A pair of progressive Democrats unveiled a bill on Tuesday that would raise the federal minimum wage to $25 per hour, considered the bare minimum a single adult needs to meet the cost of living in much of the US.
The Living Wage For All Act is the first bill to be introduced by the newly sworn-in Rep. Analilia Mejía (D-NJ), who won a special election earlier this month after helping to lead the fight for a $15 minimum wage in her home state of New Jersey.
SIMPLE ANSWER: Companies would learn to accept lower profit.
There’s no goddamn good reason for companies to “need” 15, 20, 30% profit margins. And there’s zero justification for companies to assume (a) every year is a winner and (b) every year, we gotta grow.
Every dollar they keep in excess profit is a dollar they stole from you. That extra dollar increases prices, decreases the value of the money you DO get to earn, and increases the political power of the extremely wealthy people who already own the government.
1000% agree with you but your estimate of profit margins are grossly off. Most margins are much higher, the numbers you quoted are low margins by far. 20% or 30% would be unsustainable for a place like Amazon.
Hopefully. I could see it turning into massive layoffs, cutting things all across the board, and it’ll be a war of attrition, who will cave first, me fighting my crippling desire for potato chips, or PepsiCo. needing to gouge prices. And the problem I see is that they’ve been winning this whole time, and the royal we are weak and dumb. But maybe we need a bigger push.
Beyond that, I’m not sure we can legislate the problem away either. And so we raise the minimum wage, we squeeze the middle class, and we probably end up in a worse position for it. But who knows, maybe we are capable of banding together as proles and speaking with our wallets.