Most Americans are idiots.

People can work for less, under the table or via wage theft. Very common in the lowest tiers of sex work, in house cleaning services, and in the agricultural sector where human trafficking is common place

Lol that's amazing. And sad.

It's sad how little people know about how their world works. I always knew they knew less than they let on, but hoo boy are they just putting shit like this out there these days. Proudly ignorant.

I promise I'm raising my kids better. Almost done with the first! Shame there's such a gap between em though...

Usually with tips it's like $2.13 or something. For wait staff that gets tips they're allowed to be paid less hourly. Their total pay for the day still has to be at least the federal minimum wage though.

Tips are so weird.

The federal tipping wage is only $2.13. If that plus tips isn’t at least $7.25 then the employer is suppose to bridge the gap. That’s hard to track especially with cash tips so I’m sure you can guess how often that happens…

I wouldn't go quite that high right off the bat, but...

Just peg a full time, min wage, locally (metro area locally), to ~~1/3~~ 3x (EDIT, whoops, mathed backwards) the median price of renting a studio apartment.

Would this be an economically perfect policy?

Fuuuuck no.

Would this actually enable, at least theoretically, an 18 yo kicked out of the family house upon high school graduation, as is the cultural norm in most of America, to actually be at least theoretically capable of providing for themselves and starting their own life?

Again, assuming jobs actually exist, yes.

This would be the bare minimum needed to make the insanely out off touch asshole boomer logic even mildly line up with reality.

...

For my next policy:

All those with student loan debt, where those students were goaded into that student debt by their parents saying they'd never have a good paying career without a college education, where those students have also been underemployed (a job or jobs not actually crtitically reliant on their degree) for a period of 5 years or more...

Congrats students! That debt is now dischargable in a bankruptcy, and it becomes the responsibility of said parents, for whom it is not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Unrealistic?

Yes.

Fundamentally legally impossible?

Also probably yes.

... Morally correct, in spirit?

Oh, oh hell yes, yes.

...

For my third policy:

Graduated municipal landlord taxes based on how much a landlord charges a rental tenant for rent, in addition to existing property taxes.

If you are renting out a property for say, double area median rent for comparable sq ft, num bedrooms, etc? Well, now the landlord pays additional tax on that exorbitant rent.

Doesn't totally murder the profit motive, but highly disincentivizes putting high value homes and condos on the market for rent (and would thus incentivize putting them on the market actually for sale, at a reasonable price), incentivizes building modest new apartment buildings instead of only 'luxury' apartments.

All the proceeds of this tax of course go into funding housing subsidies for the poor, or directly building new, municipally operated, non profit apartment complexes.

... Just play the uno reverse card on the landlords, tax their rent extraction.

If you don't get paid time off do you have to take it? Up here in Canada most full time jobs (at least all the ones I've had) have two weeks paid vacation after the first year. Here's an Indeed article being way more clear than I could be.

Min wage hourly doesn't come with guaranteed time off, but I think the pay gets added to each paycheck? Don't quote me, it's been ages since I was an hourly guy.