State minimum wage will rise to $9.19 per hour
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Washington state's minimum wage is increasing 15 cents to $9.19 per hour.
The Department of Labor & Industries said Friday the new rules will go into effect in January. Washington is already the state with the highest minimum wage in the country.
Washington voters approved a process to calculate the minimum wage in 1998, and the new increase reflects a rise in the Consumer Price Index. That has been driven upward recently due to gasoline prices.
Oregon has the next highest minimum wage, and its 2013 floor will be $8.95 per hour.
The Department of Labor & Industries said Friday the new rules will go into effect in January. Washington is already the state with the highest minimum wage in the country.
Washington voters approved a process to calculate the minimum wage in 1998, and the new increase reflects a rise in the Consumer Price Index. That has been driven upward recently due to gasoline prices.
Oregon has the next highest minimum wage, and its 2013 floor will be $8.95 per hour.
All it really means is the value of the dollar has slipped...AGAIN!
In reply to us missing each others' point about what we were getting at with gold, I certainly agree that when gold was backing our dollar on that last day, it was far healthier for our dollar. Still, the value of the gold was already being diminished at an ever increasing rate by backing it against raw dollar values in ever expanding numbers of created debt fixtures, compounded with interest exponentially in sums just not covered by our existing gold reserve, nor all of our precious bullion, coin, or strategic metals. Had the gold increased in price, it would have been no more useful at that time, so would have been less valuable in reality just as it is now. But gold isn't backing our dollar now. It is backing banking and housing. Both artificial constructs in the financial debt scenario, which makes what the Fed is doing no different than the failed attempt to get us successfully off of gold in the first place except in it's criminality of paying one person to hold their gold, but not someone with gold like you or me.
 @Glassman Now if you get this basic concept, then what were you arguing with me about?
Doing some math the minimum wage would bring home around $300 after taxes for 40hrs work. with a typical apartment running at or over$1000 a month complete with methheads as neighbors next door leaves little left for food and utilities let alone any money for anything else.
 @Charl317 It's called 3 roommates.
 @Charl317 Seems like quite the incentive to work hard, not sit at minimum wage.
Highest min wage in the country and no tip credit anymore for restaurant tipped employees (unlike other states where they allow operators to pay less than min. wage on tipped wages), so servers in WA state make the highest min wage + tips. Now you know why our dining out menu prices are so  high and keep going up every year. Go to other states that have tip credits and servers make far less due to their tipped income and menu prices are more reasonable.
 @mkbkak1010 "Now you know why our dining out menu prices are so  high and keep going up every year."
So...you don't believe in paying quality people a quality price for quality service?
Typical Romney mentality...
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I have to wonder if you accept the same treatment from YOUR boss...but then we are talking about quality, so never mind. You guys don't have a clue when the issue is quality.
 @OrcasThunder Ha ha! You guys all must work in the restaurant biz! Seriously though, I'm not slamming the min wage rate, I'm critizing the no tip credit on tipped employees. Employers have to pay taxes on tips they can't receive or even control and we then we double hit them with an artifical high pay rate on their tipped employees (min wage + taxed tips). It voilates the intention of min wage. Bear in mind, that the non tipped employees in most fine dining restaurants all make more than min. wage. Review your Econ 101.
 @mkbkak1010 I paid 92 bucks including tip at my favorite local full service restaurant, for 6 people, 3 of which were adults. While I noticed that their prices had gone up overall on the menu, the food is still excellent, their menu had expanded, and our service went beyond excellent in that they had to put up with the indecisions of teenagers as well as that of my wife who has real trouble with lots of choices. A cost of 15 bucks a plate is still a damn fine deal in that restaurant.
 @FreeCoffeeNow! Fine if you like Applebees - I went out last night to my local fav, for 2 adults, we each had a beer, a salad and an basic entree (nothing fancy). We paid $80 including a 15% tip. Other states are doing better with more choices and better prices.
 @Glassman  @mkbkak1010  @FreeCoffeeNow! Wrong. A fair tip is 15%. Adjust accordingly for fair/poor service.
 @mkbkak1010  @FreeCoffeeNow! Cheap Ba$tard! A fair tip is to double the sales tax...around 18-19%.
 @mkbkak1010  @FreeCoffeeNow! "I went out last night to my local fav, for 2 adults, we each had a beer, a salad and an basic entree (nothing fancy). We paid $80 including a 15% tip."
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Well, what is it you folks always tell union workers who are asking for more pay and working conditions? Oh, yeah - "if you aren't happy there, go somewhere else!"...
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The place probably pays low wages, has limited benefits, crappy working conditions, and treat the workers like garbage...your typical miserly small business that thinks the only thing they owe anyone is a plate with slop on it.
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Again, if you don't like the food or service, the only person you have to blame for going back is yourself.
But then, you like playing the victim, don't you?
 @mkbkak1010  @FreeCoffeeNow! Maybe you should move to another State. Texas could be a good choice.
 @mkbkak1010 Actually, my fav locally is not a franchise and cooks up meals like my wife does, who has years in cooking experience, including Executive Chef. I don't like Applebees. I get it that some are way out of their reasonable expectation of price for their product, but here at ground level, I don't mind those particular people I mentioned getting paid a bit more. I know from experience that my favorite won't be raising their prices much and that I'll get a good dining experience as usual.
So don't go out for dinner, problem solved. The problem is all non government wages are not keeping up with inflation, they haven't since the early 70's. Corporate profits go up, employee income goes down. @mkbkak1010
 @Blindman  @mkbkak1010 Let's just disregard these people who don't understand what a REAL work ethic is...doing quality work for a quality wage...they look at Chinese imports and think that's the best it gets.
 @Blindman Restaurant business employs a lot of people, an easy way to not raise taxes and bring in more revenue for our state is to get the restaurant business growing so bring back the tip credit - not having it is counter productive to an increasing min wage for these types of employees. WA is rated the worst state in the Union to run a restaurant profitably.
The minimum wage is a cruel law. How are you supposed to get job skills and enter the market if the minimum wage blocks your entry into the job market?
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It's no wonder unemployment is so high among young people.Â
 @mike "How are you supposed to get job skills and enter the market"
Well, you might try working on the attributes that can be developed without a job. Honest work, an eye for quality, productive personal habits.Take on an internship. Volunteer at a charity like a food bank. Just walk over and help your neighbor weed the garden.
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 @OrcasThunder  @mike How do you pay rent and buy food while you are doing this altruistic volunteer work?
 @Glassman  @mike About the same way a single mom supports 2 growing kids on minimum wage.
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Or...there is always the standard right wing response - move in with your parents...
And if anyone wants to hear my assertion of the rich being paid in real funds for leaving money in gold through the Fed; it's real nuts and bolts simple. I've received no such real wealth for holding my gold, nor has any other American small multigenerational holder. At just 300 million Americans with one ounce each, that's $1768.00 per ounce times 300,000,000. You got a half ounce wedding ring at 14kt on your finger? 1-4th ounce of gold. But while the rich are being paid, we are not; and we won't be in on the crash of gold either, which will make our gold that we are holding worthless comparatively to what they are and will receive at our full expense. We cannot sell at anywhere near the going price. We are required to accept less money at every level in a market that is paying one group while oppressing ALL others.
 @FreeCoffeeNow! Huh??
 @Glassman Do you have a question, or can't you hear what you read in your head? Obviously, your huh?, must be answered with my huh? See how that works? If all you have is baseless insult to offer, such as your ASSumption that when I included pretty much all of the tip I paid the other night in with the near total cost of our excellent meal per plate then maybe you could give being an idiot a break for a day or two and actually offer real points of contention. How'd that be?
@FreeCoffeeNow! I'm pretty sure that 'college training' you mentioned in another post probably consisted of smoking pot in a hippie drum circle.
 @70MonteCarlo "probably consisted of smoking pot in a hippie drum circle."
Project a lot?
 @70MonteCarlo Break out yer issue with one of my assertions then. No one else is afraid to till it's too late for their BS. C'mon, smart car, got a real thing to say, or just baseless insult? You learn that in what goes for college these days where we teach second year college students how to use a graphics calculator? Where we graduate people who still can't read a Wall Street Journal to save their own finances? Where more time is spent on ipods and iphones and facebook than on any academics? C'mon, tell me something you really know that I can agree with once, smart car. Present something or shut up, because I at least have both arguments and solutions all over this site and many others.
Who could live on $9.19 per hour? We should raise it immediately to $30 per hour. That should solve our economic inequity problems!
 @70MonteCarlo Then the cost of living would skyrocket right behind it.
 @70MonteCarloÂ
Liberals actually believe this kind of nonsense.
 @Fast Eddy  @70MonteCarlo And yet, look at who is suggesting it...
When I started work min wage was $1.60 an hour.  I remember my boss trying to keep me on when I found a better job at $1.90 hour by saying he could bump me to $1.65.  I think cigarettes were .50 a pack back then.  I remember when they went to .55 a pack and people freaked right out about that.  Jesus I'm getting old...go have another Rainier beer.
 @teahater "Jesus I'm getting old..."
My first job was $0.75 an hour. I made $80 a month in the Army, and when I got a job at Boeing for $8 an hour I though I was the rose garden.
When I was growing up I always figured that making more than the $500 a month my dad made was the ultimate target.
Today, asking a single parent to support a family with 2 or 3 kids on $1,600 a month is insane, actually bordering on cruel and heinous mistreatment. And before the "You shouldn't have had the kids until you could afford them!" jackwad pipes up out of the swamp water, let me get a word in first - STFU!
I'm not really a fan of this, but look at the numbers. In Washington State, in the last 19 years, from 1994 to 2013, the minimum wage has increased from $4.90 to $9.19, a 87% increase. In the previous 19 years, from 1975 to 1994, minimum wage went from $2.00 to $4.90, a 145% increase. Just saying.Â
 @EWU fan On the surface, in the immediate context to workers, it is a good thing. But we are currently printing money to cover it, which is ALL introduced as a public debt first, asset second. The REAL WEALTH of the money will be given to the rich, and that fact is quite unassailable and easily proven as we are currently giving them vast sums of real wealth not to close in for the kill on Americans who provided means for them to get to a position of great wealth through corporate welfare and everything else that they get paid again to be willing to receive.
 @FreeCoffeeNow!  @EWU fanÂ
Cost Of Living 1965
How Much things cost in 1965
Yearly Inflation Rate USA 1.59%
Year End Close Dow Jones Industrial Average 969Â
Average Cost of new house $13,600.00Â
Average Income per year $6,450.00Â
Gas per Gallon 31 centsÂ
Average Cost of a new car $2,650.00
 Loaf of bread 21 centsÂ
Average Rent per month $118,00Â
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Put it in context. Gold was $35/ounce. it is now $1765.70
 @FreeCoffeeNow!  @EWU fan You miss my point (or I, yours). My point was that in 1965 our buying power was based on a gold-backed dollar that had a given amount of buying power. Then along came the FED with their built-in inflation and the value of the dollar has steadily decreased to where it is a laughing stock in the world market.
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As for me hording gold, all I have is the crowns in my teeth. Glad I'm worth SOMETHING.
 @Glassman  @EWU fan No, Glassman, your gold IS NOT worth $1768.00 as of yesterday, nor is it worth $1765.70 today. You will NOT be paid for the gold you are bolstering the Fed and the housing market with, but others are and will be paid YOUR money for the gold we all tend to keep. And that's one helluva lot of gold, far more than one ounce per head overall. YOU receive debt, the rich receive real wealth. Post a buttload more details and numbers, but the facts will not change except in the numbers and levels that YOU do not receive yours, but the few at the top do, illegally. Where YOU receive debt for what you are supposedly owning outright.
 @FreeCoffeeNow!  @EWU fan So...perhaps a wage/price freeze might be in order? I might actually expect something like that from a Romney administration...
 @OrcasThunder  @EWU fan Not at all, OT. My assertion is that local minimum wage increases should be handled by the PEOPLE in that locale. As this is, all real wealth from the increase still goes to the richest, while we pay debt to cover it; while already printing debt for our people as fast as the mints can drown us in it. At every level the people use that money, it is represented in increased debt far more than real wealth. At every level that the people use that money, more real wealth is transferred to the rich which is exchanged for even more debt.
All this does is put the onus of runaway inflation firmly on the wallets of the working class, while allowing both corporate America and our federal and state governments to wash their hands of the world tragedy they caused.
Also. This raise to the minimum wage doesn't even cover the monthly illegal hikes in the price of gas, the price hikes in education, the still inflated cost of a house, or anything else that's real in our world. It won't cover the current scenario of their rent increases. It will be their enemy in the public health care environment, and private care will still be unattainable. It will further decrease the amount of privately held funds held by the masses. It allows increase of illegal payments to the rich for keeping their money in gold.  I can go on and on with this newest seemingly good scenario, but the fact is that small business owners and the public at large are far more suited to the task of employee wage management, but no one wants to take real initiative in those quarters. We need no government approval or involvement to see a living wage applied more evenly across our work product. We need no big business approval or involvement either, nor union participation. We need none of them to demand better price for our goods and services either. If tarrifs are the problem, international trade wise, we can make demands in that quarter both locally and in those other nations without government participation as well, because they are directly harming our economic climate as well as our standard of living.
 @FreeCoffeeNow! What runaway inflation? I keep hearing about this on Fox News (although not as much anymore) but it has yet to happen.Â
@caphillkid @FreeCoffeeNow! Bought gasoline or food lately?
 @70MonteCarlo  @Mej47 And the actual tax rates that the 1% pays is much lower that advertised by the right wing.
@Mej47 Precisely. Real inflation and unemployment are much higher than adverstised.
@70MonteCarlo  The feds and the state don't count energy prices or food prices towards the inflation index and with the rise in gas and grocery prices eating up most peoples disposable income there's nothing left to spend on the things that might affect the index.
It's pretty slick if you're trying to convince people that things aren't really as bad as they think they are. Especially if you want them to vote for the same folks who've help cause the problem.
 @caphillkid I don't watch tv. That's pablum, just like most news. We are artificially allaying runaway inflation with increased debt, while paying the ultra rich in real funds not to raise prices in the market environment they created to do that very thing. Our loans from banks like BoA are not represented in real money at all now, they are backed by debt the public at large pays in more real funds. The debt is sold to international banks of all sorts. And we pay again in real funds for them to do it, and our government as well to give away this real wealth. Real property debt is not even being recognized at large owner level anymore, with real debt being allayed by public real funds, not those of the private equity firm or large private single buyer. My assertions come from college training in both micro and macroeconomics, where the conduct of the last twenty years or so flies in the face of all known economic wisdom other than that of the criminal.
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 @FreeCoffeeNow! So you just realized that our currency and many other world currencies aren't really worth anything, and it's all about perception?
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I know, we should start paying people with chickens and goats again.Â