• @bhmnscmm@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I’m on board with people across the board making more money, but $50/hr everywhere in the US seems unrealistic.

    Where I live (Midwest) that would put you in a very high percentile income bracket. But in much higher cost of living areas it’s probably still barely enough to get by.

    I feel like minimum wage should be adjusted by cost of living.

    • Neato
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      1811 months ago

      US civil servants’ salary is broken into 2 numbers: Base Rate and Locality Rate. The first is based on their grade and time in grade. The second is wholly based on where their job is and is a percentage of the base rate. It goes from ~16% base to in the 30s%. It drastically needs to be more granular and updated in a lot of locations but this could work for a lot of jobs.

      Then federal minimum wage sets the base rate and states and localities set Locality rate. States and cities could even use this to incentivize workers to move there at the cost of wages increasing across the board.

    • @Not_mikey@lemmy.world
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      1211 months ago

      That’s what she was saying, everyone is taking her out of context. She was saying the federal minimum wage should be as high as $50 in places like the Bay area, she then went on to say that the national wage should be brought up to ~$20-25 and base it on affordability.

    • @Mesophar@lemm.ee
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      211 months ago

      This would also be for federal employees, not state level minimum wage. So postal workers, military bases, etc. Maybe state and local government? I’m not sure if those count as federal positions or not tbh

    • toiletobserver
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      -211 months ago

      Then they’ll only hire people from low cost areas. It’ll be the next suburban exodus, except to rural instead

      • @bhmnscmm@lemmy.world
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        311 months ago

        I don’t think so. I mean, theoretically I see how that might apply to a small number of remote workers, but the vast majority of minimum wage workers (and many hourly workers) are in jobs that require a physical presence at the workplace.