[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

Yeah AOC would be an epic disaster, Tim Ryan of Ohio might be a possibility, sharp, likeable and he even has a little Trumpism in him regarding China for the on the fence voters.

Nominating someone who "has a little Trumpism in him" is NOT going to fly with the people who got Biden in office. We really need to stop courting the fictitious 'on the fence' voters and play to an actual base. The base being the minority, female, educated, etc people who beat Trump the last time. No the Dems cannot run an AOC and I get that, but we absolutely do not need a conservative Democrat either. I live 50 miles from the Ohio border and I have no damn clue who Tim Ryan is, I can't see too many left-leaning Dems getting on board with him, and make no mistake, those are the people we need to bring into the fold. Those are the voters you need to mobilize. Those are the voters that saved Democrats in 2020.

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I agree with everything he says, except for more than doubling the minimum wage. It's just too broad of a brush and would just see prices rise in proportion to the extra money in the economy. Keeping in mind that people doing work more valuable than minimum wage will want raises to reflect their labour when they are suddenly closer to the minimum. When they raised it in Ontario, it destroyed many small businesses. Large businesses seemed to fill the niche, but getting closer to peak capitalism by putting more economic power in fewer shouldn't be a goal.

I would propose instead of raising minimum wage, a better option would be to have more cost control and assistance for essentials like rent, food, energy, and education to make the current minimum wage more than adequate to meet needs.

You need to do both. Minimum wage is still $7.25. Gas in my county is currently running around $5.09/gal. Wages need to go up. Wages needed to go up 10 years ago, but we didn't do that, so now we need wages to be lifteddramatically.

Make the minimum wage $15 (at least) and tie it to inflation going forward. Create tax breaks and other assistance for small businesses to cover this increased cost. And then you can also work on controlling the costs of rent/food/energy/education, but you absolutely need to dramatically raise the minimum wage.

It is genuinely getting to a point where the average lower-middle class worker is having a hard time surviving.