https://ballotpedia.org/Michigan_$15_Minimum_Wage_Initiative_(2024)
$11.00 per hour by January 1, 2023
$12.00 per hour by January 1, 2024
$13.00 per hour by January 1, 2025
$14.00 per hour by January 1, 2026
$15.00 per hour by January 1, 2027
Living wage Wayne County (Detroit) 2 Adults, working, 2 kids $24.98/hr.
These idiots are freaking out over increasing tipped emoloyees to half the living wage. 
Article
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — As state lawmakers are wrapping up work this year, every Republican member of the House of Representatives walked out during Friday’s session.
Republicans say Democrats are refusing to negotiate and talk about wages for tipped workers.
If nothing is done, the minimum wage for tipped workers will increase to $12 an hour on Feb. 21. Those against the increase are concerned that raising the minimum wage will mean less tips, fewer jobs and lower overall wages, while supporters say the change will reduce poverty.
State Rep. Bryan Posthumus, R-Cannon Township, said Democrats had no intention of having a conversation.
“We told (House) Speaker (Joe) Tate that if they want to have the conversation with regard to road funding, saving tipped workers jobs, then we are happy to have that conversation,” Posthumus said. “We’re right here, we’re ready to go.”
Meanwhile, Tate, D-Detroit, said on X: “House Democrats are here at the people’s house ready to do the people’s work. House Republicans? Well, they left the floor because they put politics over people.”
On a national level, if you take the GDP and divide it by hours worked (workforce times average labor hours per worker), you get about $72. 72 dollars per hour worked.
Anyone who says it's okay for a worker to receive less than half of this, let alone less than one sixth of it, should have a LOT of explaining to do.
If they think that the workers aren't so important, then why can't the economy be run without them?
Even if you cut off the imperial superprofits, I bet a huge number of Americans would see their quality of life increase from evenly distributing the wealth.
Maybe at some point I'll tackle that issue. There are mechanisms that obfuscate it, but it should still be quite feasible. Under the liberal assumptions of free movement of capital and ideas, we should be able to make the corollary that what's done in one place can be done anywhere, and that there's nothing inherently better about sawmilling a pine tree or sewing a garment in Canada rather than doing the exact same thing in Honduras, or vice versa.
In other words, world GDP per capita matters, and can be used as a metric for something, which quantifies a mixture of two things. One is an industry underperforming materially compared to its peers (which flies in the face of orthodox economics, which assumes that for an underperforming national sector, a firm/FDI can make large profits by coming in and improving it); the other is economic imperialism, by way of uneven exchange, transfer mispricing, asymmetry of extractive and value-added industries, and limits on migration.
This stat hits really hard, though I don't know if the average American would actually understand it.
If you want to get mad, I've got more fun math right up my sleeve that lines right up with these numbers.
40% of the cost of everything is made up of wages. 60% is something else.
gdp is fake
Death to America
I mean, yeah, to the extent that all money is fake and CEOs' wealth in stock portfolios is fake.
Read my other comment about imperial superprofits where I suggest ways to demystify the variation of it.