So let me go through these items:

Point 1: Those who believe womanhood to be merely a state of mind and not a material reality often say that it is bigoted and hateful to disagree. I honestly don't know what to say to that but that it simply isn't true. My own perspective on gender identity as a concept is substantially informed by that of a woman I've known many years now who went through a period of transitioning into first a "tri-gender" identity (as it was called back then), then a male identity, and finally back to identifying as female. Before walking through that with her, I knew really nothing at all about gender identity; not even whether to call a transwoman and transwoman or instead a transman, anything like that. I learned about the concept through her and was supportive through each transition, to which end I used to be much more on board ideologically with the gender identity movement than I am today. Her experience was very negative, as she faced much discrimination not only outside the trans community, but also within it as well. Her explanation as to why she transitioned in the first place has evolved with distance from that time, but the bottom line is that she considers gender identity to be a bullshit concept that was affirmatively harmful to her. I don't have first-hand experience with transitioning to truly know what it's like for myself or know anyone else besides her in an offline capacity who has gone through a gender identity transition before, to which end I have no doubt that there may be something about it that I'm just not understanding. Other than her experience, it's just what people share with me on the internet. To this end, I reserve the right to change my fundamental opinion of transgenderism. But I just cannot agree with the notion that one's physical composition should be considered socially irrelevant. My point though is that it's not out of some place of contempt for gender-nonconforming people from which I'm approaching this issue. I don't know how to better communicate this point.

You make a comparison to the treatment that gay people have experienced. Well I am one of those and I find it pretty easy to differentiate between my attitude toward my sexuality and a group of people yelling at me on Facebook telling me that I should be attracted to transwomen as a lesbian because dicks can be very female too. I've had that bizarre experience as well. Think I've mentioned it before actually. It doesn't characterize the attitude of most trans people (who I often find pleasant company in the capacity that I have it), but there is a social movement in existence that thinks like this, in these sorts of ways, and that's the thing I really object to here.

Point 2: I don't view everything conservatives do, think, and say as coming from a place of bad faith. I know too many of them to believe that. The "weak" $15/hour proposal that Senator Hawley is advocating, for example, is more principled than the offerings of some Democratic senators on the same issue and Hawley's proposed approach is also now being championed by Bernie Sanders for inclusion in the Rescue Plan. Is Senator Sanders being "weak" and just trolling the libs as well? This is not the first issue on which the two of them have landed in a similar place either. I would be among the millions and millions of workers affected by it because the company I work for has a revenue stream exceeding $62 billion. And they pay me $9.40 an hour.

Point 3: As I sought to explain in my last reply to you, I highlight Hawley's IMO superior proposals in certain areas to clarify my level of disappointment with many Democratic office-holders (including the Biden Administration itself) at this moment.

For someone who was yelling about how you would accept no compromise just a couple days ago, you sure signed up for the compromise fast...

...I'm baffled. Much in contrast to your seemingly ever-changing stance on this issue, my position in favor of a $15/hour standard has been absolutely 100% consistent across this entire thread. That has not changed. I am in favor of whatever means might arrive us at that end; whatever might lift my pay rate to that level and not less. That's because, while your livelihood may not depend on it, I like to eat.

What baffles me even more is the absence of other supporters of a $15/hour minimum standard here on a thread that's clearly dominated by Democrats and their supporters in other countries these days. Rab and myself seem to be the only proponents of this position here. I don't know how someone like yourself gets off preaching against my ostensible inconsistency and lack of principles.

It seems to me like most of the contributors to this thread anymore will just support any position that enjoys the support of the Biden Administration regardless of what it is. If Biden signals that he's cool with the total elimination of any minimum wage increase at all in this bill, *snaps* most of you are on board with that position instantaneously and without a second thought about broken campaign promises that tens of millions of people cared about a great deal or who might suffer needlessly as a result.

I support $15 minimum wage. I've made that very clear. 

However, I also support what is best for workers in the short term if a $15 minimum wage is not on the table. You criticized me, the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats for that opinion. 

Yet, now a complete shit like Hawley slides in and says "Hey, here is a compromise bill", and seemingly without even knowing the details of that bill you are singing his praises and preaching that he is so much better than many of the Congressional Dems, even talking about how you'll keep this in mind come 2024.

Like, come on. Really? You think this is upholding your principles? 

I feel you could do better...

Thanks to the ruling of the unelected Senate Parliamentarian, ALL proposals to raise the minimum that exist in the Senate at this point are compromise ones. One is left to choose a favored path within that framework at this point. When it comes to aligning myself with one or another such proposal, my inclination as a low-wage worker myself is to focus mainly on the top-line number, so here's what the offerings look like to me:

Hawley/Sanders: $15/hour using tax scheme

Joe Manchin: $11/hour

Romney/Cotton: $10/hour, exempting undocumented immigrants who can go hungry(er) because we are Republicans!

Rest of GOP / Sinema: Jack squat.

That's the crux of what it looks like to me. Whether businesses are fined for violations or charged more in taxes for violating the proposal or whatever is almost secondary minutia to me. I have proposed that even Josh Hawley's proposal looks more appealing to me than the position of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and that the latter, being Democrats, should be embarrassed by this fact considering Hawley's party alignment. I'm not sure what's rationally disputable about this suggestion.

Now as to how your position has appeared, I observed that your first instinct was to rush to the defense of Senator Manchin's as you can plainly see wimpier proposal the second he proposed it and not later and even at one point seemed to give a moment of credence to the even weaker version that's been advanced by Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton.

As to my general opinion of Josh Hawley, as that seems to keep coming up, it's largely negative for reasons you might well expect, in case you're concerned that I'm losing my mind or something. People who frequent the Politics forum of VGC by now should be extensively familiar with my opinion of Donald Trump. I never voted for the guy, repeatedly marched against him and his program, felt that two impeachments were nowhere near adequate, and at one point ran into controversy here for wishing aloud that he'd die from his case of COVID-19. I think my position has been equally clear on who won last year's election. To the extent that Josh Hawley disagrees with any of that, I hold him in low regard. People know where I stand on the Trump question.

These things said, while Hawley is obviously positioning himself for a presidential run and...shall we say doing what he must to be viable in a future Republican primary...that is not his only feature. He also has a record. This actual record of policy positions is more mixed than negative, in my opinion, which is something I don't often say of Republicans. Hawley has distinguished himself in some areas that include strong stands in favor of ensuring people's privacy online, breaking up tech monopolies, advancing legislation to curb internet addiction, prosecuting drug companies for the opioid epidemic (an issue especially near to me, knowing people), supporting, along with Senator Sanders, the full $2,000 COVID relief checks proposed in December by Trump and which the Democrats aim to follow-through on as part of their own relief package in the immediate future, among other things I find agreeable. The minimum wage proposition comes in addition to these things that I think cumulatively establish him as perhaps the single most pro-labor and pro-consumer Republican in the Senate. And to this end, it seems to me that Hawley is aiming to establish his own distinctive brand of conservatism here that appeals to social conservatism and a less one-sidedly pro-corporate sensibility than we've seen out of the GOP in generations now.

Were we to hold a presidential election today between Joe Biden and Josh Hawley, Biden would still get my vote. There is a world though in which that might change between now and 2024 and it involves a continuation of the current direction of things between now and then. I vote for Democrats mainly owing to their left-leaning economic policies and maintain a more moderate, complex take on cultural issues overall. To this end, my general preference is definitely for the Democrats to lean into labor agitation and economic populism in power and de-prioritize culture wars. That is the opposite of what I'm seeing at present.

EDIT: I've spent much of the last two days on this thread and am growing a little tired of it both because it really is me against the world here consistently anymore and also just because. I need a break and think I will take a hiatus from this particular thread for just a bit. I hope I've finally replied to everything to everyone's baseline satisfaction at least.

EDIT 2: Senator Hawley has laid out details of his idiotic "15/hour" proposal now that force me to retract many of my aforementioned compliments and enthusiasm and look pretty stupid right about now. It turns out the "$15/hour" program he's advancing is actually just a tax credit that reimburses people making less than $16.50 an hour for 50% of the difference between that total and their actual wage. I mean it would certainly make a difference and be significantly better for me than the simple continuation of the status quo and everything (50% of the difference between my $9.40 an hour and $16.50 being $3.55, which, added to $9.40 an hour would equal $12.95 an hour, i.e. still higher than Joe Manchin's proposal), but...yeah when I hear somebody tell me they plan to guarantee me a minimum of $15 an hour, my instinctive assumption is that they mean to guarantee me a minimum of $15 an hour, not a partial refund from the government that expires after three years. *sighs* Hawley's contrived and much too complicated plan is obviously so constructed as to avoid offending the business community or costing billion-dollar business corporations any of their profits. Republican "populism"at its finest.

This is basically what I was going to say. Hawley's proposal is pretty bad. While, on the worker side it isn't the worst thing imaginable, I have a pretty strong dislike for his proposal due to the absolutely broken incentive structure it creates. By having this faze out system, you are actually disincentivizing pay raises. As the government is paying part of the employee's check, the business can drop wages to keep them functionally the same, and when they do raise wages, the employee only sees 50% of that benefit which means a business would have to raise wages by twice as much to have the same power in attracting/keeping workers.

Further, the government should not be taking on payroll costs as a general rule. If we need to for some businesses in times of crisis (such as with PPP loans), or to help a small subset of businesses increase wages I can take one on the chin there, but the government subsidizing business' ability to pay slave wages is one of the prime reasons we should be increasing the minimum wage. A cut-off at $1billion revenue simply doesn't work to prevent abuses by businesses who can afford it. And as this would be an increase in government spending, we also have to remember who the Republicans want to take from to make up deficits (hint: It isn't corporations or the rich). 

The cutoff also incentivizes an acceleration of workplace fissuring. If a $1billion company doesn't want to pay their janitorial staff $15/hour, they can fire all of those people and hire a smaller business to do their cleaning, which leaves less room for pay (because profit is cycled off first, and because not being associated with that large corporation generally reduces overall benefits) and more room for labor abuses, while still only having to pay minimum wage.

The incentives of this proposal are so thoroughly fucked that I don't know why the media isn't tearing this thing to shreds. It is just straight up bad policy. Also of note, Hawley's bill is a stand-alone proposal, not meant to be added to the current Covid relief bill. As such it isn't subject to the budget reconciliation process so there is no defense for its shortcomings related to it having to work around these rules.

As for your criticisms of Manchin and the individuals who haven't yet put forward a proposal, I don't really see the benefit in every individual in congress putting forth their own proposal for legislation. I think there is value in knowing where individuals stand on certain things, but you can only really know what they have told you, and most Senators have not made comments regarding where they stand on the theoretical Sanders Amendment that was previously discussed. As such, I think it is entirely fair to criticize Manchin for only supporting an $11 minimum wage (something which I believe is too low, however if it was the best we could get for now, I do think we should still take it), however I don't think it is fair to criticize Manchin for his presumed support of other Minimum wage adjacent proposals such as the Sanders Amendment. 

Good article about QAnon's effect on families in America:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/children-of-qanon-believers_n_601078e9c5b6c5586aa49077

We really do need to start investing resources into deradicalization. Feels like a worse epidemic than covid at times.

Although I expressed my concerns about the impact of increasing the minimum wage to $15/hour, it's kinda disappointing that's been taken out of the COVID-19 bill. Hopefully in the future, a minimum wage increase can be done in a separate bill. That would mean 60 votes will be needed to get it passed in the Senate, so there's going to have to be some compromise to get it passed there. Democrats may not be able to get the minimum wage increased to $15/hour, but any increase is better than none imo.

Minimum wage here is $28 an hour for a casual worker. (With casual loading) which is roughly equivalent to $21.28 USD per hour.

That is on top of Universal Healthcare (Which is also cheaper on the taxpayer!) and is one of the best Healthcare systems in the world and we have one of the highest standards of living and more.

Minimum wage is good enough that leaving "tips" for waitresses isn't even a thing.

In saying that... I only get $37 ($28.51 USD) an hour as my base rate and $49 ($37.76 USD) over the weekend or Afternoon/Night period (After 4PM).
But I do get paid in 3 hour chunks even if the job is 15 minutes. Could it be better? Probably pissing up the wall when some people here are earning a fraction of that...

I don't get the fear of a high minimum wage in the USA? Then again, I don't understand the hate against Universal Healthcare that is proven to be far more effective and cheaper and the strict opposition to gun control which also is proven to work.

What does a higher minimum wage actually mean? Well. It's actually simple.
The Government earns more in taxation so it can pay it's debt/bills due to higher wages.
Consumers are able to increase expenditure which drives the economy.
Businesses also see increases in sales rates, so the increase in wages can be offset by higher volume of sales.

I'm in full support, I just didn't feel the need to point it out before.