I have never in my entire life seen a poor person who had an expensive new phone. Nor an expensive new car.
many (poor people who should be risk-averse) who are barely surviving buy expensive HDHPs (which were designed for rich, healthy people only) (because otherwise the insurance costs more than they make in wages) and find that they are designed to strip them
the poor of their coverage immediately when they get a serious illness (thats what the health insurance companies are experts at) So they pay faithfully for years until they get some diagnosis and then zap, the bills just push them out. Thats the way they are designed, their intent.
I do support a higher minimum wage because otherwise, peoples time gets all used up and they don't make any money. If they make a wage thats more substantial, sure, they don't have to work as many hours to make the same amount. Then its possible that they might be able to do something in that other time to get out of the rut, learn some new skill or get a better paying job.
Also, keep in mind that because of how austerity and also trade deals work, that minimum wage may become a great many peoples wage at some point. Including many engineers. (although getting their employers to actually pay it may be impossible as the wages might be paid overseas into overseas workers accounts, as was the case with the proposed $6.47/hr wage for the Malaysian engineer in the "Matter of i-corp" case.)
Here is the problem, young people's from around the world's parents now seem to be on the verge of paying so they can work. Sort of like internships in other fields, desperate people will have to work for almost nothing (well, actually, its possible US minimum wage, or maybe not, as it will be very hard to enforce in practice, because the money stays outside the country, and its disputed whether we even have the right to tell foreign staffing firms what to pay their workforce, who are likely talented young people just like our own. Desperate for some work experience. They are kept in a state of disempowerment - working for very little - for as much as several years - or maybe forever if the situation keeps getting worse. And it may, thanks to the technology we're creating.
... Paying for the experience.
The horrid experience..
The point I am getting at is that technology is changing the world in entirely new ways and we have to be aware that there are important debates we need to be having which are being suppressed.
This is being done to against all odds, (one would think that democracy would be seen as our way out, the democracy we have not had in a long time) But instead we're being so deluged with noise to put us and keep us in an ever deeper rut. Common sense is all we need, that and truth. We are all in this together.
Now how many of those people have new phones and cars? Health insurance with high premiums and deductibles? There are other things you can't measure reliably too, steps taken to improve the situation, earnest efforts to keep some money around. Actual skills vs what is required near them. There is never a single reason which is why the individuals are generally considered to be at fault. I read an article today on cnn where Seattle raised the min wage to 15 but people actually only make 1-2% more due to cut hours. This is in a busy urban area. Nothing said about cost of living changes though.
Cost of living is not considered in setting wages under neoliberal ideology, its all based on the market, and supply and demand. Thats what we're headed for. So any explosion in labor saving technology (basically AI is functionally identical to workers who will work for almost nothing, just electrons) may be accompanied by huge falls in wages. This could happen even without the outsourcing and offshoring they will claim they "need" to do to 'restore profitability'. See where our greed takes us, if we tune out and fail to see how democracy is in danger globally in a way that hurts everybody?