CDT: I made quite a large amount of money, at the time, working for that gas station. 9.50 an hour compared to the 7.25 minimum wage.
CGA: >->
CGA: 
CGA: Wow
CGA: Minimum wag3 is t3rri8l3 wh3r3 you liv3
CGA: 
CHE: /* hm and then stuff. */
CDT: I live in the south, where the cost of living is low enough that minimum wage doesn't need to be higher.
CGA: >->
CGA: 
CHE: /* why isn't minimum wage tied to the price of a market basket of goods? and then stuff. */
CHE: /* *local price of */
CDT: It is.
CHE: /* oh */
CHE: /* huh */
CHE: /* ok */
CDT: That's why the *cost of living* is so low here.
CDT: That's pretty much what the cost of living sums up.
CDT: The prices of everything in your area.
CDT: Although the cost of living usually divvies up by state, or at least region.
CHE: /* oh I meant like, being defined in terms of */
CHE: /* not just being related by some combination of influences */
CGA: >->
CGA: 
CGA: Wow
CGA: This is g3tting too n3rdy
CGA: I quit
CGA: Anyways
CHE: /* what */
CHE: /* if you are going to have an opinion on what the minimum wage should be it seems reasonable to like, */
CHE: /* nvm */
CDT: Continue.
CHE: /* I actually don't have the practical experience to say what I was going to say with confidence */
CDT: I mean, I've worked for minimum wage, and I've worked my way up to middle class so.
CHE: /* but what I was going to say was, seems reasonable to want to consider how minimum wages mix with inflation and such */
CDT: Well, yes. If you keep raising minimum wage, inflation gets perpetually worse.
CDT: People don't seem to realize that, unfortunately.
CHE: /* I was saying what if you just fixed the minimum wage to be in terms of the price of a market basket of goods */
CDT: That wouldn't help.
CHE: /* but that might just lead to runaway inflation */
CDT: The current issue is people want to argue about a 'living wage'.
CDT: Although cost of living standards vary from person to person.
CHE: /* I was just thinking, if inflation eventually makes the given minimum wage "too small" (if inflation doesn't stop) , it seems like it increasing automatically to compensate would be good */
CHE: /* but if that can't work, then it seems like increasing it manually would also be a problem? */
CHE: /* but that would seem to indicate that minimum wage can only be temporarily useful, and not long term, because it has to either become "too small" to have the benefit, or increase every .'. often, and cause whatever problem */
CDT: Increasing it period just fuels inflation because our economy is based off of debt instead of a gold standard.
CHE: /* or some other standard */
CDT: Well, to hold any real value, it would have to be back with another form of valuable material.
CDT: So metals, gems, ect.
CHE: /* ok, but not increasing it wont stop all inflation, right? */
CDT: Not at all, but increasing the minimum wage so drastically, would roll us faster towards hyper inflation.
CDT: See Germany after WWI
CDT: Since the proposed 'living wage' that they thing the entire country should go up to, is 15 dollars an hour.
CDT: Which the issue with that is other wages won't adjust to compensate for that rise.
CHE: /* oh, I'm not saying that it should be raised that much */
CDT: That's what a lot of people are saying it should be.
CHE: /* I'm just saying, should it increase at all ever */
CDT: And I know in some places it is that, already.
CDT: Occasionally, when inflation does eventually force the minimum wage to be completely and impossible to live on.
CDT: But that would be... Probably once every 10 years?
CDT: Even then it'd probably go up a dollar or so.
CDT: There's issues in places like the northeast where the cost of living is so high, that companies are forced to pay their employees higher than minimum wage, wages.
CDT: Or you could use Wyoming as an example.
CDT: Because no one lives out there, it's so hard to hire people, they wind up paying even McDonalds employees 10+ dollars an hour.
CHE: /* yeah I'm not saying it should be particularly high */
CDT: You're one of the few then.
CHE: /* I'm just saying that maybe instead of manually increasing it and have people debating over how much it should increase and when, maybe it could be set up to increase automatically in a gradual rate? */
CDT: Well that wouldn't be effective at all considering how states have to manually adjust that shit anyways for their cost of living in that area.
CDT: There's also no real good way to graph out the way inflation is going to work.
CDT: I mean, you could extrapolate the data, and find a rough average, but the economy might as well be it's own living entity.
CHE: /* what if such a policy was imposed by individual states? */
CDT: Susceptible to all sorts of bullshit.
CDT: It could be potentially successful, but what state really wants to take on that responsbility when they could just leave it up to the feds?
CDT: Although some have taken on the task of manually increasing minimum wage basally on their own.
CHE: /* of finding the price of a market basked of goods there? */
CHE: /* *basket */
CDT: Definitely not.
CHE: /* is that expensive? */
CHE: /* I didn't think that was expensive and then stuff. */
CDT: No one is going to do that because it would take too much compiling of data.
CDT: Too much time.
CDT: Then some people are going to bitch because they buy brand name instead of generic.
CDT: Ect.
CDT: Oh well I buy premium fuel instead of basic bitch fuel.
CHE: /* I wouldn't expect most people to look at what goes into the basket */
CHE: /* it would be more for just measuring the price level */
CDT: Well unfortunately, people will do literally anything and everything to try and get free money.
CHE: /* hm and then stuff. */