Reply to Montgomery County, please give Elrich a chance. Don't let Floreen fool you.

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Reply to "Montgomery County, please give Elrich a chance. Don't let Floreen fool you."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
My 14 year old working at a pool snack bar earned close to $10/hour, as do babysitters. Same kid now 18 works in a medical lab for $15 an hour and that will help fund college This is out of touch. Young adults that I know of working lifeguard jobs to try to help pay for college earning $10 an hour have trouble paying for food and basics like a new lifeguard suit. Let’s not be so stingy. The minimum wage in DC is $15 and there are plenty of jobs there.

The low minimum is also why we have a lot of illegal immigrants doing jobs here ( which we all pay for in taxes via providing benefits ) as they are the only ones wanting to do certain jobs for such a low wage. When the wages are so low that people need food stamps and energy and rent assistance to survive it’s costing the tax payer instead of the business. [/quote]

I agree.

IMO the argument against $15 is myopic. Also, it's not as if the only people working minimum wage jobs are high school kids in Bethesda with rich parents just adding to their pocket money. Some people count on multiple minimum wage jobs to survive - especially LEGAL immigrants with professional degrees in other countries who need to start over when they come to America. A lot of these people are trying to make ends meet for themselves and their children and also learning English.

And what if it is a high school kid working a summer job. "Back in the old days" summer jobs could pay for college tuition. If you're telling a 17-18 year old to suck it up, pick yourself up by your bootstraps and not take out huge student loans and complain about it afterwards.... the only way to avoid this is to have them, in addition to competing for scholarships and/or staying in-state, is to have them earn more money being employed.

I also agree that $15 is more of an arbitrary target than a silver bullet. I'm not an economist myself, but perhaps it's close to some kind of optimization of closest to livable wage vs bottom threshold for small businesses to continue to operate. It will still take a second job and some social services to keep a family afloat - but at least a minimum wage worker might not fall further behind. Anyone would agree that the idea is to ascend beyond a minimum wage job - but it exacerbates the problem if one is falling into a financial hole/not having adequate medical care/not feeding themselves while trying to acquire new skills and hunting for higher-paying jobs. [/quote]

The young adults I know of working the lifeguarding jobs are having troubles with basic expenses while LIVING WITH PARENTS or in group homes.  It’s not enough money to survive on in any way that is reasonable. It’s also wrong to assume that everyone is going to college. Some aren’t bright enough - it’s ridiculous to assume that everyone is a rich, educationally successful ( good student who received a good education) person who is going to college to better themselves and they are just doing a lower level job for pocket change and a ‘life learning experience’. Some of these people will honestly be lifeguards for a long time and they don’t have money for basic expenses even while living in a group situation.

There are several people I know working those kinds of jobs who have college degrees but who haven’t been able to find a job in two or more  years.

As we may know Maryland Medicaid doesn’t include dental care so you have people losing teeth because dental care is way too expensive out of pocket.

$15 an hour will ease things slightly for these kinds of people and that’s seems important to do and fiscally I am not liberal at all. It’s a basic human rights issue. [/quote]

Then why is it $15? Whey not $16 or $13 or $20?

If it's a human rights issues, then minimum wage isn't the solution -- EITC (earned income tax credit) is. That's why we already have it at both the national and state level. It looks at your entire household situation, since that lifeguard in your example will have more expenses if they are raising a small child than if they are single. It also takes into account all their jobs.

There's a reason more and more places in MoCo are automating heavily. Notice the ordering kiosks at McDonalds and Burger King, and even new trendy places like Honey Poke (in North Bethesda) has all ordering from a kiosk. Or look at the ice cream place just opening now in Bethesda on Norfolk Ave -- the ice cream dispensing is entirely by machine. The rush to automation is because labor costs are too high -- so they are eliminating jobs accordingly.[/quote]

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