The “low cost of living” in the “flyover states” is subsidized by a complete lack of accessible social services or government accountability.
You can get a house for a bit more than 100,000. But you’ll pay for it by sending your children to a school where your high schooler is being taught math by someone with a GED. Or when you lose a tire to a crater in the road. Or when a tornado hits your town and emergency services aren’t available because your Governor is in Paris and didn’t bother to tell anyone.
It’s really Galt’s Gulch here. The low cost of living/low pay works like a trap, because how the fuck can one save up to get out?
No, but the same food and lodging costs drastically different based on location in this country. A New York City cost of living would bankrupt small businesses in rural Nebraska who also price their services based on regional costs. It’s just more logical than a flat minimum wage for the whole country.
The problem with having a universal minimum wage is the minimum is usually pegged to the state with the lowest COI, and there are usually assholes in government in higher COI states who will not require their state to set the minimum any higher. So you end up with people still struggling to survive because the minimum wage is too low and their state doesn’t have any delta. Pegging the minimum wage to regional COI makes way more sense given the vast differences in COI between urban and rural parts of states.
Reality would beg to differ. While I’m sure it’s not all fair and even, most of the higher cost of living states already have a much higher minimum wage. Many require more than double
Okay, but high COL blue states aren’t the only ones out there. If it costs twice as much to live in Tennessee as it does in Idaho, the Tennessee legislature (being largely Republican) will probably do fuck all about increasing the minimum wage. In fact they haven’t.
No, but the same food and lodging costs drastically different based on location in this country.
Rent’s going up everywhere. Lower wages for the states whose voters you regard with contempt is only going to create a permanent underclass of flyover Morlocks who will get hungry.
Dude, what are you talking about? I live in rural Indiana. I also realize that cost of living is not the same in every area and making the minimum wage one flat rate creates problems when the cost of living is not flat. This is common sense, not a bias against “flyover states” like the one I live in. That’s why I said it should be pegged to cost of living reports that are already conducted by the government across every region of the country. This way if rent goes up, it would automatically be accounted for and adjusted.
This is common sense, not a bias against “flyover states” like the one I live in.
Just because you consider your life to have less value than someone in a non-flyover state, that doesn’t mean you get to tell the rest of us that our lives have less value.
And their suggestion was to tie it to the CoL. CoL goes up? So does the minimum wage.
It’s almost like their suggestion was a system where what’s provided is molded by what’s needed and not to just set the minimum wage at a lower number once and forget about it
Yeah, an hour of someone’s life is just worth less in the flyover shit states.
EDIT: Why don’t the worthless people in the flyover shit states want to vote for us?
The “low cost of living” in the “flyover states” is subsidized by a complete lack of accessible social services or government accountability.
You can get a house for a bit more than 100,000. But you’ll pay for it by sending your children to a school where your high schooler is being taught math by someone with a GED. Or when you lose a tire to a crater in the road. Or when a tornado hits your town and emergency services aren’t available because your Governor is in Paris and didn’t bother to tell anyone.
It’s really Galt’s Gulch here. The low cost of living/low pay works like a trap, because how the fuck can one save up to get out?
No, but the same food and lodging costs drastically different based on location in this country. A New York City cost of living would bankrupt small businesses in rural Nebraska who also price their services based on regional costs. It’s just more logical than a flat minimum wage for the whole country.
That’s how it used to work until WFHers realized they can make urban wages and live in the country; literally eating their cake and having it too
That’s why it’s the MINIMUM wage. It isn’t saying places like New York City needs to pay that low, nor is it saying they can’t mandate higher.
It is saying that every person, anywhere, should at an absolute minimum, be offered this baseline.
The problem with having a universal minimum wage is the minimum is usually pegged to the state with the lowest COI, and there are usually assholes in government in higher COI states who will not require their state to set the minimum any higher. So you end up with people still struggling to survive because the minimum wage is too low and their state doesn’t have any delta. Pegging the minimum wage to regional COI makes way more sense given the vast differences in COI between urban and rural parts of states.
Reality would beg to differ. While I’m sure it’s not all fair and even, most of the higher cost of living states already have a much higher minimum wage. Many require more than double
Okay, but high COL blue states aren’t the only ones out there. If it costs twice as much to live in Tennessee as it does in Idaho, the Tennessee legislature (being largely Republican) will probably do fuck all about increasing the minimum wage. In fact they haven’t.
Rent’s going up everywhere. Lower wages for the states whose voters you regard with contempt is only going to create a permanent underclass of flyover Morlocks who will get hungry.
Dude, what are you talking about? I live in rural Indiana. I also realize that cost of living is not the same in every area and making the minimum wage one flat rate creates problems when the cost of living is not flat. This is common sense, not a bias against “flyover states” like the one I live in. That’s why I said it should be pegged to cost of living reports that are already conducted by the government across every region of the country. This way if rent goes up, it would automatically be accounted for and adjusted.
Just because you consider your life to have less value than someone in a non-flyover state, that doesn’t mean you get to tell the rest of us that our lives have less value.
And their suggestion was to tie it to the CoL. CoL goes up? So does the minimum wage.
It’s almost like their suggestion was a system where what’s provided is molded by what’s needed and not to just set the minimum wage at a lower number once and forget about it
It’s better than the current system of begging politicians.
Sarcasm I hope?
Very much so.