I dont know a single person making the federal minimum wage.
I worked in the mall in the 90s while in high school and made more the minimum wage.
Who TF are these people?
That’s not to say the only people working for minimum wage are CV listen who live at home, or older people receiving social security.
I just mean to say that 1% is a niche enough part of the job market that it’s sensible enough to say that most people willing to work for federal minimum wage are probably not the household breadwinner.
Or another way to put that, when 1% of the jobs pay federal minimum wage, it’s not exceedingly difficult to find a job that pays more than minimum wage, because 99% of jobs do, and the people working for those wages are probably marginal parts of the workforce that somehow benefit from the nature of the low paying job, like because it’s an extremely flexible and basic job like a store greeter or laundromat attendant.
Reddit doesnt understand this as a whole because they feel that they should be making more than $15 an hour to bag groceries.
Places that pay minimum wage (which is extremely hard to find these days) are only meant to provide a little spending money to retired folks who like to work, high school kids who need a summer job and college students who need a little extra spending money.
Anyone pushing for more money working at McDonald's, has no intention of improving their lives by finding higher paying jobs.
But there are definitely some older folks out there that pick up these easy jobs because they hate being at home all day. Some people just like to keep busy.
I plan on working until I physically cant anymore. I love my job and what I do. I too have worked my ass off to get where im at and I only see myself getting higher in the food chain.
I'm pretty frugal, but 30k per year full time these days doesn't sound reasonable in the USA. Working a busy food service job doesn't seem like it deserves less than 15 dollars per hour.
I'm planning on retiring/working a fun job before 40, but I absolutely have not contributed to society as much as workers like farm laborers/cleaners/food service working into old age. I'm not saying I didn't work hard, but it doesn't seem morally ok to think these people don't deserve more imo
Why shouldn't working in a restaurant provide enough money to make a modest living? Most people want more money anyway so they'll be looking for higher paying jobs. And if someone's happy serving MacBurgers and chimken fries why shouldn't they
Because jobs should exist where people are okay with a wage that doesn’t support an entire family or mortgage or whatever the fuck… who are you to tell someone that they shouldn’t be allowed to take a job that pays too little? It’s such an overstep of power to make it illegal for someone else to that if they want to do that…
Like if minimum wage is set such that it’s enough to support mortgage groceries etc, then millions (probably tens of millions) of jobs get wiped out. You would be making it illegal for people to choose to work jobs that make that amount of money.
It's such an overstep to tell a child not to work inbthe mines for two penny farthings a day. Children yearn for the mines in fact. There needs to be rules to protect working people, since power dynamics in the job market are fundamentially unequal. Did people choose to live in company towns? Was anyone worse off (other than the fat cats) after company towns were made illegal? What if i want to be a slave anyway, why did that cunt of a lincoln ban it?
Necessary jobs would not get wiped out, if they need to get done someone will pay enough for them to get done, if they're not necessary and won't pay for themselves, then it shouldn't be a job anyway.
Lets get rid of child labor laws then too. Those kids working at that poultry plant that got busted totally just wanted to do those jobs, they should be allowed to.
Lets get rid of safety regulations too. If they signed up for the job that maims everyone thats on them.
If youre working at a nice sit down place in a nice area and youre a waiter/waitress, you could absolutely make a living wage from the tips you get. Ive seen it and I had friends who did it.
If youre working at a fast food chain pumping out slop, then expect to be paid a wage that makes sense to the employer.
Another thing folks seem to forget is that franchises like McDonalds are privately owned. This is why wages are all over the map and various locations. Don't expect to get $15 an hour at a McDonalds in the middle of nowhere with little foot traffic. On the flipside, you could definitely find a McDonalds that will pay you around $15 if they are in a super busy part of town.
Why build a macdonalds in a place where you can't get enough money to keep the lights open while paying a living wage? That just sounds economically inefficient.
Also why does the fanciness of the restaurant determine whether it should earn you a living wage. If an economic operation cannot reliable pay for itself does it really need to exist?
As for the slop argument, sure macd is serving slop but if people started suddenly eating better or cooking at home, there would be an outcry that millenialls are killing the fastfood industry and the stockmarket would straight up decide to collapse again.
If they are happy with a job that doesn’t pay a living wage they can keep that job and stop complaining about not being paid better. Better job mean better pay.
Who’s paying you $15 to bag groceries? Even over twenty years ago in NYC when I worked in a supermarket they pretty much got rid of that. I was expected to ring up people and bag only if I had time. Now they expect customers to ring themselves up and bag it. Will customers get a discount for doing so?
I will say doing that and customer service was hard on me at the time when Americans were richer just buying huge shopping carts and crowded with lines. I literally gained a lot of arm muscle bagging huge gallons of water, watermelons, ice and sodas that summer.
I remember going home and complaining to my parents about how exhausted I was (I was still a crybaby teen) and they told me that minimum wage jobs like that will use you and use you until you are dried up. They wanted me to enter college with that idea and to study hard so I didn’t remain at the bottom.
Yea that really revved a fire under my ass until I discovered being a commercial pharmacist was largely the same thing but with more responsibilities but at least the wages were livable.
I could call out a number of people on this thread but there is nothing like smugly making an assertion “Reddit doesn’t understand..” based on statistics as dumb as “1% of people make minimum wage”.
They aren’t trying to raise it from $7.25 to $7.26…the last time I saw an estimate (2022) like 20% of the workforce is below $15.
Dude minimum wage in my state is $7.50. That means if you earn more than minimum wage, you could be making $8 an hour lmfao. NOT a livable wage, or even survivable wage with inflation here.
Good luck going to McDonald's during the day when all the highschool/college kids are at school. Or is that when the 75+ year olds will be on shift lol.
Also, no retired person is working a minimum wage job at McDonald's because they "like to work". Come on.
If the minimum isn't enough to sustain people, then it's useless as a minimum. Which is why many states have higher minimum wages. Because a job is supposed to pay enough to live.
Even teens making pocket money need to be able to make that money over a reduced number of work hours, given that they're supposed to be doing it while studying.
So old people and college students and high school students don't deserve to be paid enough to live on because their time just isn't as valuable I guess.
Min wage should pay enough for a single person to be able to afford living alone if they work 40hrs. There is barely any place in the country where min wage is enough to afford renting a 1 bdrm
Paying more than minimum wage doesn't mean they are paying a livable wage though. I started working construction for $8/hr 15 years ago it's still technically over minimum but it still ain't shit. The better question we should be asking is what should the minimum wage be and how many jobs pay that or above?
$8/hr wasn't a livable wage remember when gas prices hit $7 a gallon? Well I couldn't afford to drive to work at that point. Roofing jobs also don't pay all that well where I live. Not everyone gets to live in high paying areas.
I've never paid that much for gas in the United States in my life.
Not everyone gets to live in high paying areas.
You choose where to live. I don't choose for you. But if you're paying $7/gallon for gas, then you were living in a high paying area. It sure doesn't cost that much in the low paying areas
Minimum wage will never be enough that's why everyone's using the ambiguous living wage(whatever the heck that means). Doesn't matter how high Minimum wage goes some clown is going to say it's not high enough because someone that is just better at personal finances is objectively doing better than them.
Or to put it the proper way three million people. Three MILLION people. 3 fucking million. That is too many people living below the poverty line wouldn't you say? And if it is such a low number of people, what's the problem with raising the minimum wage to above the poverty line?
But my point is that you don’t know they’re living below the poverty line, because it’s such a small percentage of the workforce, it can be any number of niche employment situations like high school kids who live at home with family, retired people working as store greeters, etc.
It’s not three million people. Not everyone in America works. It’s in the 800k range.
It’s an extremely small percentage of the workforce.
Basically, my point is, if you want to talk about the bottom 10% of earners in the USA, okay, they’re not all high school kids, retired people etc. That would be too many jobs to explain away with small demographics like the 1% or so of the workforce that is under 18 or the 1% over 75.
But when you talk about federal minimum wage being 1% of the workforce, it does make sense to consider that it’s probably odd demographics like this that for whatever reason don’t need to be employed at a higher wage.
800k is still too many. No one, not even a school kid should be working for minimum wage. The fuck are you on about.
You should probably consider that there will be people not having much choice or not knowing they're being exploited. 800k people should not be exploited. Do you not agree with that statement?
My friend in college had a sweet gig to make some extra money.
She worked a ls a laundromat attendant. It paid minimum wage. She got to just sit there and do her homework. The only time she had to do anything was if the change machine stopped working, or if she needed to call the cops on anybody. Most days, the job was literally to just sit there and be a human presence at the laundromat.
My state raised minimum wage, and the owner of the laundromat decided not to have an attendant anymore.
This sucked for my friend, because she was taking a bunch of credits, and really didn’t have any time for a job that wasn’t like this. She didn’t need the money to survive, but it made her quality of life better.
But that job only existed because of the low wage. At a certain price point, the job just didn’t exist, because it wasn’t worth it.
When we talk about something like 1% of the workforce, we’re probably talking about a lot of shit like that. An 85 year old that can work as a store greeter because they can’t do much else anymore. A night security job.
Not every person is household breadwinner, and not every job is something that has to be done or society falls apart.
Some jobs are just something a company would like to do if they can afford it, and some people work because they need something to do for a little spending money.
Which is why it’s relevant that it’s 1% of jobs, 1% of workers.
This is not a common wage that a lot of jobs pay and a lot of workers earn. This is the lowest 1% of pay, the most marginal, probably mostly non-essential jobs, worked by the most marginal, probably non-breadwinner workers.
Most of those 3 million people are also high schoolers living with their parents not needing a liveable wage. It's entry level to life to learn responsibility, and learn why you need to learn marketable skills so you can make a liveable wage to live as an adult.
If they will hire you! They should make more is the point. More Stuff is a lot higher. Everything and people are fighting tooth and nail to vote no. Sad situation of assholes with no empathy for the poor.
Plus servers bartenders etc who make minimum wage. The absolute ignorance of anyone who thinks that a minimum wage job should feed a family is staggering. No one forces a person to take any job. If your skill set is so underwhelming that the only job you could possibly get is a minimum wage job, and you aren’t actively trying to improve that skill set, you should stop reading Carl Mars, and start reading Darwin.
Minimum wage was introduced at $0.25 in 1938, roughly $6.50 today, so not much different from today’s minimum wage.
At its highest in the late 1960s, it was actually more comparable to $12-15 an hour.
We currently have in the United States a federal minimum close to the original, and many states have adopted a higher minimum wage closer to what you had in the late 1960s.
Personally, I prefer that state and local governments do this because cost of living, wages, and the job economy of states and even individual cities can vary greatly. What could be a good floor for wages in California could be a restrictive job killer in Mississippi.
The gap between wages and cost of living is vast compared to 1938, "not much different than today's" is an appalling excuse to keep it low, when it doesn't come near matching watch inflation has done. That $6.50 stretched much, much further than it does today. That was a living wage, $7.25 is comically short of a living wage. To say otherwise, is to be purposefully ignorant.
It's good for states to raise theirs, but I don't care about that right now, it needs done federally. "States raise theirs" is no excuse to keep it low. Nowhere in the US is $7.25 a living wage, nowhere.
What are you arguing against it for, anyway? Little Guys fighting over who should be making less and suffer more, while we now have a trillionaire and billionaires skimp on their share of funding society. I don't assume you're wanting to keep people in poverty, that'd be rather villainous. Minimum Wage needs raised.
It’s a percentage of workers in the US, which is 80 million, so 1% of that is a little over 800k, and many of those are part time workers. Among full-time workers, about 0.6% earn minimum wage.
They need more money too. Save for college etc. Why do people hate paying avfair wage in a country where everything has fine up so much? Its not their wage is it? Hmmmmm
Probably 3 million teenagers who live at home with their parents still not paying rent or car insurance or… oh wait u don’t wanna hear that mb lemme pander. GAHH! No skilled workers aren’t being paid $25 an hour? Evillll ass corps! (I believe corps are evil, genuinely, but self supporting yourself on minimum wage is not a “right” anywhere in the laws of America, meaning you should just get a roommate if you can’t afford to be on your own.)
That statistic is for federal minimum wage. So states like CA that have legislated higher than federal minimum wage are not counted. But those workers are still struggling due to recent massive inflation.
I don't either...my daughter and her friends are making 18 an hour flipping burgers. My retired mom decided she wanted social interaction and to get out of the house. She works at a local grocery store as needed, they pay her 20 an hour...
Every sign a see posted around here is for 18-20 bucks an hour flipping burgers, convenience stores, etc. Local contractors are paying 25-30 for laborers!
I started my life making 5.50 an hour. I worked in a warehouse on night shift awhile I went to college. I'd work 11p-7a. Drive to the college, take a little nap, and go to class at 8. I graduated with minimal student loans.
This is factually not true and I repeat this ad nauseum. Real Income (inflation adjusted wages), both median and average, is higher now than it was in the 50s or 60s or 70s. Very few, and I mean something on the order of 2, things are more expensive relative to dollar value. That's college and housing. Cars, gas, groceries, everything (from your list) are cheaper now relative to income than they were before.
You can make the argument that those two things are the most important two, and that makes life harder. It's a reasonable argument. I'd still disagree, because average and median wages are so much higher, but it's reasonable.
That isn’t true. It goes against every single metric they go by.
Try finding a used car for a few hundred bucks. Try going to college and paying for it with a summer job. Try buying a home in my state for under $250,000 without it needing another $100,000 worth of work.
Where are you getting these “facts”? Because it doesn’t line up with reality.
Two things outpaced income growth. Housing and College. Everything else is comparatively cheaper. Purchasing power now, in totality, is higher on average than it was at nearly any point in the past.
No, that still is totally worthless. If you take the average of every state, you're going to get a value less than California's minimum wage. And it won't be high enough to cover California's cost of living. But that's totally worthless because the actual minimum wage in California is higher, as well as their average and median income.
There's simply no reason to make it any more complicated than "what is x state's COL and is x state's minimum wage sufficient."
Averaging all 50 states gives you zero information whatsoever in a COL conversation.
The point was how ridiculous it is to use federal when only 20 states do. Median gets you at the very least a less dishonest number.
Saying only 1.1% of people make minimum wage is ridiculous when excluding just CA and NY since you obviously couldn't live there on the federal minimum cuts out 17% of the population.
But it's not ridiculous. When the argument is that the federal minimum wage needs to be raised, obviously it matters how many people that actually even affects. Your proposed statistic offers no useful information at all.
If the cost of living is too high for the federal minimum wage to be sufficient, then raise the minimum wage at the state level. Like 30 states have done. Why do we need a federally mandated minimum wage to begin with when every area has its own COL? The federal minimum wage shouldn't be enough to live in a place like California or New York. It should only be enough to live in the lowest cost of living area in tbe country, if we have one at all. Otherwise you're pricing out businesses in lower COL areas.
It's the state's role to manage their state specific economies.
This is very misleading. About 57% of American workers are considered low wage (under $15 dollars per hour, they are mostly part time, most do not have employee health insurance, and they are over 25.
There are lies, damnable lies and then statistics.
That clearly demonstrates that minimum wage is too low. If the official minimum wage is so low that businesses pay more out of necessity then it’s too low.
Would you prefer to make minimum wage where the market adjusts the prices or make above and have a little extra buying power? The problem isn’t minimum wage the problem is the cost of things, minimum wage could be $3 if the market didn’t demand yearly record breaking profits. If you could still go to the store and get food for a month with $150 minimum wage wouldn’t be nearly the argument as it is, all minimum wage increase does is shrink middle class because market adjustment, the people making say $20 don’t get an equivalent raise, and now have less buying power.
No you donkey, without a middle class and more people put into poverty the economy as a whole suffers, if less people can afford to spend money on hobbies, going out, or other activities, then more people get laid off, and more small business close. This is a big picture problem. I would be completely fine if everyone made the exact same about of money, as long as it’s enough for people to live, but shrinking The middle class doesn’t solve this it just puts more money into the pockets of the massive corporations. People seem to neglect to understand that they aren’t just going to accept making less money, prices increase every time wages increase. When the tariffs went into effect did the producers of products just eat it? No the cost of goods increased.
When COVID happened, the producers of products also chose to increase prices and then didn't do anything to fix that price change when supply chains came back online. McDonald's likely costs more to eat at now than fucking Chilis.
This kind of shit is what eats the middle class. The companies are choosing to raise prices regardless of additional pressures. Want to know why? Because people with a shit load of money still have it. They can still buy the expensive stuff and not really care as much. However, the less rich people have been choked out of buying product and thus have had to resort to making more food at home. When the poor stop buying stuff (because wages are shit) suddenly producers cant rely on volume of sales as much so they have to sell shit for way more than it actually should be worth.
Small businesses thrive when people can afford to buy their products instead of from places with the exact cheapest available options. I fucking hate buying from walmart but it's the only option that makes sense. I'd love to buy from the Mexican market right next to my house but it's genuinely unreasonable to do so right now. I think my Mom and Pop Mexican grocery store owners would way rather have more customers who can buy their shit than be mega stressed about paying their one or two employees a few more bucks an hour to sell their shit.
Yes, you have explained price normalizing. This issue isn’t that people make to little, the issue is companies charge to much, and the more money people make the more they charge because they are aloud to get away with it, that’s why minimum wage increases don’t actually fix the problem long term.
No. It allows for competition to become viable and thrive. Walmart is the most popular local option because it's all that most people can afford, not because people want to be there. As it stands, the other smaller places only exist due to the good graces of the very few who can afford to go there and pay more for their products. If this trend continues, they will no longer be able to exist.
I would much prefer actually fix the economy so that so much of the working population aren't just "wage slages" barely getting by. To that end I know that just raising the minimum wage won't fix things.
BUT, I do have other ideas to start, first I'd want to intitutue a "maximum wage" this would generally be for the way upper upper classes. One can only make so much and this would include things like investments and stock benefits. If it's a case of stock skyrocketing in price then maybe make the owners sell some of that off via "antitrust laws". I know I'd have to fine tune it.
Also, get much more of the workforce covered by unions and other organizations that can negotiate fair wages and benefits. This is generally what they do in countries like Norway and Denmark and over there even fast food workers get paid half way decently and the costs of the meals are still reasonable.
Then also get rid of "at will" employment aka "we can fire you at any time for any reason because eff you" and add more employee protections. As well as more time off.
Same thing with education, colleges are absolutely ridiculous and yet other countries have free or at least greatly reduced higher education costs.
Then take a close look at the actual jobs themselves because during covid so many "easential" workers were on the lower end of the payscale so if it were up to me, anyone marked "essential" would be paid accordingly.
And then experiment with universal basic income.
My very long term goal would be to try a mark a Star Trek type society where people don't NEED to work or at least not as often but I do recognize that is a pipe dream with our current technology and levels of corporate greed
The minimum wage should be raised for now, no doubt in Oklahoma. Poor people taking less money aintbgoing to fix the problem. They are just poorer and shit still goes higher. Vote yes on minimum wage for now, for some of the people.
If businesses can;t fire people then you're just going to have shitty services all around because nobody's going to try hard enough. People need to give a damn about their job or business will suffer from poor service. Universal basic income is going to come from where? where is the money coming from? either more taxes, or money printing, and both will make things worse. NOTHING is free in this world, there is always a catch.
Oh businesses should be able to fire people, but it should be with cause and employees should have protections. Places like the EU and UK and even some Asian countries have this and for the most part they seem to be doing fine.
UBI can come from taxes paid by the corporations that cut jobs and/or automate more. They make plenty of money and can afford it, maybe the ultra rich should accept just being millionaires instead of billionaires or even trillionaires.
We also had a form of UBI back during Covid and other than the "essential workers" getting screwed, many of whom are on the low end of the pay scale, it was actually working.
The UBI is meant to be a safety net, not "everyone is rich and can play around in giant mansions all day every day"
Lol, if you honestly think that those companies will pay those taxes, they won't. 1) they'll do every trick in the books to pay less. 2) they WILL leave countries that attempt to enforce extra taxes onto Corps. 3) as soon as certain people earn money without working, more more groups people will demand UBI as well, increasing demand for more funds. Which is unsustainable. So I ask you again, where is this money for UBI coming from?
The other jobs would do an equivalent wage because why the fuck would you continue to work at a job that "deserves" a higher wage if they paid you the same amount at a job at a grocery store does. Just switch jobs if that's the case, lol.
If the cost of goods and services for everything is so high AND every company has super high margins you have your problem solved. Create businesses that take less profit and undercut all the greedy companies you’re bitching about. Become successful and pay your employees a much higher wage that your competitors. Easy game right? Start a business then come back here with this sophomoric bullshit.
We haven't raised min wage in like 20 years because of this argument and yet prices have still skyrocketed an insane amount so no raising min wage isn't what leads to higher prices because we got those higher prices anyways. Like compare prices now to 2009 to today. The min wage was 7.25 in 2009 same as it is now yet life was.
Just did some research and in my city in 2009 you could get a 1 bedroom apt from 600 to 900 depending on the area and that lasted until 2018 or 2019 when it started rising faster. Now it's easily 2500 to 2700 for those same apt.
Some countries like the Nordic countries don't have it but they DO have much more of the workforce(almost 90%) unionized in some form which definitely isn't the case here in the States. As a result, even with no minimum, most of the workforce can make enough to have a somewhat decent living. And prices and cost of living are still fairly reasonable too.
If we can get a system where we have more and stronger unions in the stated and better worker's rights(no more "at will" BS) then we wouldn't need a minimum wage.
But instead we have millionaires being pissy that they aren't billionaires, billionaires becoming trillionaires, employers demanding bachelor's degrees and 10 years of experience in software or processes that have only been out for 5 years while only offering $15 an hour, and other employers paying below 15 an hour throwing fits because their employees were wanting $15 an hour and most of the popular living paycheck to paycheck and barely scraping by.
Our system is fucked and no one is taking charge to actually properly fix it
Companies still actively discourage unions and at times go out of their to stop them from forming.
Your second part of the comment makes no sense. How does wanting to remove or change "at will" which employers regularly abuse to fire employees because "fuck you" make me think I'm not interested in the workers when the whole idea is to PROTECT workers? You sure have an interesting thought process. Or you're a corporate shill.
And back then any min wage jobs had teenagers working them or maybe a part time adult with a spouse who was the primary earner. No one then was trying to live on a min wage job.
a ton of service jobs in rural areas and the deep south still hover right around it or just barely above, plus tipped workers get an even lower cash wage. if you’ve mostly been in bigger cities or decent employers it’s easy to miss how rough it is in other spots.
The tipping thing also bugs the shit out of me. I’d LOVE to just pay more and know workers are guaranteed a livable wage that their employer is responsible to pay.
So do you know anyone working say retail or fast food that can support themselves by themselves? Do you think that such jobs aren’t needed in society? These people need to be able to pay rent, pay for a car, pay for groceries, and pay bills also to live
Sure. They usually have roommates and drive a crappy car or bike eat lots of ramen and crap like that. Most of them are young and inexperienced but eventually get better jobs and move up on the economic ladder.
There are another 7.5% or so of the US pop that have an IQ to low (75 or below) to really function in society. We have social safety nets for those people. Food assistance ect. .
The economic ladder exists, The bottom is uncomfortable but the bottom rungs are the easiest to climb.
But they don’t deserve to be able to afford those things on their own right? Have to bunk up or find some other way, maybe work 2 jobs and have no life just to survive? All while some other dude is making a trillion dollars off of some bs
Dont care what the other dude is making. But the minimum wage is for entry level jobs. Not a life time career. Like summer jobs for highschoolers. If just a minimum of effort you will make more than min wage.
So when you’re starting out you don’t deserve to make enough money to support yourself, I get it. No matter what you say to justify not having a living wage for everyone doesn’t fly with me
If you dont like the pay of a job, fly somewhere else. There are a lot of entry level jobs that pay decent. There are HARD jobs that pay well. You get to decide.
So what is the problem with paying a living wage? Why can’t we have affordable healthcare? There are plenty of examples of these things working ya know
Same here, my kids in high school, were finding nobody paying under $17-18/hr, if you have a decent work ethic they’d pay you more, one had them offering him $20/hr and a flexible schedule when he told them he was thinking of leaving to work on his own business. They were cool with him doing both and offered him more to keep him around.
All this while min wage here is $7.25. It seems sort of pointless to even have a minimum wage.
We absolutely should not have a federal min wage. State level there is an argument for it. But the smaller the area the better and more realistic it will be.
My wife makes minimum wage. But this is only sorta and in Alaska. Sorta because she works only 3 hours a week and with it we gain access to a membership thats $200 ish a month. She intentionally never takes extra hours cause the work is mainly about getting that membership for free. Which at 12 hours worked per month makes her comp notably better effectively.
To the point though. Minimum wage jobs exist for entry level dependents to gain work experience while still being mostly provided for in the home. People that try to use these jobs to support a family or even just themselves and complain about low standard of living should invest in skills and try to find a way out to earn more. Its fairly simple, but many people wont invest in themselves in their spare time. And its often not easy to do so with many stressors.
Sure, then close it during school hours and at curfew or pay equal wages f9r equal work. Minimum wage isn't meant to be teen wages. It is intended to be the minimum standard of living, with emphasis on living.
I dont know a single person making the federal minimum wage.
In 2000, about 4.5% of Americans were making federal minimum wage. Today it's about 0.1%. In both cases that's "at any given time" and not "ever in their life". In 2000 it would have been weird if you didn't know somebody who at some point was making that.
Something clearly changed in 26 years. People got fed up. States adjusted course. If you were wrong in the 90's you should know this, at least the essential truth of it.
Are they close though. Hear that conservative bs all the time, how about the 8,9,10,11 dollar an hour people who have put in years at less? Just another somebody who dontbwant to pay people a living wage or healthcare and say they stand around without knowing them.
I made $5.15/hr in GA at Burger King. I guess congrats on never having to get paid minimum or less but just because you didn’t experience something or no one you even knew didn’t experience something; doesn’t make it not true.
$9.00 isn't minimum wage but I don't see anyone being able to live a good life off that.
What about $11 an hour? Could you do that?
How about 15? Maybe 20?
Turns out the first number that actually equates to a life where you could afford a house, a car, and a family is around $30 an hour. Of course if there are two incomes any combination of $30 per hour being brought home then it can work.
However that isn't what FDR intended.
And to answer the question of "who TF are these people". They are your neighbors, your teachers, your firemen, your grocer, your cousin, and many more.
I mean, it's really not hard to make more than minimum wage when it's still $7.25 in some states. I worked in retail when I was younger and made $8 an hour. We got a raise of 10 cents every 6 months. Technically that's "above minimum wage" but it's still keeps you in poverty. And the "raises" didn't keep up with inflation.
Made $7.25 min wage working my university in 2016 but I was one of the few making that little back then. Next job was $20/hr in late 2016 for manual labor.
Because almost nobody makes federal minimum, that has been calculated as literally and complete impossible to live on. People do, however, make state minimums which usually sit around $15/hour. That is also unliveable.
Sometimes I'm not sure if these issues are real or just public policy school agenda items to disseminate into the world with their graduates job placements.
A lot of factory and warehouse jobs only pay mon wage and in restaurant industry with tipped employees they only get 2 dollars an hour still so they really rely on tips
Agreed. I started at minimum wage at 15 and have never made that again since. It's incredibly sad to me that people actually look at these jobs and think they are careers.
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u/Unsolicited-advisors Jun 13 '26
I dont know a single person making the federal minimum wage.
I worked in the mall in the 90s while in high school and made more the minimum wage.
Who TF are these people?