Federal Minimum Wage

CA has different minimum wages at the county level already. Seems even more constitutionally dubious to require counties to use a formula. I'm sure there are quite a few that don't take any federal money for anything.

Unless and until (not within my lifetime) there is an actual United States of America and not 50 little fiefdoms of "I gots mine and fuck the rest of ya!" there will never be an equitable pay scale for those who are often at the bottom of the food chain, work the hardest, and are denigrating by the privileged and those who buy into the myth that "Hey, if I work hard enough, Imma gonna be the next Gates/Musk/Zuckerberg" someday.

Yeah, I've only mentioned the self-made libruls. The inherited wealth is not even on my radar anymore. If there is a God, she'll straighten them out, if not in the New York 9th, then in whatever Christian afterlife (and Donnie Boy was raised Catholic) exacts retribution in Hell.

Making things too fine grained is probably too complicated and open to exploitation. Do you base it on where people live, or where the company is based?

If the goal is to get minimum wage back up to the buying power that it had at its peak in the 1960s, we'd be talking roughly $12.50. Not that there's anything wrong with deciding we should do better, especially considering how much productivity has gone up since then.

No matter what the new rate is, the legislation should have automatic COLA indexing built into it.

Now, now! You're talking about places that people in the other 48 states wished they lived, but don't really want to live, and where they have this horrible love/hate relationship that buys into the Hollywood/Park Avenue fantasy where (having lived on both coasts, I can vouch for the fact that it really is a fantasy, but nobody listens to me) if they were just cast in some "reality" show (they really don't believe they're entirely scripted) everything - just like winning the lottery (and they're gonna, next time, honest!) - would be one phone call away!

Stop tromping on their delusions.

I dunno about where you are, but here the price of a city limits 4BR house is pretty much 100x what it cost 55 years ago.




and, here's roughly the same house for sale today for $1.45M

The Parental Units bought a house in a "nice" (translation: red-lined white) neighborhood in 1957 in Brooklyn, NY for $15,000. Current value, according to Zillow: $1,206,071.00.

ETA: Apparently someone added two bathrooms and finished that dank, low-ceilinged, asbestos-ridden basement, but seriously...

I'm looking at the house pictured and realizing my grandparents bought the same one around the same time, just about 20 miles to the west in Brampton. I could probably find my way around the place, blindfolded.

$15 is what you can achieve now, hopefully subsequent legislation sets up some sort of index for increases that's more economically than tying it to inflation.

The best argument for doing so is one seldom mentioned: it largely stops subsidizing the employment of large corporations that pay less than that. Raising the wages will likely take millions of employees of Walmart, Kroget, McDonalds et al off of much, if not all, of the federal safety net support they get now (and future raise even more so. That cuts into their huge profits but it's them paying their workers, not the government.

I do not know that this is being discussed but IMO the best structure is to take that money saved on benefits and repurpose it into a program that subsidizes wages for small businesses that truly cannot stay in business and pay those wages (you'd need to devise a formula to keep some from trying to game that system but there are smart people who can do that.

Some (Republicans) would likely complain but done this way, you serve as somewhat of an incubator for small businesses, some who will eventually grow beyond the need for the subsidies, WITHOUT inadvertently subsidizing the profit margins of companies who CAN afford it.

I’m seriously crushing on that house. I want that bathroom!

Yeah, nice little house. Obviously been subject to a gut/remodel at some point. Waaaaaaay too much white inside, tho. Good bones.

Judging by the layout they moved some pipes around under the floor for new stacks (would've been iron originally) and dug into the bedroom beside it a few feet and probably split the difference with the other rear BR. The window in the shower stall is the same one that is at the top right in the picture from the back of the house... the tub would have originally been in that spot.

And yeah, having done several gigs on places liek this and the other major builder of the era, Shipp, there's no S*P*F in those frames

I've been browsing real estate listings here lately and have seen some 70-80 year old frame houses (or older) going for $300K or more because they've been renovated within an inch of their lives. Brand new, those homes probably sold for a few thousand.

About 4-5 years ago we did the job on this place, 19 Borden St... over $1M and 2 years for a place that cost about $900K before gutting.


The idea was originally that it'd be an air b'n'b/foreign student rentals, so luxury en suites with heated floors.

and it was still a shitshow.

Not surprised the purchaser flipped it because it really wasn't (re) built for a family and the original investor didn't want to sink money into things like rehabbing the foundations

also... stucco uke:

When I worked at the assessor's office (20 years ago), I could go back more than 100 years of home sales in the township. On average, property values rose consistently about 3% per year. This did not include one small subdivision, built in the late 40s specifically for soldiers returning home after the war, that had probably ... 200 (?) small houses {less that 1000 sq ft, average was 763 sq ft), those houses increased nearly 12% per year over the same time period.

Another township in Lake County went from a small agricultural town to a booming tourist/summer vacation spot. Property values increased significantly. Unfortunately, the assessor in that township refused to take those new numbers into account because he thought they were anomalies, despite the trend had been happening since he'd first been elected 20/30 years prior.

Home prices in and of themselves, do not necessarily reflect why millennials cannot buy homes. That problem is that purchasing power and salaries have decreased at an astronomical rate since the late 70s.

Also looked to me like a wall between kitchen and dining area had been removed in pursuit of the ever-popular "open concept."

As with many bad things, you can blame male insecurity and corporate greed for the popularity of open floor plan remodels.

HGTV found out that you needed a certain level of demolition content (people swinging sledge hammers and working saws) in order to not get guys to veto their spouses from watching their home improvement shows while said guys were present.

‘You can learn about paint color combinations as long as there is enough breaking shit that my fragile male ego is protected.’

And how do you get a lot of demolition into a remodel?

Open floor plan. Which is why over 90% of the remodels on HGTV involve them.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/01/7839...r-century-of-real-estate-inspiration-escapism

Open floor plan became a much-sought out feature in new build homes long before HGTV's shows were in vogue.

A lot of false assumptions and unsupported claims in that snippet.

Having done a couple rennos and helped build a house, plus having had master carpenters in the family, plus smaller DIY projects I've done . . . men don't watch HGTV for sledgehammers. Although that is fun. We also watch for how things are done. How do you properly frame up a door? Make sure your attic is properly vented so you don't get mold? Build a retaining wall that actually, y'know, retains the hillside behind it? It's the same reason that "How It's Made" on the Science Channel is popular, or people (men and women both) will stop and watch a bulldozer or backhoe doing its thing. It's just interesting to see this stuff. It ain't all demolition, it's also the putting-back-together part. Take a run-down old house and make it look all cool again.

Open concept I would suspect (I have no data to back this up) is popular because a lot of the people now in position to do these renovations grew up in older houses that were basically a box with smaller boxes inside it and like the more open, airy, light-everywhere look of it.

My own house is sort of halfway open concept. When we found it, we recognized that the basic structure and layout was good and worked for us. There's a nice flow from door to living room to dining room to kitchen to family room and back out the door again. The three bedrooms and two baths are on the other side and are much more typical of the "boxes inside a box" layout. The renovation was mostly paint and repair stuff, although we did a gut-and-replace on the kitchen and both bathrooms. The only real demolition we did was taking out the icky old bathtubs in the bathrooms and opening up the walls to get to the plumbing. I dunno, I guess you can count taking down old kitchen cabinets as "demolition" as well, but those came out intact and were donated. Not all smashed apart. I actually wish we'd done a little more demolition, as one of the walls in the living room kind of needs to be re-drywalled due to the number of patches in it, but we ran out of budget. Oh well.

Anyway, I really don't think open concept is popular because of "male insecurity and corporate greed." I think it's popular because it's visually appealing and it works.

comparing to memory, nope. those kitchens to the dining area were fairly open affairs in the original plan. the side with the microwave and pantry though, that's an add in. Grandparents had more of a breakfast nook in that space. looks like they did knock out the gable wall on the sliding door side though...



what's odd is that first smaller bathroom with the shower would be behind that fridge wall. there may or may not be a den sized room back thre that's converted to a nanny apartment...
that door goes to the garage while on the left is the bsmt stairs. There should also be a smaller room to the right of the garage entry.

looking at how new everything appears, I'm guessing this was a flip. the tile-other than the 2" mosaic in the showers is all pretty contemporary and cheap. (that 2" looks like they got it out of the H4H dumpster)

added benefit is the frequent need to retrofit main joists with LVL or I beams to make up for the lost vertical support.

still, it can go horribly wrong as evidenced by the Borden St job I showed. the desired kitchen island left a passage on the seating side of about 26".

demolition may be fun to watch, but it is absolutely the worst part of the job. everything is toxic, flammable, or live, and you will need a tetanus shot.

There absolutely should be a minimum wage, and it should be adjusted annually to match inflation (but only up, not down, so if inflation is stagnant or negative, minimum wage stays the same that year).

As for the dollar amount, that's unfortunately going to vary in purchasing power from area to area. In some states and cities, $20-$25 an hour would make sense, while in other areas $10-$15 would make sense. Hopefully more states and counties/cities where there is a higher cost of living continue the trend of having a minimum wage well above the Federal level. But I think $15 per hour is a good goal and a good balance.

The current minimum wage is $7.25, and even if someone worked full time, they wouldn't make enough money to pay rent in many areas. That's absolutely bonkers. With such a low minimum wage, we're essentially subsidizing companies getting away with paying the bare minimum to increase profits, when in reality they could pay their employees a livable wage and still take in mindboggling profits (also their employees could afford to buy more stuff!). Those minimum wage employees have to rely on government assistance, which I don't mind my taxes paying for, but I strongly dislike my taxes being used to subsidize a company just so profits can marginally increase.

Minimum wage for waiters, and other tipped employees, should not be so low. It's at $2.13. Yes, tipping is customary, but what do you do when a table doesn't tip? I think there shouldn't be a differentiation between tipped and non-tipped minimum wage. Again, this goes to taxpayers subsidizing restaurants. If you can't afford to pay your waiters more than $2.13 per hour and they rely on tips to live, you have a failing business model and deserve to go out of business.

Our house is 41 years old and the first floor is pretty open. Entryway that leads on one side to a large living room/dining area with a vaulted ceiling. The other side leads to a den/fireplace area that opens up to the kitchen (which can also be accessed from the living room area through a swinging door). The master bedroom, laundry room, and downstairs bathroom are the only spaces with an actual door.

Upstairs we've considered taking out the wall between two of the three bedrooms (our daughters are grown and out of the house) to make one bigger bedroom/home office for my wife, but we haven't done it yet because it would mean that if we had overnight guests on a work day, my wife wouldn't be able to do her job. She currently uses the smaller of the two bedrooms as her workspace. The other bedroom has been my office/study since we first moved in.

All wages should be adjusted against the GDP. Since 1978, the GDP has increased steadily as has executive pay. Worker pay has remained consistent with about a 10% increase causing a much lower purchasing power. It's not just minimum wage that suffers, everyone does.

I get where you're going with this -- when more is produced, the people who produce it should benefit -- but recessions are defined by sustained drops in GDP, so tying wages directly to GDP would result in people getting less money right at the time when stimulus is most needed.

Right, or as FW suggested, if the GDP doesn't go up, there is no gain, but there also is no loss.

I think simply not giving minimum wage a rise in times of stagnant or declining GDP would be sufficient. Not really necessary to reduce minimum wage. Normally.

Open concept would be really nice with little ones. It’s truly amazing how much destruction a one year old can cause in the 10-15 seconds it takes to go into the kitchen and flip a pancake.

Wait, are some people saying that they don't like open concept floorplans?

For workplaces, open office plans are the devil.

My job did a big remodel a few years ago that turned almost the whole newsroom into open office (thankfully most of us still have cubicles) and it sucks. They even took the doors off the edit suites so, as a form of protest, I edit with the speakers turned up loud.