@3967703f And that's untipped. It's bleaker when tipped is $2.13 an hour and you have to make the rest up on tips or have your employer fill in in the rest. They'd probably sack you instead because restaurants are rife with wage fraud 

 @3967703f $25 makes more sense.

What the hell is up with people not rioting over how low this is?

People need to make the rich fucks share. 

 @3967703f

Back in 1965 I was getting paid $4.00 and hour,  so when I got back from Vietnam, four years servitude later they held my job for me,  I got a raise to $4.75 an hour.  Then my boss got me a job with a distributer for $5.00 and hour.  So that is a 50 percent rase today, oh goodie.   

Congress salary was  $30,000 dollars in 1965. Today Congress gets a 174,000 salary not counting bribes and graft.  

So going by my 1965 salary of $5.00 and minimum wage today of $7.25 to be fair (we know this is not how it works) Congress should be paid 50 percent more than $30,000 which would be $45,000. 

 @3967703f

I think most sensible people agree that a worker can support a family of four on an annual income of  $15,000/year, assuming they have a time machine and can jump back to, say, 1965 to do all their shopping and buy a house. 

 @3967703f 
Blimey, I thought things were bad in the UK. We're on £10.42. How can 2 people earning US minimum live? You'd have to sleep in a car and eat out of trash cans...

https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/111/030/047/811/277/306/original/756df3e6f67f893c.jpg 

 @3967703f 

When I was a teenager, gas cost around $0.16 per gallon and sirloin was about the same per pound. The current minimum wage would have been good pay back then.

I was a teenager in the 1960s--the minimum wage is stuck in a time warp.

My in-state tuition at UCLA was $82.50 per quarter when I started in 1966.

(No credit to me: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar--then Lew Alcindor and now well-known for lots more than hoops--was at UCLA the same 4 years.)

The min wage is a NATIONAL SHAME. 

 @3967703f 
I've spoken to restaurant servers in Tennessee and Florida (Right to Work states) that get paid around $2.25/hour by their employers. They're expected to make it up in tips. 

 @3967703f in Maine in the tourist towns they pay high, but there’s no affordable housing.