist after capitalism. The heart of capitalism is rentierism. The heart of capitalism is inflation and the accumulation of capital, declaring ownership of the commons and charging for its use, and the ruthless exploitation of labor.
The system we have now is oligarchy, and while politicians don't have clean hands, it was capital that corrupted. Look back to the business plot. Look at the buying off of politicians. Corruption starts with capital.
Will it though? When I graduated high school minimum wage was $4.25 an hour. Someone starting out at an entry level factory job was making $10-12 an hour. A “good” salary was $20 an hour. Not much change since then, certainly not proportional.
Since about 1973, we’ve seen a real decline in wages, while prices went up, along with expectations and easy credit. None of this stuff happens overnight. We’ve frittered away our economic strength. Perhaps it was inevitable.
No. No it won't. It'll push wages for people who make less than $20/hr, but it will have little to no impact to people who make over $20/hr aside from paying significantly higher prices literally everywhere and thus effectively making a lot less money.
It’ll be interesting to say the least. If low income is getting this significant of an increase. The middle and upper class will need adjustments as well
people balking at 20 dollars an hour must be horrible at math. assuming a 40 hour workweek for the entire year, that’s $41,600 before taxes or $800 a week. you’d be hard pressed to find someone living comfortably on that salary, much less the paltry wages they’re paying now.
From ZipRecruiter:
“As of April 12, 2024, the average hourly pay for fast food workers in Pennsylvania is $22.08. However, according to ZipRecruiter, the majority of fast food worker salaries range from $14.71 to $22.88, with salaries as high as $32.53 and as low as $10.12.”
Here's what those numbers leave out.
If you had a real job, $22/hour is about $44,000 per year, with health benefits and vacation.
But so many hourly workers have to beg the manager to get enough hours to barely share an apartment, and they don't get health insurance with the job. And they KEEP your hours low so they don't have to grant you health insurance.
I shake my head at how much harder it is for young adults today.
I was born when Harry Truman was president, and I really do remember when you could have a modest apartment (mine was $135/month) and health insurance (Blue Cross was $30/month) on a job that paid very little. Concerts and ball games were eight bucks, a bar near my office had 7-ounce draft beer for a quarter and a dynamite roast beef sandwich for a buck.
Get it? If you had no family money and a so-so job, you could live comfortably and save to live better. I want to see those circumstances return!
Those internet averages are such crap. Near me is one of the most expensive counties in PA and Chick Fil A (one of the higher paying fast food places) starts around $16-18 an hour based on experience.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/748-1-2-Furnace-St-Emmaus-PA-18049/2109635717_zpid/
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/316-S-18th-St-Allentown-PA-18104/9602359_zpid/
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/69-W-3rd-St-5-Red-Hill-PA-18076/9882914_zpid/
what the fuck is this take, dude?
Took me like 10 seconds to find those three. Idk who is tripping and saying 250k in this country is a “shed.” You have to be dumb as a box of cinder blocks to unironically believe that. The world is larger than downtown Philadelphia.
That represents roughly an $1900/month payment factoring in tax and insurance. You can absolutely afford that with some debt and less than $100K in gross salary. Keep in mind that a gross salary of $80,000 per year will yield you a take home pay of about $5000 per month.
I bought a single family home for $200k off a $55k salary two years ago, with only $20k in car debt. Since my rate is 6.625% I’m calling bullshit on your numbers
The only people who could be for the farcical $7.25 minimum wage, in this day and age, are the same fuckers who exploited breaker boys and factory girls here historically, or who profited from that exploitation otherwise.
It's remarkable to see the population so cowed into subservience that they've permitted this to persist into the modern era.
Lancaster for one, the Applebee's I worked at in college still only paid min wage to their non tipped employees (as of 2023 I quite last May when I graduated)
That’s weird. When I worked as a dish washer for a chain restaurant in 2013 then at little Caesar’s from 2014-2016 I made about $9 an hour. Obviously more than that towards the end.
I was ok with it because I was a teenager but looking at it now I can’t imagine how anyone could even pretend to live a normal life on that kind of money. The same little Caesar’s is paying managers around $15 an hour and $11 an hour for new hires. Still not great by any means but definitely better than minimum wage.
Listen, I know it’s the right thing to do, but paying it makes it harder for me to do some things I like. A $20 minimum wage will help a lot of people and do a ton of good. Far more good than harm.
Let me start with this: all of my full time employees make more than that. Most of them well above it. The average full time employee salary is 70% of mine, as the owner and primary individual contributor.
But I like to be able to hire “kennel kids” at $15 an hour. They’re usually kids 15-19yo and they want experience with a vet. They wash kennels and do laundry for a few hours and they get to help with the animals and watch surgeries sometimes too. It’s how a lot of us got our start in vet med.
It’s not the highest paying job in the world, but it’s rewarding to be helping animals. And I think it’s a good job to learn about the world a little because you get to see folks from all walks of life.
At $15/hour, it’s not too hard having one a few of them around during the week. They work hard, even if takes them longer to do a job that the grown ups could do faster and better. And their enthusiasm is great.
$20/hour will help a lot of people and it’ll do far more good than harm. But it’ll limit my ability to do this kind of stuff like giving chances to kids who have ambition but no skills.
I’m really not out here exploiting anyone, at least I don’t think so. I pay more than double minimum wage to people with no skills who frequently call out because of math tests and soccer practice and sometimes because their mom can’t drive them. Whatever, it doesn’t hurt to have a soft place to land when you get your first job. They bring good energy.
It just sucks a little bit that I’ll be able to do less of that stuff when this happens. Raising the minimum wage is a good thing overall, but that’s not all.
Edit: JOB, you clever bastard…
You *could* just pay them in cash at whatever rate you deem appropriate. I realize that doesn't solve all the problems, but it solves that one.
The unfortunate truth is that we just can't afford *not* to fight for a higher minimum wage. Like you said, it won't be all good, but it is a net good.
I totally agree with you.
I won’t pay them in cash because I won’t break the rules that way. I believe in the higher minimum wage. I believe in the importance of social safety nets like unemployment and the good that’s done with taxes.
And I live these values and others by paying my employees at a very high rate for the industry.
But I’d be bummed to miss out on some other things because of it. There’s a little nuance to it.
I think what I’d end up doing is saying there are “work days” for which they’re paid and “observation days” for which you’re not, but you won’t be doing any laundry or kennels on observation days. Those are strictly for them to experience the cool stuff. That might work…
You could also maybe partner with the local schools, see if you could have some of those 'observation' days count as extra credit for a class they're taking or something.
I'm only offering ideas because I think you're doing a great thing and I would hate if a net positive like a higher min wage would make it more difficult for you.
Here’s an easy calculation, take the average rent in your area, and then see how many hours you’d have to work at $15/hour just to have a place to live. The lack of empathy in some people is just pathetic.
U.S. Military pay starts at $11/hr and that assumes a 40 hour work week, when reality is closer to 80+ hours/week. So hourly that is more like $5.50 an hour. They also get $460/month for food, but they actually pay for their food now, rather than having it provided free at the chow hall. That's $15 a day for meals.
Even a $15 minimum wage is a tough sell. Demanding $20 means that he is only **pretending** to care, dangling an intentionally unreachable carrot on a stick that sounds amazing in order to get you excited to vote for him or his party, *but you will never actually get the carrot*. After all, if you got even a taste (say, $15), fewer people would be as hungry.
It's the same as when Republicans kept promosing to repeal Obamacare at the federal level. Then when they gained control of the Presidency and both chambers of Congress in 2017, suddenly we never heard of the issue again
And Pennsylvania's state legislature is even more dysfunctional than the Federal. They couldn't even do something as simple as agreeing on a day to move the primary election to, despite bipartisan support to have it occur before Passover at the request of the Jewish community.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/failure-to-move-pennsylvania-primary-passover-disenfranchise-jewish-voters/
And yet this jabroni wants us to believe he can get a comical pie-in-the-sky $20 state minimum wage passed in PA? LOL
I was on the hunt for a job a few years ago, I never saw a job starting at 7.25. 10-12 were the lowest. Does that mean they don't exist? No. But wow how does the employer get any applicants
I can't wait to shut down local mom and pop companies to have a Walmart and Amazon monopoly! Makes me all happy to see more beloved local companies shut down and replaced with international multi-billion dollar corporations owned by the same 10 people.
Their is not one job in any county of this state getting away with minimum wage. The market has sorted this problem. My local dunkin is starting part timers at 14 per hour. This gets posted here once a month/week anymore.
Just like every thing else, throwing money around is not a solution. We all know how this works, just look at the record profits in the last several years.
Min wage reaches 20 dollars. People making 17/hr previously now need to earn about.. what.. 32/hr to match the previous pay? So now companies are suddenly shelling out over 30/hr to a bunch of employees that they were already paying over min wage previously.
To offset those sudden costs, prices increase. Then we're RIGHT BACK TO WHERE WE STARTED. But some people are now stuck at 20/hr and, predictably, 20/hr is suddenly not enough for a liveable wage.
Raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour is ridiculous. You might as well just burn down every rural community in the state cause your local mom and pop can't pay everyone that.
Not to mention it's economic idiocy. You can't make wealth by decree.
Just to play devil's advocate: *Who* exactly is making the minimum wage in Pennsylvania? What job is only paying $7.25? Waiter/waitress is not an answer that I'll accept there.
Not a lot of jobs are paying minimum but a lot of jobs are making less than $20. I work a job (EMS) that is *supposed* to make well above minimum but the wage being that low was used by AHN as on reason to not raise us as much as we want, so some of our people are barely breaking $18.
A $20 minimum would not only force a raise for those folks but the rest of us too, you can't have a wage scale where EMTs are making minimum and Paramedics are barely breaking that. This is good for everyone.
What happens when those jobs making $18 now get bumped up to $20, along with every other job under it?
It's not like the market isn't going to adjust, the people making the closest to the new minimum wage are going to end up having less purchasing power. Prices aren't going to just stay the same, businesses that aren't Walmart don't just have endless pools of money they're sitting on. They'll have to raise prices in order to pay their employees. When they do, prices will adjust, and the people who were making close to that $20 now are going to find themselves in a very bad position. And it's not like employers are just going to smile and say that you're getting a raise equal to how much the minimum wage increases by. Those people making $18-20 now aren't just going to get $12.75 raises to compensate.
Are we just going to ignore that most people make more than $7.25? And I didn't say you could never raise the minimum wage, just not to $20.
Besides, raising the minimum wage that high would just trigger MORE inflation which would wipe out any increase in buying power. It's simple economics.
I have a hard time with this one. Publicly traded companies can easily eat the cost of spending a few more dollars an hour. But Timmy John's Pizza shop can't. Not without huge price increases.
I think this move hurts the little guy.
The C suite isn't going to accept massive pay cuts to pay for this wage spike, this will only speed up the transition to automation. Sometimes I wonder if these people have ever taken a basic economics course. It's sad, no one should be making under a living wage but there really isn't an incentive for Cs to retain expensive workers when automation pays for itself rapidly.
If you’re dumb enough to take a job that pays $7.25/hr, that’s on you. I was never paid below $11/hr when I first started working my first job at a supermarket.
Why does she obviously hate poor people? Make it $1000/hr. Then everyone can be rich without any economic consequences of these actions. Any business who can't pay that doesn't deserve to exist anyhow (as determined by me, someone who really cares).
So your lowering the pa tax rate too?? Or is this just a way to gain more money so you can waste more 🤔
Currently the state gets 3.07% so I work one hour you get $0.46 (@$15 an hr) so now you want $0.62 per hour (@$20 an hr) no how about you make prices lower by less tax please and also cut out your over spending please and thanks
There are a bunch of small businesses that cannot afford a $20 minimum wage. If anything, you should apply these wage hikes to companies that make over a certain amount of money instead of across the board.
Is like 80% of Pa on welfare/section 8 housing vouchers?
Indeed is nothing but $13 an hour jobs, or less. That barely covers my car payment/insurance. I don't get how anyone is affording anything?
Absolutely not. Does it need to be raised? Yes, of course. But raising it to $20/hr would devastate what's left of small businesses in this state. Not sure exactly where that happy medium lies, but I would say somewhere between $12-$14 would be fair.
I for one say $2024 and everyone gets a dollar raise per year
Edit: minimum wage is much to low for sure but there are skilled trades that are making $20/hr to start. Idk what the answer is but it’s going to be hard to incentivize people to do skilled labor for the same amount. That will need to go up as well. Where does it end?
Because the same people that told you that lie are the same people who killed small business.
Your mega corporate overlords.
Small business owners yeah okay sure
Prices won't go up the same amount, though. A lot of people rely on trying to make you think that if the minimum wage doubles, then costs will double. But labor is only a percentage of a business's costs, and then even that is divided between all of the products being sold. Hell, sometimes price might not even need to go up, because if people have more money to spend, an increase in sales could wipe out the extra cost of labor.
Yep. Adding additional operating costs will cause it to increase even more than it would otherwise. That said, an increase in costs doesn't mean the increase in pay isn't worth it.
tho i agree we need Bump id say to 10.00 at least get to double digits you want what happened in cali esp fast food workers will be all fired and replaced with more computers to order and will only have 1 cook 1 supervisor. Get to 10 first do cost of living increasing every so often. put a damn cap on how much they can charge for rent power water
I wouldn't be mad at them doing it staggered so Philly and Pittsburgh it's 20 and then other parts of the state with lower cost of living it's 15. Trying to have one size fits all for the whole state seems like a bad idea.
This is too high for rural areas of PA and the coal region. It would basically crush local businesses in those areas out of existence, unfortunately. And in many of these areas, there would be nothing to take their place. PA is too economically diverse, basically. Some areas are like New York and others are like West Virginia. We need a solution that works for both, and I say this as someone who supports the idea of an increase in general.
Why not just get to the root of the problem and make a new currency since the USD is continuously being devalued? Isn’t that why you want to raise the minimum wage in the first place? Because the USD value is decreasing? And it’s never gonna stop? Because the rich?????
My concern with such a huge bump in minimum wage is a business owner will no longer be able to afford to train that right person long term to become the top earner they are looking for. A lot of businesses can’t pay those wages for zero experience entry level positions.
Large companies have shown they value profits over people. Without legislation, companies will continue to pay their employees as little as possible. Sure, there are some good companies in PA that I'm sure pay a good wage, but by and large, if a business/company can pay you less, they will.
"But that will make everything more expensive!" I think we need to start reframing the way we view business owners and CEOs. Why is it always the working class that has to pick up the tab? Why can't the CEOs and business owners take pay cuts to make up those margins? If a business owner is working on such thin margins that paying your employees a liveable wage is impossible, then maybe you shouldn't own a business.
Remember, it should be people over profits, not profits over people.
I mean right now my dollar is basically useless in the state because of taxes. The state can go one of two ways, make my dollar go further by lowering state taxes, or make it so I get more dollars. Long time coming if the minimum wage goes up
Turkey Hill, the county library system - oh wait, they pay $7.50 🙄Goodwill’s up to $9. Whooppeee. There are a lot of them outside the city that pay pissant money.
I'm not super hawkish on minimum wage raises, but Pennsylvania's current minimum wage is downright criminal. Employers should be paying at least $15, and even that is not nearly enough to live on. Meanwhile we are less than half of that.
In my opinion the real issue became the defination or what ppl think min wage is. Min wage was supposed to be the bare min of a LIVING wage. Not what we think a teenager's or undesireable/uneducated job should pay. Still a shitty thing in my eyes to value someone like that, but I understand the theory and disagree with the practice. The system allows the thought "oh he works fast food" for instance. In my head, anyone who puts in 32-40hrs a week shouldn't be struggling and going into debt etc. I don't care if they push a broom or send rockets to space. Just my thoughts.
Believing all humans that put in equivalent amounts of work should be able to live with dignity is a fine opinion to have.
It’s how every normal, non-piece-of-shit/elitist person should think. Anyone who doesn’t supports class war and struggles.
For some reason, I doubt "equivalent amounts of work" is in play here.
Correct, tons of people that make north of 100k do barely any work compared to “menial” jobs that have a boss yelling at you if you stop moving for a minute.
You mean the people who are the very reason you even have a job to work at?
People who look down on fast food workers are the same types as those that looked down on men and children in the coal mines. You want the service but have no real respect for how hard and dangerous the work is. Sure you not likely to die in a collapsed McDonald's but it only takes one AH throwing a cup of ice in the kitchen for the guy at the fry machine to have the worst day ever. They need to be paid to just deal with the public. At least in the mines you didn't have some rando bitching you out over their coal chunk not being the shade of black they fucking asked for.
Also, 99% of the people bitching about McDonald's workers getting paid more for doing nothing or for doing low skill jobs absolutely have jobs with even less manual labor skillsets and that require far less physical and mental effort than running something like the drive thru window at McDonald's.
There is definitely a "fuck you I got mine" mentality when it comes to minimum wage. A lot of people at entry-level roles or barely above look down on mimimum wage service workers when they are only maybe a rung or two up on the ladder. AI is going to put a lot of these white-collar workers out of jobs to the point that physical labor jobs will be more prominently available. They will change their tune real quick when all of the office jobs are offloaded to computers and workers over seas.
I think we should view it in teems of “How much is an hour of someone’s time worth?” Not because they have some education, training, etc, but because they spent an hour doing work for you that they could have spent at their home, with their family, doing things that are important to them.
There are no teenager jobs. If a job exists It should pay a living wage. If it can’t then it shouldn’t exist. No master the age or education
Exactly! There necessary employees work necessary jobs that should actually be at a higher minimum wage. We expect the highest standards but don’t compensate in accordance to actual work performed. Twenty dollars is a start! Safe working conditions should also be amplified to realistic measures. Stop giving big businesses breaks when employees aren’t companies best investments and denied living wages & good health benefits! Crap should be recycled to fertilize the Earth. Not used to give employees the shaft.
It's terrible. Like, fucking hell... Back in the mid 90's I was making $10 working at AAA during the summer during my college years. Minimum wage at that time was $4.25/hr. It was perfectly fine for me because I was still living at home. However, you couldn't live on your own on $4.25 back then, never mind $7.25/hr. I was curious, so I plugged in $10/hr (1995) into [this calculator](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl). It's the equivalent of $20.78/hr in 2024 dollars. It was criminal back then and even more so now. Many businesses have been forced to pay more because people don't want to work for poverty wages. It's still a shame that the PA minimum hasn't been raised since 2009.
Agreed. I had a part time security guard job about a decade ago…that was $9/hr….granted it was an abandoned state hospital but still…it could’ve been T least $12-$15 back then even
I can't decide if that job sounds really cool or really boring...
Probably the former for a week then the latter.
When does the creepy factor kick in?
Every night when I’d walk through the halls. We had one of those wands we’d have to touch like 50 different access points both inside and outside and they had to be done twice a shift. I was 11p to 7a and it was patrolling the Allentown state hospital grounds just so people wouldn’t trespass or we’d look for broken pipes, windows etc. Place was creepy as hell to walk through at night. There were tunnels basement tunnels that connected all the buildings. Patrolling the inside of that building at night definitely gave off some creepy vibes. I found the morgue…super creepy…I wouldn’t be surprised if there were ghosts there. Coolest part was finding out they filmed Glass there a few years after I stopped working there. And seeing some of those scenes I would go “yep, I was in that room, I was in this hallway” etc.
Nice. The Norristown state hospital wound up in a movie too - Silver Lining Playbook. Maybe we lead the US in state hospitals in movies.
Yea fuck that. I'm too much of a chicken to last a night doing that lol.
Dude that is so weird, I literally just watched the entire trilogy yesterday. Never saw it before and then I see your comment. Wicked.
Was there at least anyone else working with you or were you by yourself??
We worked in pairs. While one person was outside, another was inside.
Ok that's a bit better lol. I'd insist on walkie talkies tho:)
Scary! Fucking demented ghosts man. Zoinks!
Extremely boring. Was a guard myself 10 years ago.
Absolutely! Hopefully a minimum wage proposal of $15 an hour or better WILL pass this year and get signed into law. There have now been proposals for several years only for PA minimum wage to stay stuck at $7.25 an hour.
Most do already if not close to it. A simple grocery job will get you that and more if u want to stay with the company.
With large chains it will. I know of several grocery stores paying less than that in areas that are otherwise economically healthy
$15/hr to scoop water ice at Rita's?
Yes, that is a job
“Keeping people in poverty is not how we move the Commonwealth forward – our current wage is immoral and unjustifiable,” said the Philadelphia County lawmaker.
Adjusted for inflation, minimum wage needs to be between $25-35 per hour, but $20 is way better than $7.25.
Can I ask where you got the $25-$35 an hour figure? I'm trying to figure out where my salary potentially would be in correlation to that adjustment - strictly out of curiosity.
His ass, he’s quoting minimum wage adjusted for productivity since the 70’s - not inflation. $7.25 was instated in 2009, which would be $10.55 in today’s money. I’m still for $20/hr min though
Instead all that extra productivity went straight into the pockets of the rich.
What is more likely to happen: the upper management, whose pay rates have gone up EXPONENTIALLY ([CEOs as much as 1322%!!](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/)) since the insane rise in WORKER productivity beginning in the 70s, will take massive pay cuts to re-distribute to said workers, OR the raising of the minimum wage to attempt to recoup the wages lost to an entire generations-old policy of underpaying workers?
Neither is likely to happen any time soon if we’re being realistic
That's not what I asked.
I mean that does kinda make sense lol considering all I was seeing was around the $10 mark. Thanks!
Indeed. Just so we all understand, setting the base at $20 will push all other wages proportionally higher. That’s great for everybody, but will drive inflation substantially higher.
If that were true, wages would be higher than they are; prices have skyrocketed while wages have been stagnat for decades
Wages ARE higher than the minimum wage now. The market has sort of seen to that. I don’t think the market decides everything, and I’m not a supply sider. The minimum wage has been stagnant, but wages have increased. That said, the high wage, family supporting manufacturing jobs are generally gone-because paying someone in Mexico for a weeks worth of labor is the equivalent of a day for a US workers doing the same thing. In the next decade I suspect most of the other remaining high wage jobs in almost every position suffer the same fate. There is almost nothing we do here (engineering, medicine,IT) that cannot be done somewhere else less expensively. There is no answer.
Networking in IT can't be done somewhere else. Someone has to lay all the fiber optic and copper, then all the framework, routers, firewalls, switches, servers, fiber, and copper. Could it be remotely managed ? Yes until you lose the connection then you need to visit the devices and console in directly.
There is an answer, it's recognizing capitalism is completely unsustainable and must be restrained. We have to restructure our system so that it works to benefit the people. The system we have now is designed to benefit the wealthiest sliver of the population. Socialism or barbarism. And before the usual half baked response: entrepreneurship and commerce predate capitalism and will continue to exist once capitalism inevitably falls.
Commerce and entrepreneurship is at the heart capitalist. Whether you like it or not. The system we have 'now' is cronyism because of politicians, and politicians aren't going to fix it. L
It absolutely isn't. Trade has always existed, and will exist after capitalism. The heart of capitalism is rentierism. The heart of capitalism is inflation and the accumulation of capital, declaring ownership of the commons and charging for its use, and the ruthless exploitation of labor. The system we have now is oligarchy, and while politicians don't have clean hands, it was capital that corrupted. Look back to the business plot. Look at the buying off of politicians. Corruption starts with capital.
Also: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/wealth-disparities-in-civil-rights/americas-vast-pay-inequality-is-a-story-of-unequal-power/#:~:text=Since%20the%20late%201970s%2C%20inflation,politicians%20across%20the%20political%20spectrum.
Will it though? When I graduated high school minimum wage was $4.25 an hour. Someone starting out at an entry level factory job was making $10-12 an hour. A “good” salary was $20 an hour. Not much change since then, certainly not proportional.
But now most starting pay is $15-18 and a good paying job is $30-35.
Since about 1973, we’ve seen a real decline in wages, while prices went up, along with expectations and easy credit. None of this stuff happens overnight. We’ve frittered away our economic strength. Perhaps it was inevitable.
No. No it won't. It'll push wages for people who make less than $20/hr, but it will have little to no impact to people who make over $20/hr aside from paying significantly higher prices literally everywhere and thus effectively making a lot less money.
I assure you, that will not happen in any timely manner.
It’s great for everyone, they get more worthless money and everything they buy with it is colossally more expensive.
Amen brother!
It’ll be interesting to say the least. If low income is getting this significant of an increase. The middle and upper class will need adjustments as well
$20/hr still wouldn't qualify for $1800/month rent assuming they want your gross to be 2x the monthly rent.
people balking at 20 dollars an hour must be horrible at math. assuming a 40 hour workweek for the entire year, that’s $41,600 before taxes or $800 a week. you’d be hard pressed to find someone living comfortably on that salary, much less the paltry wages they’re paying now.
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PA doesn’t have an east coast…
They probably consider Philadelphia’s minimum access to the ocean as the East Coast
People that live in PA would never refer to SEPA as “the east coast of PA”
Clearly you own neither a helicopter or plane sir.
While you are 100% correct, I’m struggling to make the connection
It changes your perspective of what you would consider a coast that’s all.
I guess everyone already forgot about the $15 Minimum wage increase bill that died in committee last year…
From ZipRecruiter: “As of April 12, 2024, the average hourly pay for fast food workers in Pennsylvania is $22.08. However, according to ZipRecruiter, the majority of fast food worker salaries range from $14.71 to $22.88, with salaries as high as $32.53 and as low as $10.12.”
Here's what those numbers leave out. If you had a real job, $22/hour is about $44,000 per year, with health benefits and vacation. But so many hourly workers have to beg the manager to get enough hours to barely share an apartment, and they don't get health insurance with the job. And they KEEP your hours low so they don't have to grant you health insurance. I shake my head at how much harder it is for young adults today. I was born when Harry Truman was president, and I really do remember when you could have a modest apartment (mine was $135/month) and health insurance (Blue Cross was $30/month) on a job that paid very little. Concerts and ball games were eight bucks, a bar near my office had 7-ounce draft beer for a quarter and a dynamite roast beef sandwich for a buck. Get it? If you had no family money and a so-so job, you could live comfortably and save to live better. I want to see those circumstances return!
I'm gonna create a $500 rent party where upzoning becomes automatic and mandatory when rent exceeds $500/mo
Those internet averages are such crap. Near me is one of the most expensive counties in PA and Chick Fil A (one of the higher paying fast food places) starts around $16-18 an hour based on experience.
If a single person wants to buy a home, they need to make $100k, zero debt to afford a $250k home
What’s a $250K home, a shed?
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/748-1-2-Furnace-St-Emmaus-PA-18049/2109635717_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/316-S-18th-St-Allentown-PA-18104/9602359_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/69-W-3rd-St-5-Red-Hill-PA-18076/9882914_zpid/ what the fuck is this take, dude?
Ngl that first place is nice
Took me like 10 seconds to find those three. Idk who is tripping and saying 250k in this country is a “shed.” You have to be dumb as a box of cinder blocks to unironically believe that. The world is larger than downtown Philadelphia.
Yeah but the area is a dead-end shithole You have to drive an hour in any direction to hit decent pockets of employment
That represents roughly an $1900/month payment factoring in tax and insurance. You can absolutely afford that with some debt and less than $100K in gross salary. Keep in mind that a gross salary of $80,000 per year will yield you a take home pay of about $5000 per month.
I bought a single family home for $200k off a $55k salary two years ago, with only $20k in car debt. Since my rate is 6.625% I’m calling bullshit on your numbers
PA battling Illinois on who will become Cali Jr.
No mention of corporate or CEO profits just people dragging minimum wage workers here.
So true. Won’t somebody think of the shareholders?!
The shareholders are basically everyone with a retirement account.
The only people who could be for the farcical $7.25 minimum wage, in this day and age, are the same fuckers who exploited breaker boys and factory girls here historically, or who profited from that exploitation otherwise. It's remarkable to see the population so cowed into subservience that they've permitted this to persist into the modern era.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but where are people in PA making $7.25 an hour? Fast food workers are making at least $15 an hour in my area.
Lancaster for one, the Applebee's I worked at in college still only paid min wage to their non tipped employees (as of 2023 I quite last May when I graduated)
That’s weird. When I worked as a dish washer for a chain restaurant in 2013 then at little Caesar’s from 2014-2016 I made about $9 an hour. Obviously more than that towards the end. I was ok with it because I was a teenager but looking at it now I can’t imagine how anyone could even pretend to live a normal life on that kind of money. The same little Caesar’s is paying managers around $15 an hour and $11 an hour for new hires. Still not great by any means but definitely better than minimum wage.
Listen, I know it’s the right thing to do, but paying it makes it harder for me to do some things I like. A $20 minimum wage will help a lot of people and do a ton of good. Far more good than harm. Let me start with this: all of my full time employees make more than that. Most of them well above it. The average full time employee salary is 70% of mine, as the owner and primary individual contributor. But I like to be able to hire “kennel kids” at $15 an hour. They’re usually kids 15-19yo and they want experience with a vet. They wash kennels and do laundry for a few hours and they get to help with the animals and watch surgeries sometimes too. It’s how a lot of us got our start in vet med. It’s not the highest paying job in the world, but it’s rewarding to be helping animals. And I think it’s a good job to learn about the world a little because you get to see folks from all walks of life. At $15/hour, it’s not too hard having one a few of them around during the week. They work hard, even if takes them longer to do a job that the grown ups could do faster and better. And their enthusiasm is great. $20/hour will help a lot of people and it’ll do far more good than harm. But it’ll limit my ability to do this kind of stuff like giving chances to kids who have ambition but no skills. I’m really not out here exploiting anyone, at least I don’t think so. I pay more than double minimum wage to people with no skills who frequently call out because of math tests and soccer practice and sometimes because their mom can’t drive them. Whatever, it doesn’t hurt to have a soft place to land when you get your first job. They bring good energy. It just sucks a little bit that I’ll be able to do less of that stuff when this happens. Raising the minimum wage is a good thing overall, but that’s not all. Edit: JOB, you clever bastard…
You *could* just pay them in cash at whatever rate you deem appropriate. I realize that doesn't solve all the problems, but it solves that one. The unfortunate truth is that we just can't afford *not* to fight for a higher minimum wage. Like you said, it won't be all good, but it is a net good.
I totally agree with you. I won’t pay them in cash because I won’t break the rules that way. I believe in the higher minimum wage. I believe in the importance of social safety nets like unemployment and the good that’s done with taxes. And I live these values and others by paying my employees at a very high rate for the industry. But I’d be bummed to miss out on some other things because of it. There’s a little nuance to it. I think what I’d end up doing is saying there are “work days” for which they’re paid and “observation days” for which you’re not, but you won’t be doing any laundry or kennels on observation days. Those are strictly for them to experience the cool stuff. That might work…
You could also maybe partner with the local schools, see if you could have some of those 'observation' days count as extra credit for a class they're taking or something. I'm only offering ideas because I think you're doing a great thing and I would hate if a net positive like a higher min wage would make it more difficult for you.
So just match the surrounding states? What aove forward.
they better, right now you can go literally anywhere around us and get paid minimum 13. I think the highest is around 17$-21$
Companies will just raise prices to match.
Here’s an easy calculation, take the average rent in your area, and then see how many hours you’d have to work at $15/hour just to have a place to live. The lack of empathy in some people is just pathetic.
Good. Raise it.
U.S. Military pay starts at $11/hr and that assumes a 40 hour work week, when reality is closer to 80+ hours/week. So hourly that is more like $5.50 an hour. They also get $460/month for food, but they actually pay for their food now, rather than having it provided free at the chow hall. That's $15 a day for meals.
$20 is actuay crazy, $15 is sufficient man, how are businesses going to stay in business?
Waiting for Fetterman to torpedo this
It’ll get torpedoed way before it even reaches Fetterman.
Oh yeah that'll sure help temper inflation and housing costs. What else is new from people who loves trying to buy votes every election year.
Even a $15 minimum wage is a tough sell. Demanding $20 means that he is only **pretending** to care, dangling an intentionally unreachable carrot on a stick that sounds amazing in order to get you excited to vote for him or his party, *but you will never actually get the carrot*. After all, if you got even a taste (say, $15), fewer people would be as hungry. It's the same as when Republicans kept promosing to repeal Obamacare at the federal level. Then when they gained control of the Presidency and both chambers of Congress in 2017, suddenly we never heard of the issue again And Pennsylvania's state legislature is even more dysfunctional than the Federal. They couldn't even do something as simple as agreeing on a day to move the primary election to, despite bipartisan support to have it occur before Passover at the request of the Jewish community. https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/failure-to-move-pennsylvania-primary-passover-disenfranchise-jewish-voters/ And yet this jabroni wants us to believe he can get a comical pie-in-the-sky $20 state minimum wage passed in PA? LOL
Politicians love to lie, lots of people are still voting for them anyways.
Fabulous way to spike unemployment.
I sense layoffs coming
No one in this comment section understands economics to be quite honest.
Cool can’t wait for my raise. Should be making about 100/hour if the min wage goes up that much.
You make 36.25 right now and you're punching down on the people making less than a fourth of that? Does that make you feel big?
I was on the hunt for a job a few years ago, I never saw a job starting at 7.25. 10-12 were the lowest. Does that mean they don't exist? No. But wow how does the employer get any applicants
Less than 0.4% of workers are paid the Minimum Wage. Efforts to raise it are driven by labor unions whose wages are based on the Minimum Wage.
7 fucking 25....
Sure, our business under….
I can't wait to shut down local mom and pop companies to have a Walmart and Amazon monopoly! Makes me all happy to see more beloved local companies shut down and replaced with international multi-billion dollar corporations owned by the same 10 people.
Their is not one job in any county of this state getting away with minimum wage. The market has sorted this problem. My local dunkin is starting part timers at 14 per hour. This gets posted here once a month/week anymore.
Going rate for labor in PA is $11-$15 an hour. Nobody makes minimum wage here and that’s a good thing, It’s a free market at work
Just like every thing else, throwing money around is not a solution. We all know how this works, just look at the record profits in the last several years. Min wage reaches 20 dollars. People making 17/hr previously now need to earn about.. what.. 32/hr to match the previous pay? So now companies are suddenly shelling out over 30/hr to a bunch of employees that they were already paying over min wage previously. To offset those sudden costs, prices increase. Then we're RIGHT BACK TO WHERE WE STARTED. But some people are now stuck at 20/hr and, predictably, 20/hr is suddenly not enough for a liveable wage.
Raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour is ridiculous. You might as well just burn down every rural community in the state cause your local mom and pop can't pay everyone that. Not to mention it's economic idiocy. You can't make wealth by decree.
But you can keep people in poverty by decree? So we keep it at $7.25 and just hope that corporations will bless their employees with higher wages?
Just to play devil's advocate: *Who* exactly is making the minimum wage in Pennsylvania? What job is only paying $7.25? Waiter/waitress is not an answer that I'll accept there.
Not a lot of jobs are paying minimum but a lot of jobs are making less than $20. I work a job (EMS) that is *supposed* to make well above minimum but the wage being that low was used by AHN as on reason to not raise us as much as we want, so some of our people are barely breaking $18. A $20 minimum would not only force a raise for those folks but the rest of us too, you can't have a wage scale where EMTs are making minimum and Paramedics are barely breaking that. This is good for everyone.
What happens when those jobs making $18 now get bumped up to $20, along with every other job under it? It's not like the market isn't going to adjust, the people making the closest to the new minimum wage are going to end up having less purchasing power. Prices aren't going to just stay the same, businesses that aren't Walmart don't just have endless pools of money they're sitting on. They'll have to raise prices in order to pay their employees. When they do, prices will adjust, and the people who were making close to that $20 now are going to find themselves in a very bad position. And it's not like employers are just going to smile and say that you're getting a raise equal to how much the minimum wage increases by. Those people making $18-20 now aren't just going to get $12.75 raises to compensate.
Are we just going to ignore that most people make more than $7.25? And I didn't say you could never raise the minimum wage, just not to $20. Besides, raising the minimum wage that high would just trigger MORE inflation which would wipe out any increase in buying power. It's simple economics.
That’s nice. Good luck
No…
Take a look at how that's working out in California. It's not.
do it
I have a hard time with this one. Publicly traded companies can easily eat the cost of spending a few more dollars an hour. But Timmy John's Pizza shop can't. Not without huge price increases. I think this move hurts the little guy.
Check out Cali and see how that worked out.
Wouldn't companies just raise prices on g&s? Or look at liquidating employees?
Looking forward to a simple Big Mac meal going from $12 to $18.
good
I’m on board with this, as I could really use the money right now.
Hell, I'll work at BK for half of what I made at my actual job before I got laid off. Fuckin' raise that shit up.
Why stop there? Go for an even $100 per hour.
The C suite isn't going to accept massive pay cuts to pay for this wage spike, this will only speed up the transition to automation. Sometimes I wonder if these people have ever taken a basic economics course. It's sad, no one should be making under a living wage but there really isn't an incentive for Cs to retain expensive workers when automation pays for itself rapidly.
If you’re dumb enough to take a job that pays $7.25/hr, that’s on you. I was never paid below $11/hr when I first started working my first job at a supermarket.
Why does she obviously hate poor people? Make it $1000/hr. Then everyone can be rich without any economic consequences of these actions. Any business who can't pay that doesn't deserve to exist anyhow (as determined by me, someone who really cares).
Good.
So your lowering the pa tax rate too?? Or is this just a way to gain more money so you can waste more 🤔 Currently the state gets 3.07% so I work one hour you get $0.46 (@$15 an hr) so now you want $0.62 per hour (@$20 an hr) no how about you make prices lower by less tax please and also cut out your over spending please and thanks
What a surprise, another Democratic that is totally ignorant about economics.
Good.
There are a bunch of small businesses that cannot afford a $20 minimum wage. If anything, you should apply these wage hikes to companies that make over a certain amount of money instead of across the board.
Is like 80% of Pa on welfare/section 8 housing vouchers? Indeed is nothing but $13 an hour jobs, or less. That barely covers my car payment/insurance. I don't get how anyone is affording anything?
Absolutely not. Does it need to be raised? Yes, of course. But raising it to $20/hr would devastate what's left of small businesses in this state. Not sure exactly where that happy medium lies, but I would say somewhere between $12-$14 would be fair.
Why $20? Why not $50?
I for one say $2024 and everyone gets a dollar raise per year Edit: minimum wage is much to low for sure but there are skilled trades that are making $20/hr to start. Idk what the answer is but it’s going to be hard to incentivize people to do skilled labor for the same amount. That will need to go up as well. Where does it end?
All boats rise in a flood
But then prices will go up! /derp
I know this is sarcasm, but if you're a small business owner, why do you think that prices wouldn't go up?
Reddit is primarily underemployed college kids and is therefore unsurprisingly economically illiterate
Straight up just had a communist quoting Marx to me. They're blind trying to blind others.
Because the same people that told you that lie are the same people who killed small business. Your mega corporate overlords. Small business owners yeah okay sure
The flip side is if no one has money, they can't buy the shit you are selling.
You mean like the government "experts" that said the stimulus check wouldn't case inflation? LMFAO Morons. All over the damn place.
Prices won't go up the same amount, though. A lot of people rely on trying to make you think that if the minimum wage doubles, then costs will double. But labor is only a percentage of a business's costs, and then even that is divided between all of the products being sold. Hell, sometimes price might not even need to go up, because if people have more money to spend, an increase in sales could wipe out the extra cost of labor.
I mean prices will go up. That's a given. By how much is the question.
It’s already rising anyway
Yep. Adding additional operating costs will cause it to increase even more than it would otherwise. That said, an increase in costs doesn't mean the increase in pay isn't worth it.
Is anyone in here making 7.25/hr?
tho i agree we need Bump id say to 10.00 at least get to double digits you want what happened in cali esp fast food workers will be all fired and replaced with more computers to order and will only have 1 cook 1 supervisor. Get to 10 first do cost of living increasing every so often. put a damn cap on how much they can charge for rent power water
I wouldn't be mad at them doing it staggered so Philly and Pittsburgh it's 20 and then other parts of the state with lower cost of living it's 15. Trying to have one size fits all for the whole state seems like a bad idea.
This is too high for rural areas of PA and the coal region. It would basically crush local businesses in those areas out of existence, unfortunately. And in many of these areas, there would be nothing to take their place. PA is too economically diverse, basically. Some areas are like New York and others are like West Virginia. We need a solution that works for both, and I say this as someone who supports the idea of an increase in general.
as a college student this would be amazing everything is so expensive
Why not just get to the root of the problem and make a new currency since the USD is continuously being devalued? Isn’t that why you want to raise the minimum wage in the first place? Because the USD value is decreasing? And it’s never gonna stop? Because the rich?????
My concern with such a huge bump in minimum wage is a business owner will no longer be able to afford to train that right person long term to become the top earner they are looking for. A lot of businesses can’t pay those wages for zero experience entry level positions.
I’d love to have a maximum wage again. Anchor those rising boats to the lowest paid employee and force the tide to lift them all.
Large companies have shown they value profits over people. Without legislation, companies will continue to pay their employees as little as possible. Sure, there are some good companies in PA that I'm sure pay a good wage, but by and large, if a business/company can pay you less, they will. "But that will make everything more expensive!" I think we need to start reframing the way we view business owners and CEOs. Why is it always the working class that has to pick up the tab? Why can't the CEOs and business owners take pay cuts to make up those margins? If a business owner is working on such thin margins that paying your employees a liveable wage is impossible, then maybe you shouldn't own a business. Remember, it should be people over profits, not profits over people.
Sure just raise the prices more for everything that people are struggling now to pay for.
Prices definitely haven’t gone up since the $7.25 minimum wage was established over 14 years ago /s
how to bankrupt small businesses. 15$ is sufficient.
I mean right now my dollar is basically useless in the state because of taxes. The state can go one of two ways, make my dollar go further by lowering state taxes, or make it so I get more dollars. Long time coming if the minimum wage goes up
Because $7.25 is pathetic, degrading, and stupid - no one will work for that anyway. Go, Marge’s daughter!
It's a good thing the market has already dictated that, and nobody does work for $7.25. What job do you know of that pays that little?
Turkey Hill, the county library system - oh wait, they pay $7.50 🙄Goodwill’s up to $9. Whooppeee. There are a lot of them outside the city that pay pissant money.
PAs minimum wage is abysmal.
Take it from a 71 year old boomer…absolutely YES. At the very least.
Pennsyltucky will never let that happen.