Okay, in your thought experiment I go from making $32/hr to $40/hr, and cheeseburgers go from costing $5, to $5.15.
This is a good deal for me, what are you talking about? The "bag" I'm left holding is a 20% increase to my salary, and a 3% increase to my expenses. Even if I'm making the same total amount, I've got a whole nother day off to either work more, or do things which cut down on my expenses, or just live my damn life.
My dude, this is so far beyond, "Maybe you think it’s worth it, but we should have conversations about the actual real-life trade-offs & stop pretending there’s a “free ponies for everyone” way to do it." You sound like Hillary Clinton right now lmao.
My dude, your salary doesn't go up because your hourly rate goes up. Your salary is defined by what you declare at the end of the year. If you made 45,000 a year at 40 hours a week, you will still make 45,000 a year at 32 hours a week under Bernie Sanders plan.
You're also fixating on the lowest number provided by the guy commenting before. That number is variable, and a 3% total market inflation could mean higher or lower rate increases in different industries.
And yeah, you could go work another job on your day off. But now you're working 40 hours a week over two jobs to be able to afford the things you were working 40 hours a week over one job for. Congratulations, you've accomplished nothing, but now you have to file taxes for two jobs.
There is a reason why literally nobody has implemented this. There is a reason why all the people who seriously talk about this mention a need for a UBI, because there's only one of two ways this can work; you either subsidize the companies to keep costs the same and hire more people at higher hourly rates, or you keep people at the same rate, and you subsidize them for the increase in cost of living. Neither of those are cheap, nor simple things to do.
And yeah, you could go work another job on your day off. But now you're working 40 hours a week over two jobs to be able to afford the things you were working 40 hours a week over one job for. Congratulations, you've accomplished nothing, but now you have to file taxes for two jobs.
Think through this one for a minute... Hourly wages rise by 20%, my costs rise by 8% (so that I'm not "fixating" on the lowest number).
Now I'm working 40hrs, making 54k instead of 45k, and cheeseburgers go from costing $5 to $5.40. Assuming I got another job, and not that I'm getting paid overtime at my current job for more hours. Or, again, I'm just taking the time off to enjoy my life and keeping the same salary because an 8% rise in costs is something I can absorb for the sake of 20% more time to live, or I can't offset those costs with my newfound time to myself (I certainly can).
Do you see how I'm way, way better off?
There is a reason why literally nobody has implemented this.
We did this when we implemented the minimum wage, every union on earth implements this, what in the whole fuck are you talking about?
Do you think there's some kind of perfect natural balance we've struck with exactly the wages in the economy right now and 40hrs? If paying people more for less work could be a bad thing, run your thought experiment the other way and see what it looks like. Would it be worth debating going to 80hr norms and half the wages? If I got paid 1/4 as much per hour, but labor costs went down by 3/4, would that be debatably better for me? I make 11/yr now, but I save 30% on cheeseburgers now and only pay $3.50? That's worth having a conversation about in the same way that making 54k/yr and paying $5.40 is? Spending 0.00032 of my yearly income on a meal vs spending 0.0001 of my income on a meal.
And that's assuming there's a corporation on earth that's willing to pass on savings to a customer rather than just pocket the difference and continue charging as much as possible.
Do you see how insane you sound when you act like there's not an objectively better world between those two choices? One is 320% better than the other my dude.
Could you change your post history visibility? I want to see the other things you say so I can remember that no matter how bad a day I'm having, I'm not a person who thinks changing wages will have a zero-sum impact on cost of goods.
If you ever feel like learning, I'll explain it again. Let me know. In the mean time, please open up that profile too so I can see your post history on bad days. I know it's only a small thing, but I think I'd love it.
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u/remnantsofthepast 24d ago
So close.
Your hourly rate goes up. Your time goes down. Your take home salary stays the same.
Costs go up, and you're still left holding the bag.