Dem Platform Committee Votes Down $15 Min Wage Amendment

[Hortensis]

85. Interesting post. I'm not speaking technically,

only that I personally feel that in a fabulously wealthy nation like our own the minimum wage should be a living wage. If we want to set it higher than that, fine. More consumer demand. If that strains our pockets, there are far deeper ones we can drain. We really, really need to do that anyway.

As for the figure and how it would relate to $15/hour, it wouldn't. It would vary not only from region to region but from different areas of a county and, yes, be indexed to inflation and deflation. Government would help offset regional problems where a living wage was incompatible with profits. (Speaking theoretically, we actually have the technology available to literally set a minimum wage for every person using data now available for most developed areas of the nation -- if we ever chose to do such a thing. When applying for a job, on the application would be, "This is a minimum-wage position. Do you have an assigned minimum wage? If so, what is it? )

I'm a California to Deep South transplant, college grad very long ago now, semi-retired. College included four econ classes that I remember very little of. And how to make it work for the fast food model is someone else's problem, except to note that demand for 80-cent hamburgers would drop precipitously in a society where poverty was unusual.

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. Louis D. Brandeis