Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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Hello everyone.
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My name is Chelsea stevens and I'll be talking about the issues with the raise the
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wage act and the assumption that the federal
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minimum wage can achieve a livable wage.
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I just want to give some background information about minimum wage.
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So it was first enacted in 1938 under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
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President Roosevelt first made this to help stabilize
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the post depression economy and protect workers.
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The F. L. S. A.
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Provides guidelines on employment status, child labor,
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minimum wage and overtime pay.
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So basically it abolished child labor.
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I said the federal minimum wage to 25 cents an hour,
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Which is about $500 a year.
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If you were to translate that into today's money with inflation,
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everything that would be about 480 an hour
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At about 9600 a year.
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Ultimately, Roosevelt said this was a livable wage
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which in reality just meant that someone working full time wouldn't starve,
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but it really didn't take into account anything else when it came through living.
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In recent years though,
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we've been talking about having a livable wage for a minimum wage
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and the push for $15 an hour has recently been ramping up.
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Mhm,
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mm hmm.
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I have taken shape in the form of the raise the wage acts.
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So we've actually had,
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So we've actually had four different raise the Wage Act since 2015
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in 2015.
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We asked for $12 an hour
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to happen over the course of four years,
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whatever your sense,
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Every act since then has requested 15 years over the course of several years,
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20,
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in particular. The most recent one also happened to be the most expedited.
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So it requested $15 an hour over the course of five years.
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considering the fact that we have not increased the minimum wage in 20 since 2009,
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this could potentially be a great thing.
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The only issue with this is that it's asking
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to increase the federal minimum wage by over 100%.
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We have never
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increased the minimum wage by so much.
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So the issue is, it's hard to know exactly how much it will impact us.
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Oftentimes when you increase the federal minimum wage by a small amount,
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the effects are minimal
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and you get more positive effects out of it than negative
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in this case, it's likely that you would see for more negative effects.
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And it's hard to know exactly.
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Yeah.
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And with an increased this large,
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it's nearly impossible to tell just how bad it can get.
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Ultimately, an increase to the federal minimum wage is long overdue.
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But this method is far too drastic
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and will cause far more harm than good.
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Now, really briefly, I do want to talk about a livable wage.
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The push for the race to wage acts have been asking.
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So the main reason why the raise the wage acts have
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anything prominence recently
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because people have been asking for minimum wage to be a livable wage.
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Now, these are two different things. Even those when using a change of place,
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the minimum wage.
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Mhm
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minimum wage is something that
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forced by federal or state governments.
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A living wage is more or less, the average needed
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a living wage is ultimately what someone would need for
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a decent quality of life in a certain region.
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Mhm.
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So the reason push for
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The raise the Wage Act and a $15 minimum wage has mostly
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been driven by the call to have a livable minimum wage.
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Now,
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the issue of having the minimum wage be a
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living wage is that these are two separate things.
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A minimum wage is something that can be
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a minimum wage can be enforced by federal or state governments,
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the
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lowest possible amount. You can pay
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the lowest possible amount that employees.
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Now a living rage is
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the cost of living for an area, basically what you would need to survive
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at least somewhat comfortably in a region,
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living wages will often account for our families.
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Now, on the topic of a livable wage, I just want to quickly cover the cost of living
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for every region and less.
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Now, the US is a huge country and we do have quite a few rural states
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and they have a much lower cost of living
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than our urban ones.
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More specifically,
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the United States, a very large, comfy.
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The United States is a very large country
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and there's a different cost.
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The United States is a very large country and every state
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and even county has a very different
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costs of living.
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So this is one of the issues that I want to bring up.
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One of the issues I do want to bring up is the fact that the US is such a lot.
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One of the issues I want to bring up with the raise, the wage acts and
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the intention of having the federal minimum wage to be livable across the board
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is the fact that United States is such a large country
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and every state and every county has a wildly different cost of living.
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The cost of living,
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the cost of living in a state like Mississippi or south Carolina or South
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Dakota is much different than it would be in new york or California.
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If you look at this first graph, you can see that
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$100
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can get you a lot more in South Dakota,
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then you can florida
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And that $100 made you a lot more Florida than again California.
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Like if you look at this first graph that I have,
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If you look at this first graph here,
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you can see the buying power about $100 per state.
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So South Dakota is dark green,
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you can get a lot more with $100 than you could in Florida.
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If you like this photograph here,
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you can see that South Dakota has a lot more buying power
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than California might receive amount of money,
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therefore
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the same wage, minimum wage
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because these varying
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because of these varying costs of living,
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Your buying power of a set amount of money
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will vary drastically per state.
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As you can see from his first graph here,
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you see that you can give a lot more of $100 in South Dakota,
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then you might be able to in California
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on top of that,
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on top of that, consider the fact that Alabama, which is a cheaper state to live in,
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follows the federal minimum wage, while California,
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While California already has a $15 minimum wage
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which means if you're training to help
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the entire country by increasing minimum weight.
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The federal minimum wage,
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California wouldn't benefit from it at all.
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Hello
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and what California will get
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basically no benefit.
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Alabama will have to double its cost of living
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and will California will barely feel the effects of the raise the wage act,
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Alabama will have to double this minimum wage to keep up
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and a lot of those people will end up losing their jobs.
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Now, furthermore, I just wanted to go ahead and show
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how much people have to,
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how much people have to make to meet their basic needs in each date.
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So you take a look at all the red states, they were making 25, you will need
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mhm
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If you look at all the Red states
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and the 25 to 35,000 range,
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That's basically somewhere between
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12,
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They all basically fall somewhere between 12 to $14.
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If you look at all the red states in the 25-35,000 range,
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they basically all fall somewhere
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Between the 12 to $14 range.
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If you look at all the Red states,
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If you look at all the red states and the 25-35,
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if you look at all the Red States and 25 to $30,000 range,
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They would basically need a 12 to just under $15 per hour wage
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to make the basic needs.
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If you look at this map,
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it shows what a single person with no assistance would
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need to meet their basic needs in each date.
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Take a look at the red states with 25,035,000 range
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Because people best need a 12 to just under $15 minimum wage
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to make ends meet assuming
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they make minimum wage in the first place.
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But if you look at hawaii or do you see
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For over $40,000,
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They will be needing more than $19 an hour to make local wage.
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Even California,
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Even California is looking at more than $17 an hour.
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Even California or New York are looking at more than $17 an hour.
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Again,
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this is assuming a single person was making the
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minimum wage and need to survive on just that
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and no other assistance.
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Mhm.
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Across the entire country that's potentially a seven or more dollars gap
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per hour in wages.
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No, here's another graph to show
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for more
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and more decent.
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No, I just want to show one more graph that shows a more decent quality of life.
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This assumes that the United States
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would be getting on 44,000 for a decent quality of life.
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That's $20 an hour,
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That's over $20 an hour.
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If you look at the dark blue, some of these will be over $62,000.
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I need a salary of more than $62,000 a year.
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That's nearly $32 an hour
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or more.
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That's a
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that's a disparity. About $10 per hour for a comfortable,
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That's a disparity. About 10,
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that's the disparity of about $10 per hour for it.
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He sent quality of life
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again assuming a single person with no assistance.
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There is no way
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and there's essentially no way that the federal
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minimum wage can support both ends of this
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without crippling one
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or
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there's no way that the federal minimum wage
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can help both ends of the spectrum
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without crippling blow end or disregarding the high end
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and
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the next. I do want to cover the demographics.
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Ultimately,
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a minimum wage job is not meant to be a lifelong career.
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Do you think
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Roughly 2/3 of minimum wage workers,
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minimum wage workers,
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minimum wage workers make up a very small percentage of our workforce
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And of minimum wage workers, about 2/3 of them are part time
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And nearly half are 16 - 24.
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That means a very large portion of these people are students.
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That means a very large portion of minimum wage workers are students,
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people who are most likely
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people who are most likely supported by family,
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people who are most likely being supported by others.
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This means that most minimum wage workers are part time and
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most likely being supported by family as they're going through school
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And about 65
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and most
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and most minimum wage jobs are leisure and hospitality, which means restaurants,
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transport,
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which means restaurants, transportation
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and lastly most
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and most jobs in
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and most minimum wage jobs do happen to be leisure and hospitality.
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That means restaurants, hotels, transportation, theme parks,
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basically anything you would see with a night out
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or if you're a tourist in a new place.
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Most of these jobs require little snow skill or education
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and mostly training is done on the job.
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These careers are mostly people who have
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little job experience
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and most of these workers,
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people with very little job experience and are using this as a, as a way to
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help support the family make a little bit more money
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or just needed to transition into a future jobs.
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These are not lifelong careers
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now. Most importantly, I do want to
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lastly, I'm just going to quickly cover some of the effects of the rays.
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Lastly, I'm just gonna go ahead and cover the effects of raising the minimum wage.
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So again, many of the issues with it is that
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money,
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some of the major concerns with raising the minimum wage is
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the fact that many people are gonna lose their jobs.
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People who are
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people who are normally supporting raise minimum wage are going under the
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assumption that poverty levels will decrease as we increase the minimum wage.
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Now, studies have shown
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Now, studies have shown that the last time we increase the minimum wage,
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only 15% of the workers expect to gain from it.
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Studies have shown that last time we increased the minimum wage,
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only 15% of the workers who are supposed to,
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Only 15% of the workers who are supposed to gain from it lived in for households.
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And even as we kept on increasing it supposedly.
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And studies have shown that as we continue to increase it
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given a lower percentage of
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And studies have also shown that as we continue to increase
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the federal minimum wage.
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And studies have shown that as we continue to increase the federal minimum wage,
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even a lower percentage of poor households would be helped
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now again,
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as we increase, that some people who were able,
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maybe we will support it, will also assume that therapy people will lose jobs.
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Unfortunately, that is not the case.
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Some of the major concerns with raising the
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some of the major concerns are raising the federal minimum wage
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is the issue of losing jobs.
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The main concern about increasing the minute the federal,
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some of the main concerns were increasing the federal minimum
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wage involved the issues of losing jobs and raising prices
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in the graphic there. It shows that with
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In the graphic here it shows that it was just increasing minimum wage by $10 an hour.
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Mhm.
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About 36% of employers would cut their workforce
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four,
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would reduce hiring and 2/3 would raise prices.
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That's only with a $10 per hour minimum wage.
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These numbers will vary drastically as we go higher and most likely more
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and more would cut their workforce to produce hiring and raise prices.
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People who
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many who support increasing federal minimum wage will assume
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that we can help people out of poverty.
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Unfortunately, the last time we increase the minimum wage,
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only about 15% of the workers gained from it,
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Only about 15% of the workers who gained from it lived in four households.
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And it's suspected that as we increase it further
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fewer, poor household,
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a lower percentage of poor house. That would be helped.
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And unfortunately many of the people who should be helped but
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end up losing their jobs as they get phased out,
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then losing jobs as employers phase out imports
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as
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would lose their jobs as employers cut costs
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as employers fire employees to deal with them.
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And unfortunately,
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as we continue to increase prices more and
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more people to lose their jobs as employers,
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as of course cut employees.
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Unfortunately, one of the major issues that as we increase price
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as we increase the minimum wage, more employers would
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fire
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as we increase minimum wage, more employers have to fire their employees
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to help.
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Unfortunately,
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in order to keep up with the rising cost,
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employers would have to fire more and more employees
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to keep up with him
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keep up.
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Unfortunately, as we increase the price,
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unfortunately, as we increase the minimum wage employees to have to fire employee.
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Unfortunately, as a minimum the federal minimum wage increases,
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employers would have to fire more employees to keep up with the rising costs.
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So potentially something some people would be helped,
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but many others will be forced back into
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poverty because they cannot keep their jobs.
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And here it is having a really short video
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about the effects of raising the wage. That you can watch at your convenience.
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In conclusion, the minimum wage is not meant to be a livable wage.
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And unfortunately, there is no way that the federal minimum wage,
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and unfortunately there is no way that the federal
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minimum wage can be a liberal wage across the,
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across the country.
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Unfortunately, unfortunately,
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the federal minimum wage cannot be livable for the entire country.
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We'd have to neglect some,
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some people would benefit,
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but many others would be neglected or hurt in the long run.
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Well, while I believe that the race wage act was made in good faith,
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it will only
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he would eat more
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while the raise the wage act was made in good faith
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will also make you more harm than good
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and failed to achieve any of what I wanted.