this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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From the article...
It really just is time for companies to pay more money to their employees, to share the wealth better, back like how we used to.
It's wild to think that in the past only one person would have to work and a couple would be able to afford a house and raise a family. I can't see how that can be done in today's world.
Someone dig up FDR and ask him the redo the 'New Deal'.
I feel like this is the most significant piece of information in the entire article and it just skims over it. People aren't failing to save because of lifestyle choices. They're failing to save because groceries for 1 person costs like 200 bucks a week in some cities. Shit is more expensive than ever before, and things like home ownership, which is historically THE default hedge against inflation, is outside the grasp of pretty much anyone below 40 who isn't a doctor or working in a similarly lucrative field.
Man, I remember when I was a kid groceries cost $100~$200 for a family of 4 for a week, and some of that food (like bags of chips) would get spread out over multiple weeks. 11-year-old me couldn't believe that my parents spent that much on food but wouldn't get me a $40 lego set.
I think the formula for minimum wage should be as follows
Minimum wage adds up to enough per month that the average number of hours worked times the minimum wage are large enough for the national average for rent to make up at most 40% of a minimum wage worker's budget.
If a county (or equivalent subdivision) has a higher average rent than that average, the minimum wage there is the same formula but for that higher average rent instead of the national average.
If there's a discrepancy between where someone lives and where they work, their minimum wage is the higher between the two.
The only modification I think it'd need is maybe finding a scientific way to replace monthly rent with "average monthly expenditure" so that folks getting billed for medicine aren't being screwed over, but frankly a country that can get the above proposition done is probably one that made UHC happen too anyways.
Also just to keep those landlords from thinking they can get wise, rent can only be raised on lease renewal, and only by as much as the reported inflation rate at the time of lease renewal. Also, constructive eviction to try and get around this is a felony and you lose all rights to own housing property other than your own home ever again.
Constructive? Elaborate?
I think that's a step too far, and wouldn't(?) pass muster, legally.
A felony would come with high penalty fees to pay, and could be enough of a deterrent.
If you're unfamiliar with the concept of constructive dismissal, it's where an employer skirts termination laws by doing shit like booking the employee on all the worst hours or piling on tasks or moving their office space to somewhere far away or unpleasant to make work so unbearable that they quit. In parts of Canada that's illegal and you're required to pay out as if you'd fired them anyways if it's shown you did that.
Constructive eviction would be the same idea, not forcing an eviction before date because they want to spike the rent, but instead scheduling a shitton of construction and maintenance and other shit that make the place unlivable until the tenant eventually has to break the lease to be able to find anywhere else to get a consistent night's sleep.
Landlords were pulling it all over the dang place during the COVID eviction holds.
Also, not being able to own or manage housing property other than your personal residence seems like a perfectly apt punishment for someone who's demonstrated quite blatantly that they're the worst kind of scumlord to trust with people's housing rights.
Thank you for the education. I had not heard of that tactic described using that term before.
IANAL, but that seems to cross a legal 'free will' line that most people wouldn't want to cross.
Other forms of punishment without losing ownership would be the more established go to alternative.