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Comment by shinjitsu | Hacker News Reader

>If they have a small mom and pop company that cannot pay workers at least $50,000, then they need to go out of business.

wow, this site really does skew toward coastal cities in the US doesn't it? $50k a year is a high end white collar salary enough to buy a (often significantly) better than median home on a single salary and enough to be considered in the upper 25% income for most of the places I have lived.

I think one of the biggest problems in politics in the US is that we have such a diversity of experience and needs in this country and most politicians (and perhaps voters) think that the solutions that are best for their local area are actually good for the whole country - when in most cases the experience across millions of people and thousands of miles from rural to dense urban is so different that almost no nation wide solution is very good.

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It's not a coastal thing, its just "any major city" thing. 50k is not enough salary to buy a better-than-median home in any of the major Texas cities (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio). It might have been enough in El Paso, but probably not since the recent housing bubble.

Sure, not everyone lives in a major city. It doesn't make a lot of sense for a line cook to make $50k in Victoria or Amarillo. But in these places, they are not being paid the ~25-30k which could be equivalent to about $50k in the city (which still isn't enough to buy a house). They are being paid $7.25 an hour and the tips aren't so good.

You totally miss the parents point, which is that most restaurant workers are barely paid enough to rent and eat, to make the point that the US has a diversity of CoL.

This does not skew at all towards the coastal cities. In the coastal cities, even a two income home, with both people earning $300,000 cannot even afford a home. $50,000 would be a joke of a joke.

First thing: let me ask you this...are you a business owner and have a vested interest in keeping wages down? Or maybe your parents or friends are business owners and you sympathize with them?

This is not about whether it is a coastal or rural issue. It is about a fairness issue.

No matter what city, rural or urban, if a business owner owns 10 locations and is making $1.5 million per year, let's just say for example, and he or she is paying $7.25 per hour for a total of $14,500 per year, and with zero health insurance, only offering 30 hours per week in order not to provide benefits that they do have for full time employees, and treat employees like sh-t, F them. I don't care if $14 is a lot in a rural area. That's not the point. I know you want it to be the only point to argue, because maybe it in your best interest to argue only that point.

However, even if it is only politically/philosophically your point, like maybe you are a libertarian or something, your viewpoint is probably that employers are free to offer any wage, and employees are free to accept it or not. Well, what is happening, is that employees are not accepting in droves. And this is causing business owners to say, "No, we don't mean free offer and acceptance, what we means is we say that in order for us to not seem like the total c-nts that we are, but now that people are taking us up on that and not accepting our offers, we want to cry like the whiny b-tches that we are and complain about how people that should be working for us, are not, and now we can't make $1.5 million while paying them $14,500 per year." That's what this is really about.

And there are a lot of other false arguments. That "the owner took the risk and is entitled to the reward." Fine. Ok. Great. Do the whole thing yourself then. Perfectly fine. Go to it dude, or dudette. Knock yourself out.

Or, sometimes people say that the money is "all on paper", another shitty argument. Jeff Bezos only takes an $80K salary, and is taxed only on that. Most of his wealth is "all on paper." So, you (not you you, but those who say it is paper wealth, I don't know if you do) are telling me, seriously, that if Bezos goes into a bank, and the banker knows it is Bezos, and Bezos applies for a loan to buy a $10 million home, that the banker says, "No, you only have a salary of $80,000." That is because the "paper wealth" is actually collateral, as are all the equipment, inventory, real estate, etc. Same as any business owner.

Another fallacy is "the business owner can't re-invest if they pay out larger salaries and provide more jobs." Yeah, right. With their multi-million homes, and vacations to Gstaad, Switzerland and safaris to Africa. I haven't seen Jeff Bezos do one god damn thing with his $200 billion, except keep trying to drive his employees wages down and trying to keep them from unionizing. Yet, HE doesn't want to keep HIS salary down, and recently bought a $150 million home in Los Angeles.

And, yet another fallacy, "business owners pay 80% of taxes." Who give a fluck? They should pay a lot more. You think this is ridiculous and communist? You have been brainwashed by the all-pervasive media. If one is into MAGA - Make America Great Again - or a libertarian, or whatever, you have to realize that if you turn back the clock, for most of the 20th century, tax rates on the wealthiest in the highest tax bracket was from 70% - 90%. It changed in 1986, when Ronald Reagan got it reduced to about 35%. And that is about the exact time that the rich started getting richer and poor started getting poorer.

In 1965, CEOs in the US earned 20 times more than the average worker but by 2015 it had risen to 300 times.

The issue is a lot bigger than just what the pay is. It is about income inequality. If you don't like it to be on that topic, and how it should be only about what is 'affordable', hey, that is just your opinion, as well as the business owners, too, conveniently.

But, employees are entitled to their own opinion, and that is that business owners who don't share in the wealth can go f themselves.

And, for the little place that goes under because can't afford to pay, well, raise your prices to cover it. If that means that you have to raise the price of pasta in your restaurant from $15 to $40, then do it. But, that is hilarious, because the owner would want to just take that as well, and not pay the employees a dime of it. And if they can't raise prices to cover costs, including investing in employees, then it is the capitalist way - go the f out of business. You suck at business. You are not providing a great dining experience that customers will pay more for.

And, the more mid-sized business owners who ARE making millions per year, they also won't pay the increased prices and increased revenue to employees, in order that they can buy their yacht or whatever. Or a bigger house so that their vain spouse can brag about it at cocktail parties.

But again, let the owner do all of the work himself. That's fair enough, if employees won't work for those low wages any more, be they in rural or urban areas, whether or not they can buy a low-end house or not. Business owners can just suck a big one if they are greedy, like most are. Tax them at 90% at the top tax rate. AND, that includes wealth, like stock. Let them sell it off to pay 90% taxes, so Bezos would owe taxes of $160 billion. And again, this is not me being a socialist or communist, but what actually happened when America actually was great, from the 1918 to 1985.

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