SIO416: What Is A Living Wage?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 416. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and back due to popular demand, incredible guest, hit guest from earlier, from the feminist man-hating series that people loved, Lydia Smith. Master Lydia Smith!

0:00:33 Lydia: I'm back.

0:00:35 Thomas: I can't make that joke around Eli. He'll just never, he'll make, he will go take it a direction that we don't want to go. How are you doing?

0:00:40 Lydia: He doesn't need more material. We've given him plenty.

0:00:42 Thomas: Yeah. Ever since your pronunciation of a certain beer.

0:00:46 Lydia: Don't bring it up in this space. Thank you.

0:00:49 Thomas: You're right. Anyway, if anyone wants to know what that is, you'd have to listen to our Godawful Movies appearances. I actually don't remember which one, one or the other.

0:00:54 Lydia: And if you know, you know.

0:00:57 Thomas: Yeah. How are you doing today?

0:00:58 Lydia: Oh, pretty good. How are you?

0:01:01 Thomas: I'm good. I'm really excited for this episode because this is a great topic. This is something that I can't wait to cover. It's got classic, idiots overreacting It's got everything. It's Got Everything We Want. And it's, yeah, it's just got so many good reasons to talk about it.

0:01:11 Lydia: All All of our favorite stuff. Yep.

0:01:16 Thomas: And not to mention very personal, deep connection for me to the topic that we'll get to. But why don't you introduce it? What are we talking about today?

0:01:25 Lydia: Sure. So with the new year, we actually had a lot of new laws signed in California in particular. And one of those laws that was signed is something that threw some conservatives into a little bit of an uproar.

0:01:38 Thomas: No way.

0:01:39 Lydia: Yeah, you wouldn't say. And that is involving minimum wage. And this minimum wage bill was to increase specifically for fast food workers to $20 an hour. There was also a general overall minimum wage increase effective January 1st to 16 an hour, but folks in the fast food industry would be receiving $20.00 an hour effective April 1st, 2024.

0:02:04 Thomas: I already have a lot of questions. First off, I was just thinking like, conservatives, since they've already broken federal government, they are going to have to start looking to states for just finding where laws are passed.

0:02:05 Lydia: Go for it.

0:02:15 Lydia: Yeah.

0:02:15 Thomas: You know, like they're like, oh, shit, well, we completely ruined federal government. That doesn't work anymore.

0:02:16 Lydia: Yeah, nothing happens there.

0:02:20 Thomas: Yeah, I guess we'll have to look to state. No, California is a giant state. Very relevant. It's But that was the first joke that occurred to me. Like, they're going to find where Our laws still pass, where haven't conservatives completely fucking ruined government? Oh yeah, states still sometimes pass laws, so that could be one, one Reason. Yeah.

0:02:20 Lydia: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:02:35 Lydia: They're Cluing in on It, yeah.

0:02:36 Thomas: They have to focus on it but also that's um pretty cool that they specifically not only increasing the minimum wage for everybody but do did you look into why fast food workers in particular um I'm just curious what the rationale Chanel was from the legislative standpoint. I mean, that's interesting to single them out set and their minimum wage higher than I'm sure a lot of other very deserving jobs.

0:02:36 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. No, of course, of course. I mean, I think everyone believes that folks need to have higher wages regardless, I Mean, the minimum wage is such a

0:03:04 Thomas: You and I believe that. And the show listeners probably believe that, yeah, yeah. End of show. All right. Thanks for tuning in.

0:03:06 Lydia: Yeah. OK. And we're right. But I think, it came from a specific at the California level who saw that.

0:03:21 Thomas: Was he dressed in a Hamburglar outfit or something? I just picture a particular legislator and then it's that purple thing from McDonald's or whatever. I think we should race. A

0:03:30 Lydia: Yeah. Grimace is like hiding in the background.

0:03:36 Thomas: People don't know how hard it is to constantly be trying to steal hamburgers or defend from being stolen. It's lot more work than people think.

0:03:44 Lydia: No. So it's been a very hard, long fight. I mean, it has to do with like the union, right? SCIU helping to represent folks.

0:03:53 Thomas: What union?

0:03:53 Lydia: Folks, Service Employees International Union, it's like they represent huge numbers of people, 1.9 million workers in over 100 different occupations in the United States. And they were really trying to rally for, I think the initial fight was for $15 for pay before they had increased the minimum wage to $15 and then $15.50 in California. And they've been continuing to fight because I think there is discrepancy in the fast food service industry because so many of those fast food restaurants become franchises,

0:03:54 Thomas: Which one in? Hmm.

0:04:28 Thomas: Hmm.

0:04:28 Lydia: That you end up with this sort of disparate system where there isn't cohesiveness on rights and fair wages and and safety and training and all of those things. So this bill was put together in an effort to protect the folks that largely are primary providers for their families. Unlike what a lot of conservatives will have you think, it's not teenagers doing this after school as a majority anyway, right? The majority of the folks in these positions are primary provides for their families. 80% are minorities and two-thirds of them are women.

0:04:52 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:05 Thomas: Wow. And here's another amazing philosophical insight from Thomas Smith, genius. I don't really care why you're working there. You deserve to be paid well. That's, I mean, it's, I had to do a lot of math to get to that conclusion. That's brilliant. But like, why do I give a shit? You should be paid a fair wage for doing very important work. I don't, when you're going to let me get on my soapbox made out of Crunchwrap Supreme wrappers, but these people are saints. Saints, they are the best people in the world, the, because I was, what I was fishing for in my question was, did somebody get up and like just wiping off the remnants of a Crunchwrap Supreme from their mouth in, in the capital, in, in this, in the halls of power is like, this thing is way too delicious for anyone who made it to make less than, say, twenty dollars an hour.

0:05:05 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yep.

0:05:46 Lydia: Yeah I

0:05:53 Thomas: Just minimum, minimum, and then everyone's like, ah, here, here, and they're banging, they're crunching their rappers like in, in support, you know, instead of clapping. That

0:06:01 Lydia: Like the way that the UK parliament does it like you're just banging

0:06:03 Thomas: Every single member of Congress is eating a Crunchwrap at the time. They're like, yeah, you Know, that's a solid point. I can't even, these people are so important to me. I eat Taco Bell 16 times a day because as a vegetarian, it's the best, it's actually the best possible thing to eat somehow. It's like fast. Yes. So this is what I'm getting to. It'S very important personal story. I'm going to embarrass myself, but I play hockey and three nights a week and it's my only form of exercise and it helps me mentally and all that. And after hockey, because I burned 4,000 million calories, I eat Taco Bell and it helped replenish those calories.

So, um, do some math. I, I ate a fair amount of Taco Bell. Plus there's the extracurricular, you know, just for fun Taco Bell as well. I mean, you don't, it's not all business. Like sometimes, sometimes you just want. Hey, what are we doing today? I don't know. Let's go to Taco Bell. Excellent. And so I last night, we've also been taking the kids to some skating lessons, obviously at the same one rink that there would be in California around us. And yesterday was the first time it worked out so that like the kids were skating. And then my game was like on that ice right after, which was fun, except for it was a terrible game.

We got absolutely trounced and I sucked. But other than that, pretend that didn't happen. And so on this particular night of ice, uh, related activity and revelry, we, we, you know, I gotta get my post game Taco Bell. And it is seen out of what some sort of show, the guy, there's one Taco Bell employee there who started talking to me. He doesn't, I probably swear he doesn't even work there that much. Like, I don't even see him that much, but when I see him, he started talking, he's like, "Man, I see you here from time to time."

0:06:10 Lydia: Yeah literally last night when Sure.

0:07:43 Thomas: I was like, yeah, yeah. Of course. But I assume you see everybody in the town from time to time. Every citizen of this great nation you should see in this Taco Bell.

0:07:52 Lydia: Well, this is Taco Bell number one, too, right? This is like the best Taco Bell.

0:07:53 Thomas: Yeah, this is the, this, the Taco Bell, I have a backup one that's potentially better, but it's, but, it's further away. So it's you know what I mean? Like I go there when this one fails, but I, so I have, I have processes in place, uh, protocols, you know, uh, like, you don't know how every building has to have that like map to the fire exit on each floor.

0:08:10 Lydia: Yep, yep. Uh-huh, yeah. Yep, you have that.

0:08:19 Thomas: I have you are here. It's all over our walls is you are here. Here's the route to the nearest good Taco Bell. And here's the secondary route in case that something's wrong with that Taco Bell that day. Uh, and so this guy starts talking to me, he started talking to Me a few few months back and he's like, why do I see you around this time? I was like, oh, it's because I play hockey and then I come here after hockey. And then he happened to like be from Canada or something.

So then he's talking to me and he says, look, these people are saints, but there's not a whole lot of good conversation to be had in the Taco Bell line. So I'm not a big small talk guy. So I appreciate these people. I think they should make a million dollars actually, but I don't have a lot to talk about in the line of a Taco Bell. So he kind of asked me something, I'd be like, yeah, no, bad game. And then last night I have the kids and the family with me. My family is with me and this happens to

0:08:49 Lydia: Yeah. Yep.

0:09:07 Thomas: Be this guy working. And he couldn't have more thoroughly embarrassed me. He was like, oh, hey, how's it going? Yeah, I know your social security number. It's this. And now you had a game.

0:09:18 Lydia: It was Pretty amazing.

0:09:19 Thomas: It must be, yeah. And I was like oh, God, this is, yeah .

0:09:19 Lydia: Hey, man, how'd go? How was the game

0:09:24 Thomas: . . I'm like, there's no way to explain this to the wife. Wife. This is, yes, I live at this Taco Bell. There's no, no, fortunately you already knew all that.

0:09:24 Lydia: Tonight Nacho cheese on your collar like you come home. Oh, there you go. Yeah.

0:09:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, no. I'd be more worried about him seeing lipstick on my collar. Actually it'd be more no, but, um, point is I'm a devotee of the black bean crutch up Supreme. I live on it. And every time I go there, I think this is not enough money. Like whatever I pay them them form this delicious sustenance. It's not enough because I'm always, you know, I went to business school. I'm almost thinking like, how much does this fucking building cost? How much do all those people in there cost? Taco Bell should be more expensive. It just should be. And the people who are in there, these guys, every time they good provide customer service, I'm like, that's, why did you even do that? You know what I mean? Like, person.

0:10:14 Lydia: You're not getting paid to do that.

0:10:17 Thomas: Yeah. I'm the kind of person who is, I, I don't want to be a customer. I'm sorry, I'm a customer at all times, like, like, someone's working a job. I'm a solid millennial who think, you know, our boomer entitled last kind of parent generation is always like, how dare you with the bad service, I deserve, but, and I have the opposite of that, like, if I go to a place and I give money and they give me a product that was roughly what I wanted and they were like kind of like nice, nice, I'm like, that is a miracle, why did you even do that?

I don't even think you should, they're not paying you to be nice, you should. So whenever that happens, I'm like, this person is not only doing this amazing job of coordinating all this, making the food super fucking fast, best, but doing it usually with a smile and nice, like, oh, your food will just be a moment, here's whatever, and I'm just like, man, you deserve a million dollars. And so I just wanted to say, this is something, thing with a very close connection to my heart and to my stomach.

0:10:17 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:11 Lydia: You're invested

0:11:12 Thomas: Yeah. And, and this, I'm, I'm actually, I've genuinely, contrary to the conservative point of view that I'm sure we're going to hear, it makes me happier to know that people who are doing stuff for me, it's so uncomfortable for someone to do something for me. It's the most uncomfortable thing. I'm like, I don't, I don't like it. It was just, you know what I mean?

0:11:12 Lydia: In this for them. Yeah.

0:11:28 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:11:29 Thomas: Like, so for someone would be doing something for to know, that starting April 1st, they're going to be making $20 an hour and Instead of whatever they were making before. That feels nice. I like that. That's great.

0:11:39 Lydia: Yeah, it was kind of an interesting road to this too, because this, I guess, for fairer wages for fast food workers, was actually proposed, a and signed last year, 2022, at a twenty two dollar minimum wage for fast food workers. But the fast food corporations basically said, we're going to bring it to ballot if you do that. And so they were worried about the Prop 22 situation that California experienced with the independent contractors versus employees and Uber Eats and DoorDash winning. So now there's an exception for them where they're independent contractors, even though they should be treated like employees. Anyway, so they went into negotiations because they knew they wanted to avoid that. And they landed on dropping down the minimum wage to $20 instead. And they also got rid of this sort of joint responsibility that was going to happen between the franchisee and the franchisor.

0:11:53 Thomas: Oh, Oh, yeah. Fuck.

0:12:31 Thomas: Hmm.

0:12:32 Lydia: And like basically, basically corporations would be involved in responsibility for the health and safety and wage, and all of those things. And they got rid of that. And when I first read that, I was like, that sounds terrible. So now all of that responsibility lands on these franchise owners that. That just seems really unfair to me that instead of, like, Pizza Hut, where I, the CEO of the Pizza Hut division at Yum Brands made $2.4 million in cash in 2022. His total compensation was $4.7 million. And then when you look at the little franchise small business owners that are going to have to bear the responsibility of any issues here, it seemed wrong to me. But then I read a piece from a franchise owner about this bill who probably didn't want it to pass at all, but really didn't like that corporations were going to be held responsible because he said that means they're going to take control over all the decisions for operations.

0:13:25 Thomas: Yeah, I was gonna, I don't really, cause that's an interesting thing. The franchises is like, you just pay a fee and then you're, you're essentially using their brand, like of that fee, which I think can be pretty expensive. Offensive, it's not like any other component of the business is going to Mr. Taco Bell, Mr. Bell. So it wouldn't really make sense to have Mr. Bell come and like personally have to, you know, that like that the bigger company have to get involved. The fact that it's just like the franchise owners, they're just, they operate the whole thing, they control the whole damn thing, it would be weird to have the corporation have to come in and do, I don't know, I guess I don't, I'm

0:13:28 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do

0:14:03 Thomas: Agnostic about that

0:14:03 Lydia: You see how I'm like torn about I'm it a little bit? Yeah. It's just kind of weird. The other interesting thing about this bill is that in their negotiations, they carved out an exception for restaurants that make and sell their own bread like Panera. And I was like, why? And initially when I read that, I was was like, OK, so is like, you know, everyone going to just start making their own bread and so we don't have to follow this taco Bread. I was reading the law and it specifically says that you have to be making and selling your own bread as of September 15th, 2023. So you can't get taco bread in

0:14:04 Thomas: Yeah yeah huh Oh god Taco Taco bread. Yeah.

0:14:35 Thomas: Yeah,

0:14:35 Lydia: There, and you have to continue to make your own bread in order to continue to remain the exception. It was just weird, but I guess that's how those negotiations work. I don't really know how that one landed. Probably some closed door stuff that we won't know.

0:14:36 Thomas: Can't get bread fathered in there. Yeah yeah it's just the way the sausage is made. It's not it's not as beautiful as the crunch wrap process because how weird is it where legislators or whoever's driving this bill is like, all right, we want it to be 22, and the industry's like, nah, like, they can just be like, yeah, but if you do that we'll fucking make hell. And then the

0:14:52 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. And we'll spend all of this money to advertise and, yeah, and trick people.

0:15:11 Thomas: Yeah the government of California has got to be like, all right, they have a point, I guess, we'll, by the way, California, I know it's always said just California alone, what is its, seventh largest economy in the world, like, if we were a country, like, this is a major maybe

0:15:16 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was fifth at one point, but maybe we dropped a little bit.

0:15:26 Thomas: I honestly I might have just said that, it's something crazy like We are massive, and the idea, the, know, we could be wanting to like make a lot the people. People could be wanting to make laws through their representatives about this kind of thing. And then, you the colonel.

0:15:29 Lydia: Yeah.

0:15:39 Lydia: Mr. Bell. Mr.

0:15:40 Thomas: Yeah, I hate imagining Mr. Bell in this dastardly scenario, but I have to.

0:15:40 Lydia: Hutt, the colonel. Exactly. He's part of

0:15:46 Thomas: Yeah, the Colonel and McDonald and Wendy. Yeah, that's so-and-so. I can't believe how successful she is at such young a age, though, I got to say. That is inspiring. Lean in, Wendy.

0:15:59 Thomas: But uh, the idea that they're just like the council of delicious fast food is like nah, and then we have to back down. But whatever, point is, twenty dollars an hour, that's awesome. Goes into effect April 1st.

0:15:54 Lydia: It. Wendy? Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, April 1. And, and The other big thing that they, um, put together was creating something called the Fast Food Council. And so it's going to be a, um, you?

0:16:11 Thomas: Oh, Fuck, can I run for that? Can I

0:16:19 Lydia: Can be appointed as a non-affiliated fast food, you know, like like you're not affiliated with the Well, you have to petition the governor because these are all going to be like appointed positions.

0:16:19 Thomas: Oh, my God, new write-in campaign everybody get me the governor, yeah.

0:16:31 Lydia: And and it'll be comprised of, you know, folks representing the franchise owners of the fast food restaurants that are impacted, the employees and one person who is an avid eater of crunch wraps. Yes. So you are you are up for consideration.

0:16:38 Thomas: Just be like avid eaters of crunch wraps, that's not a Yeah. An

0:16:47 Lydia: Congratulations.

0:16:47 Thomas: At-large bid for fast food enjoyer.

0:16:49 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, So that, that entity would be authorized through 2029, and it would oversee any additional, like, minimum wage increases that they want to do and can negotiate.

0:16:50 Thomas: Yeah, huh.

0:16:59 Thomas: Interesting.

0:17:00 Lydia: It'll oversee kind the improvement and standardization of a lot of training, health and safety standards for the industry. And this way, the employees continue to have a seat at the table, too, but making sure that it's equitable. Yeah. And then, you know, in doing a lot of this research, I found the hearing in front of the committee when they were passing this kind of like for the last time. And they have, you the section for public comment at the end. And I was legitimately tearing up. I thought I was going to start like crying, crying.

0:17:13 Thomas: Oh, Did somebody get on there and talk about the crunch wrap and like how amazing it is

0:17:31 Lydia: No, no, that that's that impacted me today. But yesterday, yesterday, no, it was just like the line of people that were coming up and they were just saying their name, where they were from, where They work and that they were in support.

0:17:33 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. It's been an emotional ride. How many crunch wraps they eat, and they're like, the way they get the crunch and the wrap, it's two different things in one. No one ever thought of it before, Mr. Bell.

0:17:56 Lydia: But yeah, I mean, it's just like it was really moving, just kind of this flow of people and they weren't, you know, telling their life story or how like it's been really challenging providing for their families or anything. It was just literally like the people. And sometimes times they didn't speak English. And so they were delivering the support in Spanish. And it was just really, really moving. And that was my experience of this. And I'd like to contrast that with the experience of, yeah, a different take. Someone we don't really talk about much on here because haven't about because he's not at Fox News anymore, but he used to be Mr. Glenn Beck. And he he talked about this a bit on his show.

0:18:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:22 Thomas: Get a different take? Yeah.

0:18:35 Thomas: What's funny is he's like 14 generations of asshole ago at Fox. I don't even remember. I can't remember why he just like left, I think. I don'T even, he didn't have a sexual harassment thing at all, I don't think, did he? Man, weird, crazy. Anyway, let's get his take for some reason. No, he's still a very influential conservative commentator.

0:18:47 Lydia: Don't know. Yeah.

0:18:55 Thomas: He's got his own channel and everything.

0:18:57 Clip: Governors around our country are doing to make your life just that much better. Let's start in California, because Gavin Newsom isn't done yet. He just signed a bill into law, and it goes into effect in April. It is fast food chains, national fast food chain, that operate in California have to pay their employees a minimum of $20 per hour. Now, that the minimum wage in California is 16, but they're moving it up to 20 an hour. I thought about this reading some of these stories about the minimum age increases, because they're all over the country. Yeah, in 2024. Sure. Don't you remember when we had the conversation about a $15 minimum wage? Yes, and it was treated as a Bernie Sanders fever dream, right? Like, it was like, okay, Berny Sanders, Democrats were saying, okay, Brenny Sanders is saying that, but no one's really considering $15 an hour. They're like, Seattle did it. Like, Portland did it, and everyone's like, gosh, that was crazy. Can you believe that? And then they watched those restaurants move.

0:20:09 Clip: Now, $20 is $20. We said at the time, why not make it $20, $25, $30?

0:20:07 Thomas: There's no restaurants in Portland anymore in Seattle.

0:20:08 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:16 Clip: Hell, why don't we make it a hundred dollars an hour? What is your limiting principle here? Correct.

0:20:16 Thomas: This is awesome. I agree with these guys. Oh, yeah, let'S do it.

0:20:20 Clip: CORRECT. Correct, uh, and we said that

0:20:21 Thomas: What's your living principle? Why not infinity point infinity dollars? Oh, no, so

0:20:28 Clip: They're not gonna, you're going to get the increase passed to you as a best case scenario, and all of those people, I know,

0:20:36 Thomas: Instead Of fucking five dollars for the best food ever made, I might have to pay five dollars and 13 cents or some fucking shit. So that the people slaving away in rough conditions and heat in, crowded, dangerous conditions, sometimes so they can make four dollars more an hour, yeah, I'll take that bargain, I don't know. Anyway, yeah, that's another whole thing.

0:20:43 Lydia: Yeah.

0:20:55 Lydia: We're also already spending more money for food because of inflation anyway. And that's not actually supporting people.

0:21:01 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. So, okay, I'll finish out the clip you wanted to do here.

0:21:02 Lydia: Yeah,

0:21:04 Clip: This is a small business person when my dad couldn't afford to uh have help because egg prices he was a baker egg prices went up or whatever happened he had to let go the staff that was doing all of the work on cleaning and everything else and he hired me for a quarter okay That's what they do they can't they just can't print money like the United States of America? Of course they said uh that it would protect the fast food workers. Uh, unfortunately, there's been a little announcement from major, uh, a major corporation, uh Pizza Hot, uh, they've decided that they're gonna lay off all of their delivery drivers.

0:21:14 Thomas: Okay, sure.

0:21:27 Thomas: Is that good? I don't...

0:21:27 Lydia: That's

0:21:52 Thomas: What

0:21:52 Lydia: Not accurate.

0:21:53 Clip: And they say, well, I mean, why should we pay for that? Because you can just go through DoorDash or Grubhub or Uber Eats, which leads you to two things. Okay, great. But now I pay for that delivery where I didn't pay for it before. So you're getting it in the end. You now have to pay for delivery instead of Pizza Hut bringing it to you. And it opens up the door for, well now, Now, wait a minute. All of these drivers have been left off. Maybe we should regulate DoorDash and Grubhub and Uber Eats.

0:21:53 Thomas: The fuck?

0:22:25 Thomas: There

0:22:25 Clip: Welcome

0:22:25 Thomas: Should be a whole genre of just conservatives accidentally making points and thinking they're doing it in, like a little bit of a shitty voice though. "Oh, because I guess they should be healthy and be able to afford to live." What are these idiots think? You're like, "Yeah, no, you could just say that with a normal voice and it's just normal." That's just like good.

0:22:30 Lydia: Yeah but We were also paying for delivery. It just was built into the price of the product. Yeah, it's dumb.

0:22:49 Thomas: It sounds like that will compensate for the other price increase probably. And then it'll be like even or it'll go up in meaningless amount.

0:22:52 Lydia: Yeah. Yep. So one thing I want to correct here.

0:22:59 Thomas: Got a couple of notes for Glenn Beck.

0:23:00 Lydia: Couple notes. So he said, you know, Pizza Hut Corporation is laying off all their drivers. That is not accurate.

0:23:06 Thomas: No.

0:23:07 Lydia: It's the decision was made by two two large franchises, both in Southern California, PacPizza LLC and Southern California Pizza company. They own a bunch of Pizza Huts across those regions, and it does amount to 1,200 delivery drivers that are impacted. So it's not nothing. They will rely on third-party drivers, but it's a decision that's made by the corporation. And I had mentioned, well, the CEO of Pizza Hut division makes a lot of money, so maybe he could throw a few bucks to the delivery drivers.

0:23:18 Thomas: Okay. Well, not only that, These are the people who are in charge of that fucking company are the same people listening to Glenn Beck, they did this a lot with like a lot of the um the COVID stuff where they're like, I'm gonna have to fire everybody, and it's like I don't think that's true, but then they're the fucking assholes who are in charge, and so they just do it to make a point.

0:23:41 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:23:53 Thomas: You know, and then it's like we don't really hear about it if they undo it later, or that you know what I mean, there's a lot of that, it's a like decision they wanted to make anyway was we want want to fucking fire people, or leave this town, that's some of them too, like we're gonna leave this town unless they give tax breaks us for whatever, and it's like they wanted to anyway, and so it's kind of a win-win for the fucking greedy corporation, that's either I get something from the government back, you know, or I have this like fake justification for doing a horrible thing, and then either way they're kind of covered.

0:23:57 Lydia: Yeah. No, Yeah I, I watched a lot of like fast food folks talking, being interviewed and stuff, and there was one where they were talking to the Carl's Jr. CEO way back when, like right after all like the sexy commercial started coming out. He was like the creator of that, I guess, to And they, the way that the the broadcaster, I think it was through Fox News, they said, like, and you're moving California because of those taxes, right? Like, I heard you're consolidating your headquarters, you're going to be in Tennessee, because the taxes in California are so crazy. And he was like, um, not no. He's like, we don't need to have three different headquarters. We have two in California and one in St. Louis. And so we're going to take one of the California and the St. Lewis and move them to Tennessee. And we're gonna keep our original one in California. And it has nothing to do with taxes. It's kind of a not not relevant to us at all. Because it's the franchises and not the corporation. It was so funny.

0:24:21 Thomas: Oh, Yeah, Yeah, I mean, it's just such an obvious dynamic that has been true about conservatism and Fox News and all that and the Republican Party for as long as I've been alive, at the very least, which is trying to convince normal people to defend rich people. The whole game is that. This is kind of a where there's woke, so I won't go on a big thing, but it's like the whole game is what can we get normal people mad at so that they will defend the interests of rich people? Because that's what the point of Republicans is, is to defend the interest of rich people. That's all it is. And you sent me this video and I started looking at the comments and I'm dying, I cannot even, they're so good. Top comment, why, why anyone would operate a business in California's beyond me. Yeah.

0:25:23 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:25:49 Thomas: There's a bunch of them. Yeah, one of the big guys from Shark Tank said he wouldn't open a lemonade stand in California. These people, they love to cosplaying as like businessy people that, you know, it's like so much of that is just complete fucking nonsense. It's just if you had a bunch of money to start a business or not, like that's what determines your success mostly. I mean, there's some good product ideas maybe, and there's better and worse ways to run a business. But this idea that one of the big guys from fucking Shark Tank is going to be like an expert on running a business in different states, and like, yeah, they wouldn't even open a lemonade stand. You know what's weird, hun? I, and you were right. California, still fifth largest economy in the world. I'm actually

0:25:58 Lydia: Amazing. Yeah, so crazy.

0:26:32 Thomas: Seeing a headline that said it might be fourth. Like it's getting close.

0:26:35 Lydia: What? Oh, my God.

0:26:37 Thomas: 2022. It's, it says poised to overtake Germany as the fourth largest economy. And then I see a later one that says, no, it's not the, so it must've been close. But the point is, hey, every commenters and everybody on Glenn Beck's fucking YouTube channel and basically all Fox News, where do you think that money comes from, it's a bunch of lemonade stands, it's actually entirely, we have, we have trillions of lemonade stans, the all that money come from fucking businesses, it's incredibly lucrative to run a business in California, that's why we're the fifth largest economy in the world. This idea I've I've made references before and don't, I, I, I'm not overplaying it, the extent to which conservatives have to convince themselves, ourselves, that California is like this dying state. Like there's just nobody left. You go there at spiderwebs. There's just nobody even whatever a. Here's another government, a dear friend and a lifelong liberal Californian refuses to admit that there's even one itty bitty thing wrong with the way things are going out there. I hate to say it, but I think he's too ignorant to, to associate with any longer.

0:26:53 Lydia: Yeah. Yep. Okay, that seems fake.

0:27:38 Thomas: Yeah, it's a, it could all be fake. I actually don't even know. How here's another one with a ton of upvotes.

0:27:40 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. How did you you tell

0:27:43 Thomas: I'll tell you what those laws mean. Stores are going to leave California even more than they already are. And any other state that that comes up with ridiculously stupid laws, as well as minimum wage be in twenty dollars, I don't know if that's whatever, and you cannot blame the business owners. They have every right to pick up and go to another state that is more business friendly. Yeah, sure, some guy who runs a Pizza Hut franchise is gonna be like, "All right, everybody, pick up a corner of this building, everybody, we're gonna walk over to Texas with this."

0:27:53 Lydia: Yeah yeah Exactly.

0:28:13 Thomas: Like you just, this is, is they're so economically illiterate, it's, it's ridiculous to me. Yeah.

0:28:13 Lydia: It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah. And then the other way that he had mentioned that, that the price might be passed off to consumers is with raising prices on food items. Chipotle and McDonald's have both come out saying that they're going to raise prices on their food items, but you know, no one has any idea what that actually means, um, the price, Prices have been going up anyway. So who knows? But I also wanted to highlight, In-N-Out has some problematic things with it, terms of its reliance on religion. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But they have always been incredible to their employees.

0:28:51 Lydia: They pay so much more than the minimum wage everywhere. I just saw that they'll be expanding into Idaho actually pretty soon. And Idaho doesn't have a state minimum wage. So they get the federal at seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour.

0:28:43 Thomas: They're religious fundamentalists yep oh

0:29:06 Lydia: That's literally the minimum wage in Idaho. And so In-N-Out is coming in and they will be offering seventeen dollars and fifty cents an hours Idaho Idaho.

0:29:04 Thomas: It's nothing in Idaho that can buy you several buttes, no, I don't know what, was that, is what's in Idaho that you could buy, that'll buy you a whole potato. Yeah. That's it

0:29:21 Lydia: Potatoes. Lots of potatoes to make more french fries.

0:29:23 Thomas: Yeah yeah, that must be easy to make the fries out there. They just reach around, oh, just look on the ground, up there's a bunch of potatoes. Just

0:29:29 Lydia: Yeah. But I mean around us, they're already paying $20 an hour.

0:29:32 Thomas: Yeah they I remember hearing tales of like, back in the day, they pay 15 an hour, and that was in like the fucking, I don't know, 2000s when that was insane

0:29:37 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. It was when I had high school friends that worked at In-N-Out and they made bank. They

0:29:43 Thomas: Yeah and the, Fucking cleanest establishments of any fast food restaurants, in and out is delicious, whatever. There are some people who decide, like, like people who say they don't like the Beatles, people decide they don't like In-N-Out. It's- if I still ate meat, it sucks that I wish they would come up with a fake meat option. They probably never will because, you know, religious nut jobs. But idea that the minimum wage or paying your workers fairly is a zero sum game that only benefits them and hurts you as a business owner is actually not even true, business wise. They teach you this in business school.

I would know because I went to business school, they teach you, some business school, there are costs to being a shitty employer. If you are a bad employer, and this is the thing that these idiots don't get, and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy with a lot of them. I've worked for people that are like this. I've known people who work for people who like us, where they think the way to run a business is to be the stingy, like screw everybody over, tight-fisted, whatever. And you know what happens to those people? People come in, they, they work their mandatory two weeks training that you have to pay them for. And then they're like, well, fuck this. I'm

0:29:59 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:30:44 Thomas: Out. Now, you know how expensive that is as business owner a to constantly be like, oh, I just lost a guy. Oh, I was just lost. Okay, And guess I have to train them. You have to pay two people when you would pay one when you're training someone at least because they can't do the job yet by definition. That has a big cost to it. And if you factor that out times, you knows, the whole year, the hole, whatever, and think about what kind of better service you get when when your employees are are happy, you know, what kind of veteran service you give to customers, the reliability of knowing like, oh, I pay this person well, so they're pretty loyal to the company.

0:30:45 Lydia: Yep. Yep, yep.

0:31:18 Thomas: That's actually worth money. Because if you have employees who are disgruntled, it's not free. In-N-Out is actually the best example. They have been a thriving business for as long as I've been alive. They've always paid their workers incredibly well. Their workers all look like they're working really hard but not unhappy all the time the place is clean the food is great

0:31:35 Lydia: Yeah. Managers make six figures at each of the restaurants. It's amazing.

0:31:37 Thomas: Yeah it's amazing it's it's actually not even the economically business-minded thing to screw your employees over that's not even I mean yeah you can get away with it probably and like skim off the top enough to have a shitty place that no one likes to go to you because everyone's mad at them. You know, it's like, I guess you could probably screw people enough to make money that way, that is not the only option, you know?

0:31:41 Lydia: Yeah Yep. Yeah, definitely. But, you know, this is Glenn Beck how he's always been. They alluded to that in the video. You know, we said this back, you know, years ago with the $15 minimum wage. And, you know, that that does have to do with a lot of times like the federal minimum wage. There have been talks about trying to increase it to $15. That was part of the COVID relief.

0:32:16 Thomas: Hey, yeah. Trivia. When's the last time they increased the federal minimum wage, hon?

0:32:19 Lydia: 2009.

0:32:20 Thomas: Yeah, 2009.

0:32:20 Lydia: Yeah. Quick little notes about that. 2009, But $7.25 would be about $10.70 today with inflation. And so we're still at $7.25. And that comes to about, you know, $15,000 a year for someone who's able to work 40 hours a week.

0:32:33 Thomas: Yep. $15,000 a year. Here. You can't, that's nothing. That's, you can't buy fucking anything.

0:32:43 Lydia: Yeah. No.

0:32:45 Thomas: I know we're in California, so we're one of the most expensive places, but that is a salary that like, I wouldn't do it. I'd be like, if my options were that, or just like try to live as a vagrant off the land, I would be choose the latter. I'll be like well that's, nothing $15,000 to work full-time. Insane.

0:32:50 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Terrible.

0:33:03 Thomas: Get my memories a little fuzzy. I just had to Google it, but I guess it was true that Bernie was like $15 and Hillary Clinton in classic Clinton fashion was like, how about 12? Which is like, yeah, okay. That's better than nine 25. But still it's like, I remember at the time saying it should just be fucking 20 or 25 or whatever.

0:33:21 Lydia: Yeah.

0:33:22 Thomas: And I don't know if now's where you want to get into that discussion of what it should be. Point But is, we're not in 2016 anymore. So I love these guys observing like, oh, we were just talking about 15 and that was progressive. And it's like, yeah, well, since then, it's the cost of living just goes up and up and some

0:33:28 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, they had mentioned in that video they had been talking about it back then. They've actually been talking about it a lot longer. I found a video from 2009 when Glenn Beck was on Fox News talking about minimum wage.

0:33:49 Thomas: Did all right, so let's see what he was talking about back then.

0:33:52 Clip: To the program.

0:33:54 Thomas: Is that god-awful music what

0:33:55 Clip: Tonight, I want you to know, if you're an enemy of the state, I'll be watching you with my button eyes.

0:34:01 Thomas: The fuck is

0:34:01 Lydia: I don't know.

0:34:02 Clip: Okay, if they're making minimum wage, I have some good news for you. Your life is about to change. It is time to celebrate. You just got a raise. Oh, I'm making $6.55 an hour today. Day. Well, tomorrow I make $7.25 an hour. Isn't that great? What are you going to do with all your money? You going to retire? I'm thinking about buying a boat.

0:34:05 Thomas: Everyone over there insane what

0:34:24 Clip: Here's the one thing. Increasing minimum wage is kind of like hugging a polar bear. Oh, look how cute it looks. It's cuddly. And then you hug it, and then it rips your throat out. Ah!

0:34:23 Thomas: The fuck what

0:34:35 Clip: Because it's a polar bears. Liberal rags like the New York Times are all for the increase. The raise is badly needed, they printed today, but they also say it doesn't go far enough, it needs to be even higher.

0:34:35 Thomas: The what in Jesus Christ yeah

0:34:47 Lydia: Yeah.

0:34:48 Clip: President Obama agrees with that assessment. He's regularly voted for wage hikes on the campaign trail. He even promised lifting the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011. That would be great, wouldn't it? I mean, for small businesses. Our current unemployment rate is 9.5%, but it is even worse for teenagers. 24% unemployment for teenagers, worse yet for African-American teenagers. It is a staggering 38% for African American teenagers, and it goes up to 45% if you don't Adjust for the season. Reason, who makes minimum wage? Teenagers, youth 53 percent of all minimum wage owners are aged 16 to 24. They have been there making minimum wage. I mean, we've all done it, unless your first job was, you know, working, you know, the poll at Sluts and Steaks. We all made minimum wage. What granola eating socialist doesn't it doesn't stop and think, supporting and jacking off the minimum wage, the one who really gets hurt is the employer, and then the employee. All those employers, those darn profit-driven trolls, people in government just assume the trolls have a never-ending fountain of money and profits, and the jobs will always be

0:35:01 Lydia: Never happened, though. Yeah?

0:35:01 Thomas: Cool What? Yeah.

0:35:22 Lydia: Maybe the question should be, why are teenagers having to work? Lie. Lie

0:35:26 Thomas: I Don't know, could that be because if you look at the numbers, they have a never-ending fountain of money and profits? Could it be, could be that I, first off, every time we play a Fox News clip, it's someone having not having a mental breakdown live on TV, and like it's gonna end with them like putting a gun in their mouth, doesn't that sound like that every time, I It's wow, uh

0:36:17 Lydia: Yeah know yeah yeah oh yeah and then in 2013 not a glenn beck thing um think? It's Fox and Friends 2013

0:36:37 Clip: You were in New York City yesterday and you were wondering, what's taking so long with my Kentucky Fried Chicken? There's probably a reason. It was the biggest work slowdown and walkout in New York City history. It's a not-so-fast food day. Yeah. The people who work at places like Mickey D's, right there, currently the minimum wage in Newark is $7.25. You can't live on that.

0:36:59 Thomas: Wow.

0:36:59 Clip: You sound like those people in that line. They want, rather than $725, they want $15 an hour. Double their The minimum wage is going to go up in the state of New York, I believe, in 2016 to $9

0:36:59 Lydia: Yeah, isn't that crazy?

0:37:01 Thomas: Yeah. Maybe because they're right.

0:37:14 Lydia: In three years, nine dollars, they were gonna get two more bucks in three years. Yeah.

0:37:16 Thomas: Yeah, it's in New York.

0:37:17 Clip: An hour instead of $7.25. I mean, I don't know. Are they great negotiators or not good negotiators? Maybe you're to end up somewhere in the middle. If you're at $725 and you say $15, maybe you end up some where higher. Here's deal. You're a minimum wage worker. That's an entry-level salary. If you do good, you'll get a raise. And at McDonald's in particular, you've got an incredible management program. This is a McDonald's college. You graduate from McDonald's College as a manager. You can go anywhere. You can open your own restaurant, go to another major company. Applebee's could be in your future. So I believe this is top. Minimum wage was never meant to be a career wage. If work hard, you'll get more money. Here's the other thing. As hard as it is in some cases because you're a single mom or a single dad, you got to get another job. You gotta get another job on top of

0:37:20 Thomas: How,

0:37:32 Lydia: Didn't even know how make a point.

0:38:04 Thomas: Fucking

0:38:04 Clip: That so you have dual incomes, hopefully that'll change.

0:38:05 Thomas: Yeah. Sorry. Is he, why

0:38:06 Lydia: Yeah yeah. So you know, even if you're a single mom, maybe you just need to get another likely minimum wage job.

0:38:14 Thomas: Don't we stop there? Why don't, yeah, why do we have a minimum wage be $1 and you get 15 jobs and then then you're fine.

0:38:20 Lydia: Yeah and then they're all full time, right? So I mean like even if just had two minimum wage jobs, so 80 hours a week assuming assuming you were able to get them full time, you're going to make $30,000 a year in New York City.

0:38:31 Thomas: In New York fucking, I'm actually astonished that there, because California separated, I don't know if that's the right word, but California made our minimum wage higher than federal minimum wage, as long as I can remember. That's crazy that New York didn't do that. Is that true?

0:38:41 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep. I know. Yeah that's true.

0:38:47 Thomas: Holy shit.

0:38:48 Lydia: Yeah it's abysmal. Like it's just it's so wrong. So wrong.

0:38:52 Thomas: But it's better now, right?

0:38:53 Lydia: It is better. Yeah the second job thing just was awful, awful.

0:38:54 Thomas: Didn't they? Is unbelievable to me no

0:39:00 Lydia: And then the other thing that I wanted to talk about here is just like, okay, speaking about New York City, that visceral reaction that you likely have when you hear what they're making, everyone knows that's not enough to live in New York city.

0:39:11 Thomas: Oh requiring someone to work multiple full-time jobs to live, to me, is just unacceptable. Like, I look at this, I used to look at the, I Yeah, I Used to look At This Problem More Economically Back When I Was Younger In Business School, and I Think I Still Would Have Supported Higher Minimum Wage, Because It'S Always Been pathetic. The amount that we deem is the minimum wage. But I think a lot of conservatives get in wrapped around the axle on these arguments about like, well, actually the minimum wage raising it doesn't have the effects you think. And there is legitimate debate about where is that coming? You know, there's been studies going either way. And I don't, I'm you not expert enough to like evaluate which one is more accurate. You know? I think also things have changed very quickly. So if you're relying on a study from even 10 years ago about changing the minimum

0:39:19 Lydia: It's inhumane. Yeah.

0:39:42 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:39:59 Thomas: Wage somewhere, the fact that prices have gone up so fucking much everywhere really changes the calculation, I think. And so for me, when I kind of changed over to being more liberal, I started looking at it in my mind from something that I think is an incredibly basic and easy to defend principle of, if you work a full-time job, you should be able to afford to fucking live.

0:40:22 Lydia: Yep.

0:40:22 Thomas: That's it. I don't care about, oh, but what is a teenager who comes and works? First of all, we heard in that clip, I think it was the Glenn Beck one. It is true that like, I think 43% or something, somewhere around half of minimum wage workers are, they keep saying, oh teenager, what's teenager defined as? 16 to 25. Yeah.

0:40:39 Lydia: 24. Oh, 25. Oh yeah.

0:40:41 Thomas: I've seen both 24 and 25, 25. Think about that. Are you a teenager at 25? You might already have two kids at 25.

0:40:43 Lydia: Yeah. Yes, not it's not teenager. Yeah?

0:40:49 Thomas: Like the idea that that means you're just some young person who doesn't need money, that shows how out of touch these people are. They always think we're the out of touched ones. It's like, cause they at 25 are probably still being supported by their parents' hedge trust fund or whatever. Ever. And so if I don't believe in a different standard for someone who's only working a few hours versus someone who it's their full-time job, that doesn't make sense. It's, it's a thing where economically, I'm sure it does make for a slightly more efficient market. If it's like, well, if I have two hours to give here, I might be willing to take less than a certain wage because, you know, it's only a couple hours or something. But I think the baseline, in the same way that slavery should not be fucking legal, I think wage slavery should not be legal.

0:41:29 Lydia: Yeah.

0:41:30 Thomas: I think that if you work full-time, the minimum wage should be in any area, it may depend and on the area. Like, I Think that's fine. I Think there's more and less expensive places to live. Ithink it should be indexed somehow to that, housing, food costs there. But it should be, if youwork 40 hours a fucking week at any job, that should be able to afford you the ability to live. Now, what exactly is the ability to live? Because for the longest time, I feel like people talk about the poverty line. Oh, are you above or below the povertyline? And we looked into kind of how those calculations are done.

0:42:03 Thomas: And poverty wage is merely looking at the cost of food, which I guess they decided should be one third of your Is that it? And then they're like, we'll multiply that by three.

0:41:36 Lydia: Sure. Yeah back back in the 60s.

0:42:14 Thomas: Yeah. And is that still how they do it? Cause I, my, my understanding is the the poverty line is basically meaningless. Like it's like the same for the whole nation, I think. And I'm seeing that it's $13,900, which is again, a useless amount of money. Like, it's not, that's not useful in a year, to make that much That's not at all useful. But so therefore, if you you were to calculate it that way as to, you know, what's the poverty fucking line, that is not at all realistic. There are so many expenses. And so we've kind of looked into this living wage calculator, which I think is fascinating. And you wanted to talk about that.

0:42:17 Lydia: It's still how they do it. Yep?

0:42:50 Lydia: Yeah, so the living wage calculator was developed by Dr. Amy Glassmeyer out of MIT, and she takes real issue with the poverty line, right? And so looking living wage? And the way that she defines it in her research is the wage that's needed to cover basic family expenses plus all relevant taxes. So it still like savings, doing anything for fun.

0:43:13 Thomas: Yeah. A single vacation.

0:43:16 Lydia: If an emergency happens, paying for that. It really is just instead of that, you know, really simple food times three, they're looking at, food, rent, utilities.

0:43:17 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:43:28 Thomas: Well, and the food terms, I was going to to say that too. There's no way the ratio of expenses has stayed the same in the wake of how much housing has gone up. You know?

0:43:35 Lydia: Oh, no way. No way. Yeah. And I would hope that the federal government is looking into that and evaluating that because it does say yay or nay if someone gets to receive federal assistance and federal programs. So if they're not looking at that honestly, it could really be preventing someone from accessing benefits that are going to help keep them alive. So I hope they're looking into that. But in terms of the living wage, you know, just wanted to highlight a little bit here. I And think you looked into it, too.

0:43:46 Thomas: Oh yeah.

0:44:04 Thomas: Yeah. That was the first thing I did was like, hmm, what's our living wage?

0:44:07 Lydia: Yeah. So the California, you. Poverty wage. Just looking at one adult with no no kids. Poverty wage is set at $6.53. That's going to be same across the board, again, because the federal government approaches it regardless of where you live. It's always going to be food times three. The minimum wage in California for one adult and zero children, that's going remain the case if you're two adults, one working, two adults both working, if you have three kids, two kids, one kids, whatever. The At time that this was put together, that was $15.50. As I mentioned, it just went up to $16 on January 1st, a couple days ago. The living wage for California, if you are one adult with no kids, $21.24. Again, to cover your basic needs and taxes.

0:44:13 Thomas: Okay.

0:44:54 Lydia: A single parent, one adult, one child, your living wage jumps up to $43.44, more than double.

0:45:01 Thomas: Wow. So what you're saying, hon, if I'm getting you right, is massive increase in wages for the saints who make Crunchwrap Supremes that we're talking about here, that's going to just ruin the whole economy, according to Glenn Beck, that still isn't even getting a single adult with no children to to a living wage. And even if you put it as like, all right, that's kind of close. Like, let's say, okay, they are at a living age. Think about how unfair that is that we're saying. We are saying, if you are someone who is in, who's working full-time, you are an honest, hardworking person who is putting in a 40-hour work week, week in, week out for a year, not enjoying any vacation, apparently, like really, really, you are not allowed to have kids.

You just fucking, you know what you can do? You can be a fucking robot, working a job for your whole life and have zero children. And that's what you can afford to do. We've decided as a society, you're not worthy of kids, apparently. It's truly sad. Conservatives, we've mentioned this before, conservatives always talk about how abortion, you now, is the problem when it comes to, you people don't have enough kids, our birth rate, blah, blah. I don't know, man. Could be this maybe. As you said, if you have one child, that living wage cut, this is a living wage. This is not a a boat wage. This is a have extravagant parties and go to live in the Great Gatsby or something. This This is just, oh,

0:45:15 Lydia: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:45:55 Lydia: Roof.

0:46:24 Lydia: Over. Your. Head, you can eat. Yeah. And.

0:46:25 Thomas: We are exactly maybe getting by if no emergencies happen.

0:46:29 Lydia: Meet your obligations to pay your taxes so you don't get thrown in jail.

0:46:32 Thomas: Yeah. If you have one kid and you happen to be a single adult, $43 an hour is what you'd need to make.

0:46:32 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Yep. And I mean, then conservatives would probably come back and be like, "Well, then everyone should just get married, right?"

0:46:44 Thomas: Oh, yeah. That'll solve it.

0:46:46 Lydia: Scroll in this table that MIT, that Dr. Glassmeyer's put together, two adults both working, right? So now you have to assume both of them have jobs. One child, $23.81 is your living wage. So it's still under what the living wage in California needs to be for one kid. You still can't afford to have a kid even if you're both working

0:46:53 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

0:47:05 Thomas: This goes to show even that conservative idea that like, oh, you get married, everything works out fine. Okay. Well even, and again, we're talking about California here, but this is where this, law this is and it's you know, it's Going to vary by state, but you should actually look at this calculator, everyone living wage.mit.edu. Cause they do it by county and they they have almost all counties, there's some like in Alaska, they're like, we can't, we have no fucking idea. There's not enough information.

0:47:26 Lydia: The polar bears are throwing us

0:47:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:47:29 Lydia: Off. Yeah.

0:47:29 Thomas: There there's just not enough like data about like food costs and all the different things. But I looked into the methodology. I read the whole PDF on it. It's really fascinating because I want to say this, even this doesn't really capture it. I don't think, I think this is reasonable. I'm not saying I disagree with it, but living wage, this is like, if a single car accident happens, like you're kind of fucked, You know what I mean?

0:47:51 Thomas: So, so even this should be a baseline, an absolute baseline. And let's say that you and I did the thing that Ben Shapiro wanted us to do, which is, well, we're going to have to, you know, two adults and you stay home with the kids. If WE had even one kid, we still need $40 an hour. I, I would have to make $40 or, you know, in his idea where you stay home and be a stay-at-home mom, I would have to make $40 an hour to break even, to just like barely make it work with you staying home.

0:47:34 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

0:48:07 Lydia: We stopped at Phoebe. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Gender roles.

0:48:22 Lydia: Yeah. And we would never get to go on family trips or anything.

0:48:24 Thomas: No. So that's saying, again, it's saying if you're a certain kind of person, if you'RE certain class of person who works fast food, you don't deserve to get a life. You don't reserve to have an actual life, according to these people. It's evil. It'S absolutely evil. I And so in my mind, I've changed the minimum wage from a economics question to a moral question. The fucking market will figure some shit out. It just will. Like, and it's probably true that like, oh, because prices will go up on the whole, then like even that, though minimum wage workers might make more, they also will lose. So it's like, all right.

But like floor, in My Opinion, morally should be, what does it take to live? And then from there, we'll fucking figure shit out, and if it turns out that we need to introduce other programs or measures to make this work, then so be it. But there's going to be plenty of room for profit because there always fucking is in this capitalist hellscape. I have been obsessed with this calculator ever since you linked it to me. It is really explaining a lot now. I think people don't, maybe some people don'T understand how expensive California tends to be because would need to. I'm looking at our category here. We have three kids now, uh,

0:48:26 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:49:33 Thomas: And we're both working. And that means our household income to just live, to break even has to be $157,000 a year to just barely be living. You know, I, I haven't looked at the numbers until now. Cause I've had this feeling of like, how the fuck is stuff so expensive? You know, we've, we'd had our, Ever since we got together, we kind of set up like, OK, here's our joint, account and we'll kind of figure that out, you know, and and just over the years, it's been more and more money like, shit, I got to put more money in the shit I got to put, you Know, I have

0:49:33 Lydia: Yep, it's Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And It's

0:50:04 Thomas: A monthly amount.

0:50:04 Lydia: Like, how are we always so

0:50:05 Thomas: Yeah. And we're like, where is all this going? And it's just health insurance. It's daycare is the number one. People do not realize how expensive daycare ist here and I think pretty much everywhere.

0:50:05 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. We talked about that on where there's woke, if anyone's interested in checking that out, with uh Mr. Heathen, right?

0:50:16 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Then there's the other thing. If we want to have three kids, which I would think, you know, the Christians would want to, the Ben Shapiro, well, I guess he's Jewish, but like the conservative Judeo-Christian thing would be like, yeah, multiply.

0:50:25 Lydia: Course. Yep. Yep. Reproduce.

0:50:30 Thomas: It'd be whatever. And this stops at three kids. Cause I think it taps out. This measure is like, all right, you can't, I'm tabbing out three kids because then we run out of numbers to express how expensive It is. And if you stayed home, like they want you to, that barely even does, that means I have to make $108,000 by myself to support three kids with, the amount that they say we're spending on housing is a joke, like it's actually not even close, you know.

0:50:30 Lydia: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Yeah.

0:50:56 Thomas: Like, so yeah. With three kids we're gonna spend like two thousand dollars, I mean it's insane, so this would mean us finding a very very sparse place to live that just barely fits, fits everybody. And, and even to support that and have you staying at home in an apron all day, baking pies, whatever the fuck they think you're doing, I would have to make $108,000 a year.

0:50:57 Lydia: Yep. Yeah.

0:51:19 Thomas: It's crazy. Things are so expensive and you this just means the minimum wage and the amount people get paid needs to be fucking higher. That's just a fact.

0:51:19 Lydia: That's So crazy. Yeah. And You know, in California is in a relatively like decent position when you look at these metrics kind of up against each other. I looked at Texas, you know, kind of like our arch nemesis as a Californian. No tax, everyone's going on there.

0:51:39 Thomas: Everyone should move there.

0:51:40 Lydia: Yeah. They also have no state minimum wage. So they get the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. If you are an adult living in Texas, a single adult, no children, and you're making minimum wage $725, your living wage is actually $16.79. So there's quite a big gap there. Very quickly, the poverty wage outpaces the minimum wage, just so you know, as you have kids.

0:51:40 Thomas: Yeah. Really? Oh, oh, yeah, yeah because it's been locked in since 2009. It's yeah.

0:52:06 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. So if you're a single parent with one kid, your minimum wage, you're already under the poverty line. Poverty wage at that point would be eight in Texas. Yeah, so $8.80 would be the poverty wage as a single adult with one kid, you'd be making $7.25, but your living wage, $33.92.

0:52:15 Thomas: This is Texas you're talking about? Wow.

0:52:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:52:27 Lydia: I mean, California continues to be more expensive than Texas, but California takes measures to bridge the gap, right?

0:52:35 Thomas: Well, but also, yeah, you get the minimum wage though. Since all the conservatives think we need to move to Texas, because that's where businessy business is, and that's what would be our situation? Let's just see. That How much If we move to Texas with our three kids and we're both working, how much do we need to make?

0:52:37 Lydia: Right. Yeah. Working three kids we need to make, making $28.09 an hour each seven dollars and 25 cents, yeah

0:52:57 Thomas: Okay, what is the minimum wage, though, in Texas? Hmm, interesting. Interesting. Guess what I'm trying to say is, sure, on paper, we have to make less living in Texas. But also, $7.25. So, I guess if you have like, oh, I'm taking a high-paying job in Texas, all right, go have fun. That's awesome. But if you're thinking, okay, I're moving out into the world, where should I go? The conservatives want to say California is taxes. It's just insane. You can't even, it's a hell hole out there. Well, this living wage calculator takes taxes into account.

0:53:32 Thomas: And so all that combined, let's see what the difference is. Sure, maybe we pay a little bit more in taxes, but if I moved to California, let'S say if hypothetically I was looking at where I should settle down or whatever, I settle in California. Yeah, it'S expensive, but I'M guaranteed $15.50 in minimum wage. If I go to Texas, oh, we can live on a little bit less. It's not that much less, but what are we guaranteed? Seven fucking dollars an hour or whatever it is.

0:53:32 Lydia: Right Right. Yep.

0:53:59 Thomas: So that increase in taxes that we might have in California is more than offset by the fact that we're guaranteed a closer to a livable wage. It's almost like policies like this are good for people.

0:54:08 Lydia: Right. Yep. I understand the debate for minimum wage. You know, you had mentioned that there are kind of differing schools of thought if it's a good thing or a bad thing, ultimately. But in terms of like the public support, it's overwhelmingly positive. Everyone thinks as you know like a person on the street is going to think that we should increase minimum wage. There's a poll a survey that was done from Data for Progress back in May of 2023. They surveyed over 1,200 likely voters and they said, you know, are you Sorry. Are you supportive of a 12 dollar minimum wage, a 17 dollar minimum age, a 20 dollar minimum And then they looked at, know, you Democrats versus independents versus Republicans. And 95% of Democrats support a $12 minimum wage.

0:54:56 Lydia: 77% of independents support it. 82% of Republicans support it at the $17 level. 94% of democrats support it, so still like roughly the same support. 74% of independence drops down a tiny bit. 60% of republicans still very popular.

0:55:12 Thomas: I mean, it's still such an inadequate wage.

0:55:14 Lydia: It is. What But was interesting about the survey is before they asked that question, they said, what do you think a person would need to make per hour to have a decent quality of life? And Democrats said twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents.

0:55:26 Thomas: Yeah, that's closer reality.

0:55:27 Lydia: And independents and Republicans said twenty-five dollars and 50 cents. So they recognize to have a decent quality of life, it's going to cost that, and that we're starkly underpaying people.

0:55:31 Thomas: Yeah. Here's the problem. A lot of those ghouls are like, yeah, it's okay if a certain class of people have a shitty life. That's what they believe. And that sucks.

0:55:43 Lydia: Yeah, that's true. I guess they didn't do that follow-up

0:55:46 Thomas: Like we need, yeah. We that's something, a longer battle to try to win that war of ideas. Is. But I guess what I would say is this. One of the other things I see with the criticism of minimum wage is, oh, it's an inefficient way to help the people you want to help. And this might be, I'll take this good faith. Oh, what you need to do is either a UBI or you need to do an expanded tax credit, etc., etc. But what frustrates me about that is federal government is broken. It's just broken.

0:55:46 Lydia: Question. Yeah.

0:56:11 Lydia: Yeah.

0:56:12 Thomas: And so if your solution is, is, oh, what needs to happen is a thing that's impossible. Then it's like, all right, well, that's nothing. So I guess we'll go with what we can do, which is on a state by state level, try to this increase wage. Now, don't I know what system makes the most sense. I mean, you look at the federal minimum wage and it's a joke, but like most states, I think have a better one. And okay, well it's most, but yeah, it's not in near all of them. Yeah.

0:56:30 Lydia: I it's 30 states. Yeah, not nearly enough, yeah.

0:56:35 Thomas: I don't know if it makes sense. Like, I guess what you would do is either you find the cheapest state and you set at your federal bar at that level because you can't make them go above that. You know what I mean? Like, I guess that's one way to do it.

0:56:47 Lydia: In terms of cost of living? Mm hmm.

0:56:48 Thomas: Yeah, so I would say find the lowest living wage, not the poverty bullshit thing, but living wage and say, that's our floor. I don't know what that would be. It's not going to be that much. Or. I you would Say what might make more sense is rather than a federal minimum wage, if we have this big of discrepancies of what it costs to live places, pass can't pass a bill that, that just indexes it to something local, You know, like find a way to index it to something local so that anyone who works a full-time job makes a living wage at a minimum. And that's just what it should fucking be, man. I just want people to have healthcare as the, as the famous YouTube interview was, you know, like that, that's what it should fucking be, yeah. Hmm.

0:56:52 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah."

0:57:47 Lydia: Over 32 million workers would have been affected by that, making double what they were making, I guess in some of their cases, not necessarily all of them. And on average, the annual wage increase would be about $3,000 per person, which seems very small. But for people who are making $7.25 an hour, that could really, really help cover some of those expenses. It's not enough, as we talked about with living wage, but it's a step in the right direction.

31% of all Black workers would have been affected by it. 26% of All-Hispanic workers would have been effected by that change. And I have, through the Economic Policy Institute, they looked at this by congressional district. So you can see the split. In some districts nationwide, it would have been upwards of 50% of Black workers could have benefited from something like that. And then there were two instances I saw of congressional districts that had over 60% of Hispanic workers that could have benefited. From that change, and it didn't go through, which is really unfortunate. In a previous article through EPI, the Economic Policy Institute, comparing, and I know this is conversation that's happening in a lot of places, looking at productivity increases compared to wage increases.

0:58:31 Thomas: Oh. Yeah.

0:58:55 Lydia: And from 1948 to 1973, hourly compensation largely matched the productivity gains. So, you productivity went up 96.7 percent during that time period. Wages went up 91.3 percent. So kind of trotting along the same slope from 1973 to 2013, productivity went up 74.4 percent and hourly compensation went up 9.2 percent.

0:58:55 Thomas: God. Yikes. Sure. Wow.

0:59:23 Thomas: Yeah, so we're we're providing more value for the fucking overlords and they're like, no, we're paying you not that much.

0:59:30 Lydia: Less.

0:59:30 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it's Yeah, it's gone up marginally. Yeah, it? I mean, it isn't hard. I remember being a conservative and getting twisted up in these economic arguments, but fucking there is plenty of goddamn money out there. There just is. There is plenty money that make this be the baseline. People will adjust to it. Certain things might go up in cost, but honestly, I think that only goes to, I mean most of that will be borne by the employer. Some of it might be borned by us, but hey, you know, we will have more money. Even if you not wage a minimum wage worker. If your employer is paying you like slightly more than minimum wage or something, but they know you could just go get

0:59:31 Lydia: Less in some cases, yeah. Yeah.

1:00:07 Thomas: A job anywhere for 20 bucks an hour.

1:00:10 Lydia: It's gonna put some pressure on

1:00:10 Thomas: Yeah, it's It will. The rising tide will lift a lot of the boats, I think, in terms of these wages. And if costs go up, they might go up. But we'll be making more and just by the way, if we keep indexing that minimum wage to the cost of living, well, then definitionally it will have to cover that. And the rest of the goddamn market can do something useful for a change. And how about you hand that into working? It'll find a way. Anyway. All right. So the good news is, though, this is happening, right? This is a done deal that it's happening in California.

1:00:10 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah yeah done deal And, and the fast food industry had, they have promised that they're not gonna be putting it on the ballot. That was part of this disagreement. So, yeah, done deal. One quick fun fact, just because we talked a lot about Glenn Beck, I had to look at, he does suck, but I was looking at, you know, Blaze Media, his company, and I was just, you now, curious. I was look at ProPublica, as we do on Where There's Book, you kno, like, looking at those PPP loans, and, I didn't really see anything, like interesting there. But I happened verify, to you know, the company's registered in Arizona. And when I saw the registered agent, it was someone by the name of Bryan Blehm. And he was the counsel for cyber ninjas.

1:00:53 Thomas: Yeah, please. Fun fact, He sucks. Sucks, uh, Oh, God. Of course, yeah. Oh,

1:01:25 Lydia: And months after he, you appeared for cyber Ninjas and, you know, served as their attorney, he He was hired by the state Senate in Arizona to do the independent, in quotes, recount of his former client's work. And he was also the attorney for Carrie Lake when she lost her election to Katie Hobbs and the challenge.

1:01:45 Thomas: God. So, Does this just mean he registered his business, or also is involved in it? Well, you can't really tell. He might just be the right, yeah, it might be like, hey, yeah, well, anyway, it means a relationship of some kind, at least a legal relationship.

1:01:47 Lydia: I can't really tell. But yeah, but he but he's the registered agent for for Blaze Media. Yep. Yep.

1:01:56 Thomas: So it's all a tiny, yeah, small, network of fascists, assholes trying to make us fight for their right, right, to make more money. That's really all it is.

1:01:57 Lydia: Just kind of funny. All tiny little bubble. Yep, yep. Yeah. Yeah.

1:02:08 Thomas: All right. Well, excellent breakdown. I'm glad this is happening, and I'm glad I can, you know, that crunch wrap is going to be even that much more delicious when I know people making it and making a little bit better of a wage. I can't wait. I would tell you fucking, yeah, I'm going to, I want to, yeah. April. I mean, I wonder if they'll raise the wages before that, but April 1st, I'll like, what up dude? You're making more money now. Right. And he'll be like, fuck yes. And I'll be like, I don't have two crunch my traps yeah on my credit card yeah that doesn't try yeah give him two credit cards you can keep one of them

1:02:16 Lydia: Oh, yeah. You should say congrats to your guy.

1:02:32 Lydia: Keep the change. There you go.

1:02:57 Lydia: Mr. Bill.

1:02:58 Thomas: Don't ruin this fantasy for me. There's somebody somewhere named Mr. T. Bell who who I want to marry someday. We'll see. Drop my current non-crunch wrap making partner but well that's topic for another time

1:03:05 Lydia: Yep. Yep.