Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

I think that may be aiming a little too high. How about defining it as the minimum you need to be able to feed yourself, have a roof over your head, and healthcare without needing food stamps, medicaid, or other basic government assistance.

A large number of states don't allow local governments to set local minimum wages. Many of those states are as diverse as you describe the US. Trying to adjust the minimum wage may not be trying to boil an ocean but is trying to boil a sea or the great lakes.

How do you define success in this case?

I live in a neighborhood where the median income is below the national average by about 10% and above the national average by about the same amount. This implies to me that there are is a fair bit of economic diversity.

Also, I very rarely encounter a service worker that does not live within 25 minutes of the establishments in my neighborhood unless they do so by choice to live in a much hipper neighborhood.

Part of this is a university that stabilizes the real estate prices and attracts a lot of low income students who take on service jobs, but also a big part of it is housing diversity. Within 1 block of me are a commercial district, a high rise building, many mid-rise buildings, lots of townhomes and a handful of single family homes including at least 2 I’d call mansions. This housing diversity came about due to several phases over the course of over 100 years of urban planning that specifically centered on making it possible for lots of housing desires to be fulfilled in a single place.

It’s entirely possible if there is enough will. But that will is lacking.

1. You tie it to always being set about 5% higher than current inflation. Minimum. It's not that great a pay raise when the inflation goes up, but seeing as how they don't even do this all the time in every area... it would be a start to get them all on the same page between Canada and the USA. (All meaning provinces and states.) The only grace period that employers should retain, is 1 month to change their pay accordingly. And without reducing hours. On that note.

2. Make it illegal to reduce hours in an attempt to reduce pay due to higher wages; with out some legitimate reason that pertains to the employee's conduct and not external forces. If the employer has to increase prices to make this work, then fine. Do it. But make sure to not skimp on the cheese, etc. Customers who get annoyed over price raises will ruin you if you are just an ass. And at that point, rightfully so. Fines for something like this should be something like forcing them to pay all their employee's extra $$ per hour every time they do it. This way the money goes to those who need it, and not those who don't; cause lets be real here, lawmakers and governments don't need every penalty paid put into their pocket. Theirs is a crime against the people who work for them, so therefore they should get that cash.

3. Enforce not exactly a minimum wage, but something that might be referred to instead as a 'balanced' wage. Not a living wage, cause that's basically what we are already talking about. No, instead we should just accept that not every job is worth X$/hour. But a person still needs to get the money they need to get by. So what to do? You base it off that persons budget and potential future expenses vs the job they will be doing. If the employer and employee cannot come to terms on what is appropriate, then the employee probably needs to find a different job worth that much instead. Personally, I have no issue with this idea not because it is my own; but because I wish we took this kind of approach more often, instead of 'trying people out' just to fire them. This would reduce that, while being more beneficial to things like income equity, instead of equality, because again... not everything is the exact same. Not all jobs are worth X$/hr.

Basically the premise of 3 is ultimately to enforce fair pay, instead of minimum pay. Minimum makes it into a benchmark. If you meet that benchmark, you are considered an okay employer, even if you're a p.o.s. We need to do away with that, without ruining people's lives at the same time. I think this is the best step forward for that, while being reasonable to all sides needs and demands. Also, things like wage ceilings and gaps and etc would essentially disappear as a notion, since at that point it's up to every single person on a equal front to determine their ideal pay for each job. It's not longer just up to the employer, but also the employee. Some may say it's already like this, but it really isn't. Not like I am explaining. Then again, it also may be a factor of what kind of work a person is in. Like many, I'm currently service industry. Even as I fix computers on the side.

4. All employees should essentially be treated like contractors in terms of taxes. It may be convenient to never have to think about it, but having automatic income taxes and other payroll taxations occur just embolden governments to spend that money however they like. Instead, we should be creating a system that better understands just how much a person uses or contributes in regards to society, and tax them according to both that and their current income based annually; but with each month in a separate table as well for better context.

I think if done right, most people would prefer this system, since it would only ever be taking what you should actually be having to pay for in the first place. That said, rebates will probably not ever be a thing anymore, since they don't have the automatic tax base to fund it all with.

Tit for tat, right?

Either or, these 4 things I think would mostly solve our pay problems. Or at least help us get onto a better path again.

The reason no one is building expensive apartments in these areas with socialist like governments is because of things like rent control and laws that disadvantage landlords, and which make the prospect of leasing to poor people completely undesirable. This is why a huge number of the apartments in California are sitting empty, because it is still better to have an empty apartment than having a poor person living there and paying you money. Any laws that force people to build low quality homes will just mean no one builds at all.

People always want to control everything, and when there is a problem they think they can fix it by forcing everyone to do what they want. No one ever wants to consider that it is them that is causing the problem in the first place.