A nationwide $15 dollar minimum wage is harmful and dumb. We should advocate wage subsidies and UBI.

[Lee-Lee]

3. Agreed on many fronts. The "Fight for 15" movement hurts our brand in many areas

In the area where I work $15 an hour is a great, above average wage. $15 an hour full time would put a single person above the average household income.

It's more than starting pay for virtually every public service job. Your EMT's responding to an accident start around $12 an hour and if they move up to Paramedic and start for 5 years or so can get over $15.

When all of these folks who work hard at what they do see people in urban areas demanding $15 an hour for something like fast food work they don't sympathize with them. They don't jump on board and support them.

They are offended by it. They see someone who has what they see as an easy entry level job demanding more money than what they make in a job that is harder, requires more skill and training, and has more serious responsibilities.

And they know that their employer, be it the public sector or private sector ones there, can't afford to increase it wages to go up proportionally if such a law was passed.

One paramedic I was having lunch with said to me once when that was on the tv "If that shit passes I'm coming right down here and getting a job busing tables. I make $15.75 an hour now, and I have to work a 24 hour shift in dangerous conditions with a threat of everything from a dangerous scene to exposure to pathogens to combative patients, in a job where most of us end up on the disabled rolls from back injury or an attack by a patient before we ever reach retirement age. That extra .75 isn't worth all that if I can come bus tables and my biggest responsibilities are getting the crumbs up and not breaking plates" when I tried to explain to him his wages would go up too because a rising tide lifts all boats he responded "I work the budget committee every year. We have ambulances 3 years past when they should have been retired and can't afford to even upgrade our defibrillators that are 3 generations behind what is current technology. Where will that money come from? We don't have county income tax it's all sales and property tax and no way that will go up enough and fast enough to give a proportional pay differential to what we have now"

I really couldn't argue it.

That is how the movement and it's publicity hurts our cause when you get outside urban areas.