I am very conservative, caucasian single 46 year old man. I am 46, and have felt my whole life that when i vote or form a political opinion,it needs to be for the greater good of the country.

However I have 37 rental units,been doing it for 20 years. I'm wondering from a different perspective what is good for me,and my tenants. I have many tenants that earn a very low hourly wage,a couple living on very low govt handouts.

I think 7.25 an hour min wage is too low,though 15 an hour too high. I think that I AS A LANDLORD,and, also any of my residents earning less than 12 or 15 an hour would benefit IMMENSLEY, I think maybe even a few of the ssd disability suckers trying to live on 750 a month or so might be lured into a 600$ a week basic job,some will some wont.

The greater good for the country is letting the free market do it's thing. Supply and demand. Not government regulation.

Value is determined by what a buyer will pay for an item and what a seller will take for an item. The same applies to wages. A good wage is what a company will pay the person and what a worker will accept for that work. SO... if a floor sweeper is paid $5 per hour and no one takes the job, the company will need to offer more to get someone to take the job. And there is price that the company will find that the job is no longer worth offering because the pay is too high.

I will not buy a $5 coffee. I know plenty of people will, but it is not worth it to me. I will buy the $2 one though. If costs associated with coffee make it $10 how many people will stop buying it and the company can't make a profit, (which is what companies are in business to do). So maybe they start automating what they can, order on your way instead of with a person standing at the register. Eliminate another entry position.

Back to landlording... should you be required to only take $xxx in rent (less than you are asking) because the government thinks that is what a tenant should be paying? I guess that could happen as people need a living wage - it could be obtained from the other end - reduce expenses.

You decide what you need to get in rent to make it worth your while. If you can't find someone to take it at that rent, you might have to lower your price. But there will come a point where the lower price will not be worth it to you at all.

You can bet that if tenant's minimum wage goes to $15/hour, my rents are going UP, as will the rents of every LL in my town. This isn't our first ride on this cabbage wagon.

Laws that meddle with the economy always benefit one party over another. Yes, land lords will come off pretty well. Your local book store, hair salon, etc? Look for "Out of Business" signs.

Let's think about those who will be harmed:

People with low skills and/or limited capacity for work--particularly the young, the handicapped, or the elderly--unable to find jobs will be on welfare.

There's a business in our town that specializes in providing entry level jobs for the disabled. $8/hour. Over 200 people with disabilities like Downs Syndrome, mid-level on the autism spectrum, etc. find meaningful employment assembling shipping packages and doing light manufacturing. I guess they will be fired since $15/hour will clobber this company's labor costs. They can go back to SSI or SSD and lose the dignity that came with jobs they were capable of managing.

Also, small businesses who employ low skilled workers and don't have the resources to automate. But we've been told that people with businesses "on the margin" aren't worthy enough, so they too will be sacrificed for the greater good of "fairness."

Medium and large businesses will have deep enough pockets to adapt and overcome, either via automation or by trimming services. Do more with less...in this case, fewer humans. They'll be fine. They lobby for stuff like minimum wages and increase bennies to clobber up and coming competitors, meanwhile ensuring they carve out exemptions that minimize the impact to themselves.

Why else would Bezos voluntarily raise wages to $15? One answer is he wants the best workers. Another answer is o his competitors will have to follow his lead...but what if they can't? He just cemented himself in power, unless the Dems get their way and Trust Bust him, but it will be harder now since he's adopted one of their party's cherished goals without having the Gun of the State pointed at his head. I don't think their constituents will be too happy.

Yep, we got ourselves a paradise in the making. Bring on the $15! Or ... why don't we just save ourselves the trouble and kick it up to $30? Then we can kick back for a decade or so and my properties will all get paid off in a couple years via inflation! Do I hear $50? ;-)

Does anyone actually work for minimum wage? Where I am at, the jobs that I think of as "minimum wage" jobs are paying $10 an hour because they can't get workers for less.

Jason, all of the comments to your post are spot on. This is nothing more than short-term thinking.

When I got my first job in high school, minimum wage in TX was $4.25. I was a waitress, though, so I think I got something like $2.13+tips. My parents made it very clear that minimum wage wasn't something on which to run a household or raise a family. It was a starting point for people trying to earn money, and they were expected to rise to higher income, either through increased experience or through developing your educational background in a career.

Today, minimum wage in Texas (and Pennsylvania) is $7.25/hour. Looking at some of the basic entry-level positions in my poor, rural area, I think Dollar General starts people off around $9.25/hour, and I think Walmart starts people off around $11/hr. Fast food is somewhere around $10/hr to start with. I threw a post onto a local group on FB, and haven't found anyone who only makes minimum wage, although anecdotally, the gas station started at minimum wage a few years ago. However, I had an application from someone who works there, and they were at $8.70 after two years. Most starter jobs around here will start off a bit low, but will give you a 25-cent raise after the first couple of months, and then another ten or twenty-five cents after a few more months, after you've proven you're a functional, reliable employee. If you don't pass $8/hr after a year--- there's something wrong.

Was breakfasting the kids at the hotel yesterday. We were in Natchitoches, which is a small regional university town in Louisiana. A girl and her mom were also having breakfast. The girl was looking at a list of majors on her phone. "Hey, Mom! I could major in Jewish Studies!" (Tulane, perhaps?)

I sat on my hands and didn't barge into her business. ("A diploma is a key that unlocks a door. What door do you want unlocked? That's what you need to major in." "A degree is a thing that turns a 10" stack of resumes into a 2" stack of resumes. What degree will put you in the 2" stack?") Suppose it was Tulane she was talking about. It's $75k for your freshman year ($63k if you're a commuter). I'm sure Jewish Studies is an awesome major... but do you really want to spend $300k+ on it? What door will that unlock, and how quickly will you earn back that initial investment into your career path?

Anyhow. I got laid off during the daughtkawm bust. My field (museums) wasn't hiring, and I became a secretary at my municipality for a few years while DH worked on his advanced degree, and I worked on my master's. (Tuition reimbursement program from my employer: caveat: I couldn't leave the City within 2 years of accepting financial assistance, or else I would be penalized.) As a secretary, I started off at $25k/year ($12/hr) and ended five years later at around $32k/year ($15+/hr). The local libraries (a) had a hiring freeze for most of that period, and (b) weren't interested in paying me to do what I was doing for free as a volunteer, so after my two years expired, I got a job in a small city elsewhere. My starting pay was $28k/year (about $14.50/hr). So, yeah, I took a pay cut to get into my field. I stayed there for about three years, rose through the ranks pretty quickly, and ended at $35k/year (about $16.75/hr) when I left to go be a SAHM.

But the point being, I had a Master's degree--- and my top earning power never passed $17/hr. But a lot of that was due to the fields I chose. If I had decided to be a nuclear engineer or a hospice nurse or a geophysicist, I could have doubled/tripled/quadrupled my earning power, presuming I had a talent for the field.

But even in your own post, you say "I think $7.25 is too low" and then in the same sentence, you say, "any of my residents earning less than 12 or 15 an hour would benefit IMMENSLEY." Those $12/hr wage earners are earning over 1.5x the minimum wage. The $15/hr wage earners are already earning over double the minimum wage. Which is a good thing! But-- just from my own experience-- I was in that $12-$15/hr income bracket for about 10 years... and it was only in the last year or two that I broke out of it.

Now? Now I substitute teach, just to keep myself looking good on paper, in case I ever return to the ranks of W2 employment. Because I have a Master's, I earn $72/day (pre-tax). For an 8-hour day, that works out to about $9/hr. If school ran for 12 months, that would be about $18k/year... which is what DH used to earn as a museum director. :P But if I was a full-time sub ($72 x 5 days x 36 weeks), I'd be surprised if I cleared $13k/year doing it.

The only interesting bit of additional information from the FB thread was that Dollar General used to start people off at $7.25/hr in 2015, but are now starting people off at $9/hr, for both experienced and non-experienced employees. Then you have the opportunity for a fifty cent wage increase after 2 or 3 months of good performance.

Raising or even having a minimum wage has negative effects. First of all, only a small portion of the workforce earns minimum wage. As they learn skills, they become more valuable and as a result are paid more. However, there are some jobs that aren't worth more than $5/hr for the work done. And there are also employees that aren't worth more than $5/hr. When I was young, high school kids worked in fast food, waitress/waiter, etc. Today, raising the minimum wage priced entry-level workers out of the market.

Another issue is that paying higher wages based on government mandate rather than market forces means that either the price of goods goes up, or the workforce is reduced, and/or automation increases.

What happens when you raise the minimum wage to what more qualified workers are earning? Do you have to raise those too? It's only fair.

The big problem comes from the idea that the company must support the worker instead of the worker must expand their talents and become more valuable if they wish to earn more.

Ultimately raising the minimum wage results in higher priced goods, more unemployed people, and less chances for beginners entering the workforce.

Yes, it sounds good on paper, but really it's just a disaster. The best option is to have a $0 minimum wage, and let companies pay based on what the output of work is worth, and the skills the worker learned or mastered. And if employees don't like it, let them learn higher level skills.

A friend of mine is in AI. Like, the sort of AI that has undisclosed locations in the middle of nowhere with armed guards kind of AI. :)

That's one of the reasons why there's such a push for driverless cars. People aren't interested in it for ordinary people wanting to go from Point A to Point B the easy way. People are interested in it because driverless vehicle technology would eliminate massive parts of the trucking industry. The trucking industry itself employs almost 9 million people; the drivers themselves number about 3.5 million; and there's still a shortage of drivers. The average trucker salary ranges from $40k/year to over $180k for an owner-operator.

Right now, AI is very, very good at operating within a controlled box. But it is very, very bad at operating within a box that contains infinite variables-- which is what driving on the open road around humans equals.

Higher minimum wage insures that the least skilled workers will be GUARANTEED PERMANENTLY unemployed. If no job for them at $7.25, why believe that they will be hired at higher amount?

Don (PA) Said: "Everyone's wages will rise, but that will result in the cost of goods and services increasing to cover the costs."