I think paying a McDonald's burger flipper the same as a starting EMT is bullshit. I have read some businesses in Seattle closed up and that thousands of jobs are gone, mostly in the waitperson field. I am all for having a minimum wage but come the fuck on, you aren't supposed to raise a family or work you entire life as a fry guy or gal. What this will do long term is raise everything up. Cost of living will go up etc, and then the min. wage will no longer be livable again.

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)

By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living. (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)

Fast food workers in NY just won a $15/hr wage.
I'm a paramedic. My job requires a broad set of skills: interpersonal, medical, and technical skills, as well as the crucial skill of performing under pressure. I often make decisions on my own, in seconds, under chaotic circumstances, that impact people's health and lives. I make $15/hr.

And these burger flippers think they deserve as much as me?

Good for them.

Look, if any job is going to take up someone's life, it deserves a living wage. If a job exists and you have to hire someone to do it, they deserve a living wage. End of story. There's a lot of talk going around my workplace along the lines of, "These guys with no education and no skills think they deserve as much as us? Fuck those guys." And elsewhere on FB: "I'm a licensed electrician, I make $13/hr, fuck these burger flippers."

And that's exactly what the bosses want! They want us fighting over who has the bigger pile of crumbs so we don't realize they made off with almost the whole damn cake. Why are you angry about fast food workers making two bucks more an hour when your CEO makes four hundred TIMES what you do? It's in the bosses' interests to keep your anger directed downward, at the poor people who are just trying to get by, like you, rather than at the rich assholes who consume almost everything we produce and give next to nothing for it.

My company, as they're so fond of telling us in boosterist emails, cleared 1.3 billion dollars last year. They expect guys supporting families on 26-27k/year to applaud that. And that's to say nothing of the techs and janitors and cashiers and bed pushers who make even less than us, but are as absolutely crucial to making a hospital work as the fucking CEO or the neurosurgeons. Can they pay us more? Absolutely. But why would they? No one's making them.

The workers in NY made them. They fought for and won a living wage. So how incredibly petty and counterproductive is it to fuss that their pile of crumbs is bigger than ours? Put that energy elsewhere. Organize. Fight. Win.

Oh please. No I am not comparing this to the great depression. I am talking about uneven distribution of wealth and the consequences. You do know that was a major factor in what caused the great depression, right?