• $10.24 San Francisco’s new minimum wage source

• » Happy New Year, indeed. Starting Jan. 1, San Francisco’s minimum hourly wage will jump above the $10 mark for the first time. That’s about $3 higher than the federal minimum wage and higher than anywhere else in the country, due to the fact that the progressive city ties its minimum wage to inflation and the quite-high cost of living in the area. But with wage hikes, various fees and the sagging economy, employers might have to start laying off workers again to keep up.

• YES though the California state controller is fighting it source

• Nearly all of them are gonna be making minimum wage until a budget’s set. The governor is basing the move on a 2003 state Supreme Court decision, White v. Davis, which says that employees without a budget that sets aside an allocation for salaries will get minimum wage until said budget is set, at which point they’ll get the back salary covered. At $7.25 an hour – in California – this seems a tad cruel. Look, we know that California politics are tough, but there’s no reason to use state employees as pawns in a political game. source

• We like the meme machines that Ben Huh’s “I Can Has Cheezburger” network provides. They’re goofy, they’re funny at times, and they often drive some pretty interesting trends online. What we don’t like, however, are his wages. What’s essentially a job in a profitable niche media industry is treated as if it’s a struggling startup. Gawker has been all over this the last few days, after Huh himself backed his company into a corner thanks to a frank admission.

What “Cheezburger” makes in revenue

• $4 million in yearly revenue off
  of user-submitted content source

The “Cheezburger” employee picture

• 30 employees work for Ben Huh’s
  cat-loving empire source

• $8.55 the starting rate (40 hr./week, no benefits) at one of Huh’s sites for an office admin or a junior designer – that’s minimum wage in Washington
• $17,784 the amount that brings home for potential employees each year, before taxes of any sort – that’s just $7,000 above the poverty line source

• » A notable wrinkle: These jobs are contract jobs without benefits starting out. Contract jobs that don’t take out taxes, just an FYI, are the ones that Joe Stack railed against when he crashed that plane into the IRS building. And while Huh claims that people move up in the company, the fact of the matter is that this is a near-poverty level job starting out.

How that compares

• $30k starting rate for an entry-level office administrator source
• $29k starting rate for a Web-based graphic designer source
• $20k starting rate for a “blogger” – so Huh is even low for that source

Can you live off that? No

• $17,784the entry-level pay (before taxes) at Cheezburger Network, with the possibility of wage increases
• $18,337the living wage (after taxes) in the Seattle area, where the network is located source

The justification for low wages

• We advertise lower wages for entry-level positions because the worst candidates focus on money the most. Believe it or not, advertising lower-than-market wages actually helped us yield better candidates.
• Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh • In an article discussing how a recent ad drew candidates who were upset that he was offering so little for what are in reality jobs that require a college education. While passion is one thing, it’s another thing entirely to force low wages on college-educated people. He lists three reasons why he feels employees who ask about compensation aren’t desirable. The first? “The candidate’s inability to control their personal expenses, which inevitably leads to drama and demands at work.” He goes further, noting: “If you have high financial requirements in order to absolutely survive, I don’t really know what to say than go get a job at a bank (you know what I mean).” Know what would help them control personal expenses, Ben? A living wage. Well, maybe they could get one (and health insurance!) if they worked at a Starbucks instead. source

But wait, they’re not alone

• Look, it’s easy to focus on them. But the real problem we’re starting to see with user-generated content is that nobody’s really paying enough, and preying on passion. Lots of companies are guilty of this. Examiner.com is a great example. Journalists have for years been able to make a decent, if not great, wage by working at newspapers and other print publications. Will this go away? Will we even be able to buy cheezburgers? Just a thought.

• Arguments for Much as with any wage increase, the biggest argument for is workers whose wage hasn’t kept up with the economic climate. The thinking, of course, is that if they get higher wages, they can afford a better lifestyle.
• Arguments against Much as with any wage increase, the biggest argument against is the fact that the economy – specifically employers can’t support the wage increase. With high unemployment nationwide, this rings truer now than ever.
• Who the law forgotThe tip slave – whose livelihood is largely based on how much you jerks tip her for your Monte Cristo and fries – still only makes $2.13 an hour before tips. Now, tips can be a nice racket, but that’s a damn shame. source

• 70¢ size of the increase in the national minimum wage – which is actually big enough to be felt
• 29 number of states with minimum wage levels low enough to be affected by the change source

• $7.25 the new ground floor of the minimum wage source