New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani forcefully defended his call for a $30 minimum wage during the final debate of the race Wednesday night, warning that under the status quo, the expensive metropolis is at growing risk of becoming “a museum of where working-class people used to be able to live.”
The inability of many New Yorkers to make a livable wage in the city, Mamdani said, “is pushing them to live in Jersey City, to live in Pennsylvania, to live in Connecticut, because they can’t afford to live in New York City.”
Under Mamdani’s proposal, which would have to be approved by lawmakers, New York City’s wage floor would rise incrementally before reaching $30 an hour by 2030. The minimum wage would then be tied to either cost-of-living increases or worker productivity jumps.
Even if you don’t get it - start at $30 bucks. The current is $16.50. If you get negotiated down to $20/hour you just gave every body on the bottom a more than 20% raise. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect New Yorkers to live on $40k/year but it’s a hell of a lot more reasonable than $33K/year.
I understand why minimum wages need to be monitored closely, and doled out with forethought and compromise. I get that raising up the bottom very suddenly tends to just be accompanied by price increases that ultimately still benefit the wealthy.
But it’s also just true that feeding money into the bottom of the system always pays greater and more impactful dividends than trying to somehow feed even more to the top. It’s been proven time and time again, and yet we’re always told it’s pointless to try it this time, because Rich people will just find a way to get it back. Duh, that’s what Rich people do. They use their advantages to gain more advantage. But the more people’s hands that money flows through on the way back to the wealthy, the better off we all are.
If it gives the poors a choice, the rich can’t have it.
You let those bottom 20% climb out of poverty and suddenly gain a choice in where they work/shop/spend their sudden disposable income? Well that might lead to demands of quality products, equitable availability and pricing, and less money for my cash stack throne!
They’ll ignore the mountain of starved child carcasses if there’s another 100 on the stack.
This is such a toxic pov