By adamg on Tue., 11/10/2015 - 5:15 pm
Beth Gavin captured protesters demanding a $15 minimum hourly wage outside the Old State House this evening.
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Then work with MY numbers
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 4:32pm
Find me ONE example of a unit in Arlington for $600/person. If you do, great...now find 100,000 more, because everyone in the situation I described needs a place to live too. Oh, and when you're done with that, get started on where they can put the baby's room, etc. Because I was giving you the *rosiest* situation above and it was STILL not making any sense. The idea that you're going to have everyone living on minimum wage move to ends of the furthest bus routes just to make ends meet rather than raise the minimum wage a few bucks is ridiculous. And then how are they supposed to get to every minimum wage job in the city from Arlington? Take a bus to the red line to the orange line to a bus in some cases? A 1.5 hour commute for a minimum wage job? Come on...
100,000?
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 6:38pm
1. See my post below. I lived in a complex off Mass Ave in Arlington that had 1200 1br's and 1600 2brs, not far from one that had 900 1brs. Not ideal for two strangers to share a 1br, but for certain values of "desperation" more than adequate.
2. If half of the supposed 1/6 of the city of Boston that's living in Dickensian levels of poverty found housing outside of the city, prices within the city would drop. Yes, some of those units would get rebuilt and resold to rich young hipster types at inflated prices, but there really are only so many of those in the metro area, so that means housing in other places would get cheaper.
3. 1.5 hours is a subjective sacrifice. In my otherwise privileged youth, I did work a minimum wage job or two to pick up some quick cash alongside people for whom it was more of a necessity. To them, it was the cost of the commute, not necessarily the time of it, that made the decision.
4. Kids and such. OK, you've got me beat. If you're making min wage, a single parent, have no family to help take care of the kids, and spend 2 hours a day getting to your dead end job, I'll admit, it: you're up the shit creek and nothing I said helps you. My answer is that if you've got a finite amount of cash to spread around, spend it on preventative measures like education, policing, and tax incentives for not-big-box-retail business. Don't blow it all on a bandaid for those who need help today (but really needed it yesterday) at the expense of creating more need tomorrow.
But then again encouraging and enabling personal initiative and self-sufficiency will make it harder to buy their votes with token gestures the next time around, so there's that going against it.
Not sourced in reality
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:29pm
Well, I can't argue with bullshit like "2 strangers should share a 1 bedroom because they're desperate (rather than be paid enough to afford living a more dignified life)" and "the supposed 1/6 of the city of Boston that's living in Dickensian levels of poverty" (psst, I was rounding DOWN. About 20% of Boston lives below the poverty level: http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getatt... ) and "make it harder to buy their votes with token gestures" when we're talking about REAL numbers of people who can't afford childcare, clothing, or even the ability to leave the city for a week to do something other than slave away at their job let alone rent, food, and utilities on the lowest allowable paychecks! These people work the entire time the polls are open, they don't go vote!
You're entirely detached from reality! You think an increase in minimum wage would create appreciable votes?! For whom in MA? The Democrats?? Like they need to buy votes with minimum wage increases in this state??
You clearly aren't interested in rationality, so I guess we're done here.
And I can't argue
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:29pm
with a "right" to go on vacation somewhere far and a "right" to child care.
No one has a right to anything other than the air they breathe, words they say, and the thoughts they think.
Everything else is earned. If it's too hard to earn, the failure is on us for making it hard, and the onus is on us to remake the mechanisms of upward mobility that have existed in the past. That's different from patches and bandaids that steal from the 80% to give to the 20% by labeling burger flipping as a middle class vocation.
I don't want to see the next generation of burger flippers agitating for a 30/hr min wage. I want to see the next generation becoming welders and skilled machinists and computer programmers. You want to take my money for something, take it for that.
Slippery slope is a fallacy
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:51pm
Why would it be acceptable to argue for a $30/hr minimum wage? Does it cost $62,000 to live in Boston? No, it doesn't. Maybe in Monaco the burger flippers need $30/hr. I want to see the next generation do whatever they want. Setting the minimum wage at $15/hr doesn't somehow make more people aspire to the lowest paying jobs. It makes those that have them worry more about how to improve themselves to get out of those jobs than worrying about how they're going to even be able to afford the fast food they serve the rest of us.
You want the next generation to aspire and succeed to more? Great, then they need the breathing room to even CONTEMPLATE that! Right now, they're not even surviving without help. They can't even think about what life could be like if they could become a welder or how to focus on their kids' education so that kid can succeed at programming instead of screwing up in school because mom and dad are always cleaning floors and flipping burgers. You claim to want these goals but you stab yourself in the eye rather than look at the problem because you think that these are somehow greedy people rather than people so far in the hole you wouldn't even recognize what that life is like.
AND nobody's "taking your money" by raising minimum wage! If anything the ripple effect will likely mean more money for you too! Plus, with fewer people requiring medicaid and food subsidy benefits because they'll be able to afford to pay their own way, "taking your money" may even go down OR go to exactly the kinds of programs you're requesting since it won't have to go straight into their pockets to pay for ramen instead! If you seriously want people to do better, you have to make sure their minimum requirements are met for living first!
Interesting
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 4:53pm
You really do live on a different planet.
Our two bedroom in Arlington, which was a ten minute walk from a bus and had one car parking, was up to $1200 a month when we left.
In 1998.
Even then, moving to a smaller place would still have cost us over $900 a month. The last time I spoke with my old landlord, two years ago, he was getting $2100 for the 800 square foot unit.
Look a little further from the heights
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 6:05pm
All of one year ago I lived in a place (by the bike path!) that had started out under 1200 and gradually worked its way up to about 1400. With parking, minutes from two bus routes, and in a complex of about 100+ other units like that.
The same company owned another (shabbier-quality) smaller complex a few blocks away and advertised it for 900 for 1br with parking. In 2011.
Years before that, when I was looking in Belmont, I found the top attic of a 3-decker for something like 900 because it didn't have a full-sized stove in the kitchen, but also with a parking space, and steps away from the bus.
I didn't end up living there, but it existed. It did take me a month of trolling Craiglist to find it, but it existed.
You're not paying attention
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:35pm
$900/mo in 2011 will run about $1100/mo in 2016. The Boston area has seen rent increases on the order of 5% annually since 2009.
Also, your anecdotal nonsense isn't what we base our policy decision on. Random Belmont apartments don't a housing policy make! Everyone making less than $30k/yr can't live in your anecdote...but hey, maybe there's a market for you finding poor people housing! You should start your own business. I'm sure with all their spare cash from you finding them cheap rent, they can make you a millionaire in no time!
OK
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:22pm
so the latest census numbers I could find show that about 500,000-600k people in the Boston area are in under 30k households, and you're right, they aren't going to cram into a pair of (really about a hundred or so) cheap apartments in a few towns.
So where do they live now? The census numbers seem to have stayed fairly steady over the past couple of years. There aren't 500k homeless in the region. From which I conclude that there is, in fact, plenty of housing on the low end there will be so long as there's 500k paying customers ready.
Now this "business" you speak of. Both the federal and MA governments run one like it. Maybe you should be agitating at them for doing a better job of connecting low income people with low-priced but still "market rate" housing instead of pushing for policies that will make it that much harder to employ those 500k when the cost of doing so goes up.
Check out French policy. There, the unemployment is at 20% because of similar worker protection statutes that make it practically impossible to fire anyone, so few people are given the chance to try out. If memory serves, Sarkozy incurred untold wrath when he tried to push through a "trial period" policy where you could be fired within the first year of employment. Didn't happen. Unemployment still high. Be careful what you wish for.
Where do you pull these numbers from?
By Kaz
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 12:21am
French unemployment is just over 10% and that's close to the record ( http://www.dw.com/en/french-unemployment-rising-to... ). Sarkozy hasn't been relevant since Mitt Romney was running for president. We aren't France. We don't have France's economy. We don't have France's payroll tax (over 40% to our 5%). Something like 25% of their workforce works for some level of government...we have LESS THAN TWO percent!
None of that has anything to do with minimum wage either and going to $15/hr doesn't somehow put us on a collision course for France's situation.
Going back to the poverty numbers, where are you getting 500,000-600,000 in poverty? Are you talking about the Boston-Worcester-Providence, MA-RI-NH-CT Combined Statistical Area?? That includes cities like Lawrence, Fall River, Worcester...
And the state has a poverty rate closer to 12%. Boston proper is the one around 20%. And Boston proper only has about 600,000 people *total*. The link I gave you from the BRA tells you which neighborhoods the 100,000-120,000 people living below poverty are living in. And basically they're living in subsidized housing. 74% of Bostonians below the poverty line are using a federal, state, or local housing subsidy to be able to afford to live ( https://www.tbf.org/~/media/TBFOrg/Files/Reports/2... ). And look, it's not hard to find and read this data, but you have to look for it instead of spouting bullshit.
$525 for a room in Arlington
By Markk02474
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 12:07am
in a shared house with 4 other people AND off-street parking near the center. Sure, with heat and utilities, that's about $600/month. There are not many of these in Arlington, but they do indeed exist. Waltham has them, probably more, along with Watertown. Better yet, long-time shared houses are usually already furnished with left behind or shared items. These are where the deals are because landlords are happy to keep such stable tenants rather than jack up the rent and risk having a place go empty for a month, wiping out any potential gain.
not quite, at least a couple years ago
By cornbread
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 4:38pm
Number one, I completely agree that businesses should not pay a barely acceptable wage, and expect taxpayer funded social services to cover the rest. It costs more to live in Boston, it should cost more to buy in Boston, and we and our employers need to just deal with it.
That said, before I moved in with my then-fiance-now-wife, I paid $540 a month in my bropad in Allston. With her, we chose to pay more, about $750 each for a 1br, because we could afford it with the two of us. This was two years ago. The 900-1000 rent number is not realistic for a single person for sure.
Keyword
By anon
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 12:15am
Is federal - no one is arguing that it would be difficult (though definitely not impossible) to survive on under $15/hour in a place like NYC, but are you telling me Flippy McBurger in Bumfuck, MO where a house can be bought for under $50,000 should be making $15/hour as well?
Small business can't afford this...
By Teecee
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:56am
Small retail businesses don't compete with the guy down the street, they compete with Amazon. Small retail businesses will be disproportionately impacted by minimum wage hikes than Amazon and other online retailers.
If you want to shut down your local retail stores and have all your goods delivered by drones to your doorstep, then raise the minimum wage.
Witness City Sports closing down and all those local jobs gone!
City Sports failed to provide any value
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 1:42pm
City Sports sold other people's brands, like Amazon does. However, they provided no value in doing so. They are exactly the kind of business that's going to fail to an online retailer and that's not a bad thing. Companies should go out of business if they provide the consumer little to no value over a competing (and better value/cost solution). They also expanded into a lot of locations even though those areas had no idea what they were or what value they added. The answer came back none and the decision to go up and down the East Coast combined with zero value proposition is what doomed City Sports.
Businesses make bad decisions all the time and some of them are going to be fatal to the business. We can't example every company that's gone out of business and say "if only wages were kept abnormally low, they could have soldiered on". No, they couldn't. They weren't failing due to employee wages. Bad example.
In fact, I wonder if you can actually find any example where someone went out of business due to payroll and not poor business decisions or lack of keeping pace with competitor improvements/innovation.
Adam Smith on workers and wages
By Michael Kerpan
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 5:27pm
The (supposed) icon of capitalists everywhere did not favor making workers toil for less than a living wage. Some quotes:
"A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation."
"A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost."
"Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low.."
Smith also looked with favor on government action to improve the condition of workers:
"Whenever the legislative attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in the favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it sometime is otherwise when in favor of the masters."
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