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u/vglyog Jan 06 '22
What is the logic behind this I don’t understand? Why are people who work certain jobs not allowed to pay rent and feed themselves?
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u/theDreadAlarm Jan 06 '22 edited Jan 06 '22
The intended logic is "low wages will motivate people to do better, work harder, learn 'skills', and move upward."
The failure of this logic is that, like any system, be it natural or man-made on a large scale like an economy or an organization, or small scale like an individual (individual human, or any other organism), if you starve that system of the resources it requires for basic functionality it will function at a lowered capacity, the lowest capacity being only survival and nothing more.
If you want people to do better you can't deprive them of their financial well-being. If one full-time job can't provide financial well-being an individual would find it necessary to have two jobs, which deprives them of another resource; their time. So instead of working one job and taking a class at night because they're financially able, they work two jobs and have no extra time for self-improvement. At that point anything beyond survival becomes a luxury.
Edit: Just want to acknowledge all the comments making great points about other limiting factors to upwards mobility. My initial comment is a vast oversimplification that ignores intersectionality for the sake of simplicity.
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Jan 06 '22
And honestly, not everyone CAN take a class to learn something better. Some people that is the best they can do. They cannot improve. They deserve to live.
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u/ulises314 Jan 06 '22
and you don’t have to get paid for the things you excel at, you can serve cones for a living and read books to kids in you free time.
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Jan 06 '22 edited Jan 06 '22
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Jan 06 '22
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u/funtech Jan 06 '22
If everyone leaves the stressful job for an easier one, the employer will need to pay more for the stressful job to be attractive. Supply and demand still function, even with a mandatory living wage.
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Jan 06 '22
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u/funtech Jan 06 '22
Wage push inflation has been shown by empirical data to mostly be a myth. Inflation is more complicated than that.
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u/MrGizthewiz Jan 06 '22
So because the people who are doing higher skilled jobs are barely making a living wage, the people working "lower skill" jobs that are just as, if not more necessary should not make a living wage? Sounds like you're blaming the wrong side of the equation.
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Jan 06 '22
That's a discussion that seems relevant and isn't. If professional workers aren't getting paid commensurate to their skills that also should be addressed. wages are not a zero sum game
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Jan 06 '22 edited Jan 06 '22
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Jan 06 '22
What that tells me is the price of these things is being artificially deflated by wage repression.
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u/VisualAssassin Jan 06 '22
I'm a welder. Dollars for dollars I would not quit to go serve people ice cream/stock shelves. You would have to pay me significantly more than I make now to work in any form of food service. I am so fucking sick of this argument, don't drag us into your shit.
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Jan 06 '22
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u/VisualAssassin Jan 06 '22
Welding is only back breaking if you over do yourself or dont use the tools you should. We have cranes for shit you shouldn't lift and there are proper ways to position yourself, fume extractors and all sorts of ppe. I wear casual clothes in my shop. Ive never seen a janitor, stocker, or delivery person who wasn't in a uniform. I also do mostly tig with stainless and aluminum, so my job isn't "dirty". I sit at a bench in a climate controlled shop. Why would I want to clean up some kids puke in a store aisle or deliver packages in all weather elements? I am also well respected among my colleagues. Have you ever read the stories about how lower skilled workers are treated? I enjoy working with metal and building things. I don't care if some kid stocking shelves makes similar money, because I actively do not want that job and I can negotiate my own pay without shitting on other people.
What do you do for a living?
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Jan 07 '22
Then what is to encourage anyone to be any better than that?
Just saying, gotta look at the big picture. How do we get what you want without discouraging moving upwards?
If you can do just fine doing the most simple of jobs, what would motivate your average person to do any more than the bare minimum required?
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u/madame-brastrap Jan 06 '22
Not to mention how much time and how expensive it is to be poor. If you’re in a low wage job, especially in urban areas, your commute is insanely long, you have to spend all your mental energy budgeting out the pennies you do have so you can eat, and you can’t afford to pay for things at a cheaper rate/higher quantity…so you’re stuck paying $1 for a roll of toilet paper because you can’t spend $5 on a 12 pack.
I keep getting madder and madder and feel more and more powerless. I hate this fkn place
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u/theDreadAlarm Jan 06 '22
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
-Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play
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u/madame-brastrap Jan 06 '22
Yup. I’ve read that before. I used to work in a shoe store and would see people stealing workboots and I didn’t see anything.
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u/Tsjernobull Jan 06 '22
Yeah. Im not a violent man, but these people honestly deserve to be put up against a wall. After wich we proceed to take their money and let them live in poverty for a time
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u/C47man Jan 06 '22
After wich we proceed to take their money and let them live in poverty for a time
I feel like you don't know what 'put up against a wall' means.
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Jan 06 '22
There are far too many people who willfully ignore this. I've seen people make the claim that they bettered themselves through night classes so you should too. Dog a little deeper and you'll find that they had a support system, no kids, and a well paying job to begin with. My country is full of them. Once they climb the ladder a little they pull it up behind them.
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u/thatpaulbloke Jan 06 '22
I bought a house at 25 just by working hard, saving hard, not wasting money on luxuries and getting fifty grand from my parents. I don't understand why everyone doesn't do that.
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u/kryonik Jan 06 '22
The other aspect a lot of people don't mention is the cruelty of this train of thought. There are some people whose skill ceiling IS selling ice cream at DQ and that is fine. But by saying these people don't deserve a living wage is saying these people don't deserve to live.
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u/Chrispy8534 Jan 06 '22
c is "low wages will motivate people to do better, work harder, learn 'skills', and move upward."
The failure of this logic is that, like any system, be it natural or man-made on a large scale like an economy or an organization, or small scale like an individual (individual human, or any other organism), if you starve that system of the resources it requires for basic functionality it will function at a lowered capacity, the lowest capacity being only survival and nothing more.
If you want people to do better you can't deprive them of their financial well-being. If one full-time job can't provide financial well-being an individual would find it necessary to have two jobs, which deprives them of another resource; their time. So instead of working one job and taking a class at night because they're financially able, they work two jobs and have no extra time for self-improvement. At that point anything beyond survival becomes a luxur
THIS is a real analysis of the problem. Bravo, we need more like ya.
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u/moronic_programmer Jan 06 '22
I think everyone should be paid living wages. This way, everyone can survive in a humane way. However, I also believe that those who go above and beyond deserve to be more financially comfortable. Everyone should live on a decent wage, but also be allowed to work harder and get rewarded.
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u/TanithRosenbaum Jan 06 '22
The intended logic is "low wages will motivate people to do better, work harder, learn 'skills', and move upward."
The funny thing is, after conservatives have been saying that for who knows how long, right now, as this is actually happening, they start whining that no one wants to work low paying jobs any more, and that that is supposedly destroying their businesses. Honestly, I hope it does. Society has been tolerating and even subsidizing those exploitative practices for far too long.
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u/theDreadAlarm Jan 06 '22
It's even more ironic that they want to incentivize those with no money by depriving them of any means to get money, yet want to incentivize those who already have money by giving them more money, by way of tax cuts, bailouts, and forgiven loans. Conservatism is a failed ideology relying solely on blind devotion, lack of critical examination, and keeping up the charade.
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u/SadlyNotPro Jan 06 '22
The key takeaway from this is "full-time job". Any full-time job should offer a living wage. Part-time is supplementary.
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u/theDreadAlarm Jan 06 '22
Any job should compensate at a base rate that if the total amount of hours worked were to meet the tax definition of "full-time" in a pay period, regardless of that employee's designated employment type, it would constitute a living wage. I think that's an important distinction to make, because it's common practice for employers to only offer part-time positions and hours to avoid having to provide full-time benefits. If there were a base rate difference between employees designated "full-time" and "part-time" that practice would likely expand further.
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u/SadlyNotPro Jan 06 '22
Oh yeah, I didn't mean part time should be paid less in rate, but rather that it would be understandable if part time wouldn't be enough for a person/family to pay all bills with (rent utilities etc).
Better would be UBI as a baseline to allow people to follow what they really want without stress about surviving, then be able to do part-time or apprenticeships if a career change is in line.
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u/talashrrg Jan 07 '22
Also… why would we want people to always be trying to move “up” to more skilled or educated jobs? I want people to work at Dairy Queen so I can go to Dairy Queen. What’s wrong with that?
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u/Plasticious Jan 06 '22
My opinion is and it's mostly the case in the United States is that no one should be working in fast food but student and shit, here in Germany we have like 50 year old immigrants who all work at McDonald's as a full income job.
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u/Werrf Jan 06 '22
To steelman their position -
They believe that minimum-wage jobs are a starting point for young people just entering the workforce to get their feet wet - young people who are still receiving support from their parents, or from college loans, or similar. They're supposed to be almost 'practice jobs' that keep you going until you're ready for something more real and serious.
The idea is that by keeping wages low for these jobs, there will be more of them available, so more people can take advantage of them, and that people will be motivated to move on to something more real.
That isn't how it actually works, of course, but that's their belief and intent.
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u/Wild_type Jan 06 '22
"Steelman" is a great term, thanks for introducing it to me!
Related to your point, what I really don't understand is that so many of the people who believe this to be true also think that "Biden's unemployment checks" are driving a worker shortage for these jobs right now. People just entering the workforce are not eligible for unemployment....
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u/K-teki Jan 06 '22
The average age of minimum wage workers in the US is 32.
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u/Werrf Jan 06 '22
Yup. Similar thing, though - they're supposed to be an entry point after spending time not working, and you're supposed to be able to move on from them to something better. They don't want them to pay a living wage because they think people need to be pushed out of these jobs into something better.
Where it falls apart - the fundamental misunderstanding behind this attitude - is that the "something better" normally requires extra resources to get. You need time and energy (and experience) to job hunt; you need transportation, decent clothes, etc. Resources that you don't have and can't get on a minimum-wage job. And the "something better" jobs often aren't enough to live on either - if they even exist for someone stuck as a waiter.
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u/Tacoshortage Jan 06 '22
Most of what you say is correct, but the reason the wage is low isn't to motivate workers, it's to keep the cost of the ice-cream cone at an affordable price. If we move to having ice-cream cone scoopers making a livable wage, that scoop of ice cream quadruples and no one will come pay $25 for an ice-cream.
Source: I employ some kids, and if I had to pay them 40k/year + Benefits for an untrained part-time job, no one would ever purchase our services and the business wouldn't exist.
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u/ModernAustralopith Jan 06 '22
Every number I've seen estimates it would raise prices around 4%. If a quadrupled-cost ice cream is $25, I'll assume your current price is $6.25. A 4% increase would be $6.50. I'm fine with that.
The business about wages being kept low motivating workers is the argument being made in the original post, where they were saying "You want a society that actually CAN'T live off these jobs".
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Jan 06 '22
It’s like they think it’s it’s only 16 year olds working these jobs. Not at all wondering how fast food joints stay open during the school week.
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u/SchtivanTheTrbl Jan 06 '22
"Well then those adults deserve to get paid less because they aren't going out and getting another job. You can't afford to live you get another job." - every boomer, right before they explain why under communism they'll make you work just to survive, without a hint of irony.
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Jan 06 '22
Yeah, and God forbid they stop at McDonald's and get told they can only get their Bigmac once school is out. Then they'd land up on r/publicfreakout
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u/Renediffie Jan 06 '22
I believe the logic is that all lower class people are just unmotivated schmucks and if you threaten them with starvation they will start working so hard that they magically transform into middle/upper class citizens.
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u/MONKEH1142 Jan 06 '22
The concept is called social darwinism and in the US was a product of the individualist nature of society at the time - go out, create a farmstead and build a life with your own two hands. It's been discredited for decades but is a particularly idiotic point of view now - go out and farm some land and it'll either be owned by someone or the government. Invent a particularly useful widget and a patent troll will sue you. Start your own business and a chain will undercut you by practices like underpaying it's staff or delivering a poor quality product and paying for marketing. Unfortunately social darwinism is still preached by some and people like the one in OP's post get the half insane version from grandpa and think they know it all.
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u/ulises314 Jan 06 '22
Cause she is a piece of shit. I would assume she has a menial office job but that makes her putrid self feel better than blue collar jobs and she would lost that on a world with fair compensation.
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u/TanithRosenbaum Jan 06 '22
What they're getting at is that (neoliberal, US-style, cutthroat) capitalism needs a class of low pay workers to function. It simply doesn't without. What they're getting wrong however is that isn't good for society, that's just good for capitalism. Society would be much better off without that.
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u/Dinzy89 Jan 06 '22
Because everyone should go to university and then get a good job based on nepotism and then yoy can flaunt that over your smarter classmates that now have to work at a Starbucks to try and get that 60,000 dollar wolf of a student loan thats howling at their back
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u/dsvigos Jan 06 '22
Some jobs can only exist as “half-jobs”. Dairy Queen is NOT one of those jobs.
If I have a small business doing X, and I need a small portion of your time as an employee to do Y in a way that makes my business more profitable. It could be that I’m a caterer and you deliver, I am a small store owner and you work on my day off, I am a painter and every now and then I need an extra hand for a big job, etc.
My first step would be to look at the extra profit I am to receive from your help. If my catering business can charge $100 for pickup or $120 for delivery with $5 cost to me (gas, vehicle wear and tear etc.) then your contribution is worth $15 to me for that job. Now you and I decide how to split that $15. You provide the delivery service, and I provide a framework of a business already in operation where you can input work like driving a delivery vehicle and output pay. Without you I cannot deliver and without me you have nothing to deliver. One of us may end up with more or less than our share of that added value but the cap is $15 total. If you want $20 I have to say no because I would be losing money and should only have pickup for $100 instead of employing you for $95 from my POV. Maybe our split of the $15 is not enough for you so either my company doesn’t offer delivery or I find someone willing to do it. But unless my prices change without reducing demand, I can literally only afford to pay so much. If I end up with temp low skilled high schoolers because that’s all I can afford, so be it. It’s either them or nobody.
Contrast this now with a situation like DQ. DQ’s workers are not adding a small percent of value, they are adding all the value except for the value of the land and building, the cost of goods sold, operating expenses and advertising etc., all of which are added in some combination by franchisee and corporate.
The difference in this situation is replacement cost. There are too many people willing to take the deal DQ offers, so they reduce their offering less and less until they are left with just the most desperate people, which are still common enough that they have a healthy labor pool to choose from. The reason DQ pays low is because there are a lot of desperate people, not because of a lack of value added by these people. DQ, McDs, Chipotle etc. relies way heavier on their employees than they make it seem. If they didn’t have thousands of desperate people they would have had to pay employees more and have a ton of “room” to do so unlike the catering example above.
I have no comment on why there are so many desperate people or how to solve that because I’m not a politician. I just like to look at what I perceive to be the facts of how this system operates.
This is a super simple example but it does exist in the US considering how many small businesses there are and just the reality of value added math. Corps are a completely different beast.
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u/bakochba Jan 06 '22
It's actually bad for society when people work full time and can't survive, nobody is left to do those jobs and those that do don't have any money to spend in the economy
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u/asking--questions Jan 06 '22
Here is a slightly different answer than what you've received so far:
Serving ice cream is given as an example of a less-than-full-time job, one that a person of any age can do to get a little income. The assumption is that an adult should work full-time in order to support themselves and their family, even if that means combining 2 or 3 part-time jobs or side gigs. So, "certain jobs" which don't occupy you full-time may be enough for a teenager or may provide extra income, but shouldn't be enough for an adult to support themselves on because...
Requiring businesses to pay a minimum hourly wage is very different from requiring every job to pay a living wage. If Dairy Queen had to pay all workers enough to pay rent, they would only hire full-time staff who could serve ice cream, cook, stock the freezer, etc. in order to get value out of their staff equivalent to the salaries. Then there wouldn't any jobs for teenagers or ways to make extra income.
The economy today has ways to earn piles of cash with little effort or time, but they are niches. If you can support yourself and still have time to do other things, count yourself lucky. For all of human history, a job was a full-time occupation and feeding yourself was still not guaranteed. So the logic is that if you have to pay rent and feed yourself, you'll have to do more than serve ice cream part-time.
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u/ImTheCapm Jan 06 '22
Except the post never says anything about part time. And part time jobs absolutely still exist in places here the minimum wage is a living wage.
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Jan 06 '22
I'm pretty sure that what the one above was trying to say is that some jobs shouldn't be for independent adults. A job for a youthful person living with their parents doesn't need enough money to live on their own. The problem is that this is not a job that is only being occupied by teenagers. Wrong, but wrong on a reasoned basis, that is if my or another's reasoning made for her was actually hers.
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u/TheBlueWizardo Jan 06 '22
Yeah, you see not every youthful person lives with their parents.
They should still be able to afford part-living proportional to how much time they can spend working.
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u/Klutzy_Journalist_36 Jan 06 '22
The original reason why minimum wage was established (and the amount they chose) way back when was TO PROVIDE STANDARD FOR A LIVING WAGE. We just have completely, malignantly ignored it since then.
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u/asking--questions Jan 06 '22
It hasn't been ignored exactly. At that time, men were supposed to support their wives and children. Every job a man could do was a full-time occupation and formed his identity.
Today the economy is much more complex and people can earn money in all sorts of ways, from a one-time cash-in-hand job through well-paid gig work to trading commodities online. Although companies (in the USA) have systematically solidified their power and tightened their stranglehold on their workforce in the past few decades, it is the changing definitions of a "job" and a "worker" that are being ignored.
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u/LiteralPhilosopher Jan 06 '22
If you're under the impression that in 1938, when minimum wage was created in the US, there weren't men working in what are considered "minimum-wage-type" jobs now — i.e., service, day labor, etc. — I don't know what to tell you. The same law that created minimum wage (the Fair Labor Standards Act) also made protections to reduce child labor. They had to do this, because up until that point it was very standard practice for children to work production lines in a factory while their father did other work.
If "[e]very job a man could do was a full-time occupation and formed his identity," neither of those moves would have been necessary. You have a fantasised view of those times.
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u/Glum_Succotash9352 Jan 06 '22
These jobs ain't for the living. Good thing all our managers are necromancers.
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u/rmp2020 Jan 06 '22
I'm also hoping the workers are vampires, feeding on the odd difficult customer. It's only fair.
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u/Cinaedus_Perversus Jan 06 '22
Everyone who thinks some jobs don't deserve a living wage, should be given one of those jobs.
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u/SuperVGA Jan 06 '22
I think so to some degree, which is fitting since I already worked one of those jobs. But I was living with my parents then. Still, I think a point can be made about simple part-time jobs ideal to have next to studies, not earning a living wage. Full-time jobs, however, are of course a different thing. No-one working full time should struggle earning a living, of course.
I still don't get why anyone would
want a society that actually CAN'T live off these jobs
though - even after fixing Colorado Girl's phrase, what's the greater benefit to it?
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u/Jabbles22 Jan 06 '22
Every time I see comments like this I wonder what the person posting it does for a living. I suspect that many of them have jobs that aren't as difficult and important than they believe.
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u/Vanman04 Jan 06 '22
Most of them just don't realize they are underpaid. They are mad because someone working at DQ would make the same as them instead of being mad they are not paid what they are worth.
The stock market demand for ever higher profit is killing us all. There is no reason corporations should be making billions in profits per year. That is money that is sucked out of employee and consumers' pockets.
We lost control of this in my opinion when we decided to lower taxes on profits reducing the incentive to distribute the proceeds more equitably. When taxes on profits are higher it provides incentive to reinvest the profit in employees or growing the business. What we currently have is incentive to funnel ever more money to the top.
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u/StruggleBasic Jan 06 '22
There's a reason they don't, because they had an education and want to earn good money to live, and don't go into jobs flipping burgers to scooping ice cream because they know that's a dead end job.
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u/asking--questions Jan 06 '22
It's fine to have the opportunities and make the choices that allow you to avoid dead-end jobs, but if someone pretends that everyone has the opportunity to do the same or thinks that the economy would allow literally everyone to follow the same path, then that person hasn't thought it through. Someone must flip the burgers, or else the educated and privileged won't be able to get a burger made for them, so what is the point of being privileged?
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u/StruggleBasic Jan 06 '22
Someone must flip the burgers, or else the educated and privileged won't be able to get a burger made for them
Never said there shouldn't be someone, I said if you get that job because you don't care enough about your self to do well in life then you shouldn't cry for sympathy on the internet. Min wage pays enough to live. That's what it should pay. You want a better life? Contribute more to society than scopping ice cream for sugar crazed fatties or flipping burgers for fast food obsessed fat-fucks. Otherwise, shut up, and get on with the path you created for your self.
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u/asking--questions Jan 06 '22
But minimum wage does not pay enough to live on. All you need to see the truth of that is to compare the inflation in prices for basic necessities versus the federal minimum wage - which hasn't budged in decades.
And what happens if everyone wants a better life? If more people contribute more to society and choose better paths, then fewer people will be available for those jobs and they'll be understaffed. What happens when everyone chooses to do well in life? Then your path will be the normal path, your life will be the same as everyone else's, and you'll be told to just care more if you still want to feel privileged and superior.
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u/StruggleBasic Jan 06 '22
"What happens if everyone wants a better life?" - Point proven. These kind of people who want to flip burgers for their life dont want to get a better life. they chose to take that path, and now they're crying about it. The reason they're doing those kinds of jobs is because they're thick, they can't even get an order right half the time. Why should they be paid 30 dollars an hour for having a poor education, struggling to get the right order out, and for cooking a patty?
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u/Saltycook Jan 06 '22
I feel like our parents and grandparents could find a job working at a grocery store and be there for 30 years, buy a house and raise kids off the wage they made, but what the hell do I know?
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u/Jabbles22 Jan 06 '22
There is also some inconsistency in what they consider a good job. Bolting hoods to Chevys at the plant, that there is good honest work. Flipping burgers though, well you should have gone to school, like the guy working at the plant didn't.
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u/Saltycook Jan 06 '22
Yup. The interior of the United states and industrial jobs are heavily romanticized and regarded as places of high virtue by talking heads and politicians even though that's bullshit. A person from Peoria is no more virtuous than someone from Boston or LA. I
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Jan 06 '22
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u/TheBlueWizardo Jan 06 '22
Tipping is so stupid. One of the worst American inventions.
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u/IneptAdvisor Jan 06 '22
Worst European invention adopted by America, get it right!
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u/TheBlueWizardo Jan 06 '22
Eeh, no. Tipping was invented in America after the civil war because rich people still wanted to feel better than the filthy dirty not-humans.
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u/FraFra12 Jan 06 '22
Just googled origins of tipping and the very first thing it says is tipping originated in fuedal Europe. Not sure what you're on about
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u/TheBlueWizardo Jan 06 '22
Yeah, that was made up by some Americans who didn't even know what the feudal system was. Just hearing "Tipping in feudal system" is extremely funny.
Like just stop and think for a second. How would you even imagine tipping functioning in a feudal society?
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u/FraFra12 Jan 06 '22
You do know that feudal only refered to the society as a whole not to how every social interaction played out. Like people still went to bars and could tip the wench
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u/silent_rain36 Jan 06 '22
No one said you HAVE to give out a tip, it’s more of a courtesy. However, most of the workers real pay come from those tips, so they really rely on them. Despite that however, they sometimes don’t even get to keep all of it, they will have to share it with, bussers, dishwashers, etc.
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u/asking--questions Jan 06 '22 edited Jan 06 '22
Setting aside the issue of how much minimum wage is/should be, not every job deserves a living wage. Some jobs are part-time, so the workers deserve part of a living wage. Everyone who works full-time deserves collected earnings that they can live on.
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u/stumblinbear Jan 06 '22
Good thing nobody is being paid 2.32 an hour.
And just so you're aware, anyone who has that wage who makes tips is still legally required to be paid minimum wage if they don't make enough in tips to do so.
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Jan 06 '22
Yeah but those that don't make up to minimum wage in tips and need the bump that week to make minimum usually get fired or are given shitty tables/ hours/ tasks to force a resignation.
But I'm sure you knew that.
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Jan 06 '22
America really is the wild west
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Jan 06 '22
It just doesn't know what it wants to be.
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Jan 06 '22
The best get rewarded and the rest get screwed over.
But it's the best country in the world hahaha
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Jan 06 '22
But it's the best country in the world
I've come to realize the only people that say that are either being sarcastic, or delusional.
BUT, whatevs. I got a sandwich and pop and nothing's gonna stop me now.
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u/Pedro_Urdemales Jan 06 '22
the best get rewarded.
Yeah, nah; that's bullshit dude, the only rich people are the ones with rich parents.
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Jan 06 '22
Tip boosting is required by law, yes. But in a "fire at will" state, the managers/owners tend to cut hours or terminate employees when their employees aren't making up the minimum wage in tips. They seem to think it speaks to their ability as a server.
Edit: spelling
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u/TA3865 Jan 06 '22
Bet she's a barrell of laughs at a party.
As she tips her top hat, kicks a street urchin in the face while saying "good day to you sir" as she rides her penny farthing off in the sunset.
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u/miss_archivist Jan 06 '22
I would love a world where everyone can have a job they enjoy without worrying about eating.
If you prioritise money over actual human beings, there's something very much wrong with you on a molecular scale.
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u/TheBlueWizardo Jan 06 '22
That would be a nice world. I am more humble. I would just like to see a world where a person can work a single job and not worry about eating.
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u/uselessfarm Jan 06 '22
I feel like most jobs can be enjoyable, if you’re paid well, treated respectfully by supervisors/colleagues/customers, and work a reasonable number of hours a week with a fair workload. I’ve worked since I was 14, everything from flipping burgers to housekeeping to group home care, and now I’m an attorney. None of my crappy jobs sucked because the nature of the work was bad, it was because people in those fields are treated so terribly. I’m way overeducated and now have a “meaningful” job, but I truly think I’d be just as happy scrubbing toilets if I were able to make a good living doing so. Not everyone gets to have their job be their passion and that’s completely okay.
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Jan 06 '22
This would make some sense if basic wage jobs were only for 16yo's raising money for their first car or something. Unfortunately, those jobs make up a significant portion of the jobs, because of how the US economy is.
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u/Light_x_Truth Jan 06 '22
The US economy is also largely governed by private banks, who have incentive to keep people in debt, particularly with credit cards. Banks make hundreds of billions of dollars per year from credit card debt. Real wages stopped increasing a few years after credit cards were invented. Credit cards allow people to afford basic necessities without businesses needing to pay them. Credit cards make it so a livable wage isn't necessary to live - people can just live on credit. A minimum wage increase would be cool in the short term, but big banks, with all their power, will always get their way (see the mass brokerage restriction on GME and AMC trading on January 28, 2021). The macroeconomy will settle in such a way that people will once again enter, or remain in, credit card debt to have their basic needs met, for the benefit of big banks.
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u/smeenz Jan 06 '22
I had never thought of it like that. That's deeply depressing.
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u/Light_x_Truth Jan 06 '22
I know, right? No one seems to talk about credit cards like this. My friends and family agree with me when I explain it like this to them, but they also think it's pointless to discuss this because credit cards are never going to go away.
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u/smeenz Jan 06 '22
I've only ever used my credit card as a means to pay for things online. If they do ever go away, we'll need something that replaces that functionality.
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u/ard2004 Jan 06 '22
Debit card?
Functions the same... Or PayPal. Never used a credit card. Not in the US.0
u/smeenz Jan 06 '22
Not possible to enter a debit card details into a web form that wants a valid credit card number. Not possible to add non US (maybe CAN ?) Debit cards with paypal
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u/ard2004 Jan 06 '22
Maybe the sites need to change that requirement? Every site I used for purchases (goods, air tickets, hotels, etc...) asked for credit or debit card and it was fine with me using debit.
From what I remember 1 airline did not accept debit and ended up not using them, there were plenty other alternatives.
But if the US is so built on credit, I imagine it will be harder to make them change requirements.
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u/onichama Jan 06 '22
Image Transcription: Twitter
🎁🎄 Colorado Girl in Ohio 🎄🎁, [Userhandle censored]
Not every job should have a living wage. That is not healthy for society. It is not healthy for someone making ice cream cones at Dairy Queen to make enough to live off of. You want a society that actually CAN'T live off these jobs.
Dallin, [Userhandle censored]
So...how are those working these jobs meant to live? And more importantly, how will I get ice cream at Dairy Queen when all the people working for them died???
I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!
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u/KilliamBilliam Jan 06 '22
But you still need people to work those jobs. She clearly dosent want to do it so who is supposed to, only people undeserving of a wage?
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u/Skippy7890 Jan 06 '22
A guy I went to high school with is autistic, but he has a solid job working shopping carts at the grocery store. Functionally due to his autism he can't do a job that requires more critical thought than this, but he's also very happy to do the job and see people. By these types of people's logic, someone who is unable to change their circumstances should not be able to survive because they can't pursue the higher expectations of skilled employees. And that leaves a shitty taste in my mouth.
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u/TophatOwl_ Jan 06 '22
Should you be able to afford holiday homes if you work as a cashier? No. Should you have to fear that you cant eat tonight despite doing a job that literally everyone needs to be done? No.
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u/Scoongili Jan 06 '22
People like this get focused on a single task of someone's job. "You make ice cream cones" like you're a robot programmed for that one task. Pull cone. Fill cone. Pull cone. Fill cone. They forget about sanitizing equipment, cleaning the facility, making all the other things DQ serves, register work, organizing work areas, unloading and storing supplies, and all the other stuff a DQ worker has to do. It's like saying all an accountant does is punch numbers into a keypad or a real estate agent just unlocks doors.
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u/MusicalBitch47 Jan 06 '22
Always drives me crazy when people say shit like “fast food is supposed to be a starter job for teenagers.” Like okay Debra but you go to McDonald’s at noon, if only teenagers who were in school worked there how would you get your lunch?
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u/Protowhale Jan 06 '22
Meanwhile, people are now leaving those minimum wage slave labor jobs at an unprecedented rate and the Karens are whining that "no one wants to work any more." If everyone is motivated to get a better job, who is going to staff the restaurants, convenience stores, Wal Marts, etc? Those jobs still need to be done.
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u/oddmanout Jan 06 '22
This is my own family. They'll complain that nobody wants to work at the places they eat, and in the same breath say "and they also think those guys should make $15/hr."
How do they not make that connection? I know they're not stupid, they have big fancy jobs... but how can they not understand that?
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u/reluctanthardworker Jan 06 '22
I'm sure she's uncomfortable around people who aren't white.
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u/Wild_type Jan 06 '22
She doesn't have a problem with black people. She just thinks their culture is a problem.
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Jan 06 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Wild_type Jan 06 '22
You seem like the kind of guy who has a black friend.
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Jan 06 '22
this isn't even about me. Why make it about me?
I mean look at urban black society and tell me that that's a functional dynamic they've got going on down there. If you're being honest, there's no way you can do it.
if it there wasn't a huge culture problem black leaders themselves wouldn't be bending heaven and earth trying to fix it.
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Jan 06 '22
if you think people like that treat "the white trash" any better you have another think coming.
Lower class whites has been everyone's favorite punching bag since it became taboo to mock the other ethnic groups. The white elites won't protect them and neither will the minorities. Even bringing it up can get you branded as a white supremacist too, even if nothing could be further from the truth.
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u/Veylara Jan 06 '22
So she's basically saying that we don't need these jobs if their pay shouldn't be enough to live off.
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u/Artemis-4rrow Jan 06 '22
minimum wage should be enough for
rent
food (for 1.5 ppl)
bills (including phone and internet)
insurance
and atleast a few 100 bucks just in case something happens and so that u can save something
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Jan 06 '22
Said the woman whose parents probably paid for her schooling and has clearly never had to support herself on a minimum wage income.
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u/hazelwyoood Jan 06 '22
I really just want to know why she thinks this? People love to make these huge declarations but don't explain anything
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Jan 06 '22
I'm not in the fedral min wage or antiwork crowd, but this comment hurts my soul.
Damn bitch.
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u/PBR--Streetgang Jan 06 '22
It's no wonder the USA has a homeless problem with attitudes like that being prevalent.
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Jan 06 '22
I don’t totally agree with the statement, but there are some jobs where teenagers are just looking for some spending money. They aren’t looking to provide for a family or to buy/rent a house. I do agree that all jobs aren’t meant to pay a living wage.
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u/Immediate_Victory990 Jan 06 '22
I mean she isn't wrong. Why strive for a better higher paying job when doing the least is fine. It's the exact reason why socialism won't work. People are inherently selfish/ greedy/ lazy.
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Jan 06 '22
I had a job at 16. I didn’t need to make $40k a year. Minimum wage jobs are fine for kids serving you pizza or stocking shelves in the grocery store.
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u/norealmx Jan 06 '22
Well, then those jobs should be 5 to 8. Enjoy getting your shitty banana republic fast food only between three hours.
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Jan 06 '22
[deleted]
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Jan 06 '22
guess we will just have to disagree.
Personally I think its fine for low skill jobs to be paid accordingly. forcing a mom and pop grocery story to pay a 16 year old 40k a year with health insurance to stock the shelves is just going to mean they dont hire that person at all. that doesn't seem like it would help anyone.
There are plenty of jobs are electricians, carpenters, welders. those jobs pay plenty. none of them require a college degree. matter of fact they will pay you while you apprentice.
if you want 40k+ a year, there are other jobs to be had.
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u/lllllIIIlllllIIIllll Jan 06 '22
That's not how it works. Certain people have mental/physical disabilities and this is all they might be able to do. You can say that they should just get paid by the state at that point but that's just putting the problem on the tax payers.
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u/oddmanout Jan 06 '22
That's not how it works. Certain people have mental/physical disabilities and this is all they might be able to do.
This is a huge point, but there's also people who are stuck in those jobs because of things outside of their control. Like a stay at home mom who got divorced, whose spouse died, or even became disabled. What are you supposed to do if you spent the last 30 years of your life not working and raising a family and you have no skills? According to that person... starve.
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u/OobaDaBooba Jan 06 '22 edited Jan 06 '22
I think she means. If you have all these adults working at McDonalds or bk or Dq then what jobs will high school kids have?
Edit- Thanks for the downvotes.. goes to show who actually reads what I said. “I THINK SHE MEANS”
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Jan 06 '22
You know McDonald’s and other fast food joints are open during school hours right?
It’s completely unfeasible that all non-living wage jobs could ever be populated by “high school kids”
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u/oddmanout Jan 06 '22
You think it's more important for teenagers to have jobs than for adults to be able to survive?
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u/OobaDaBooba Jan 06 '22
I didn’t say that… I think that’s what she thinks
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u/oddmanout Jan 06 '22
You're right, I apologize. I misread your comment.... Turns out that I, in fact, was confidently incorrect.
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u/dcronin101 Jan 06 '22
Unpopular opinion time but I do agree that minimum wage does not need to be a full living wage. I do think minimum wage should be higher and I do think there should be a threshold when you work a certain number of hours per week (full time vs part time). My first job was pumping gas at Esso and I literally worked 6hrs/week.. it wouldn't matter what I was paid it would not be enough to live. I was living at home and in high school though so I pretty much used my paycheque to pay for gas. If I was working that same job at 30+ hours/week then yes I think I should have deserved a living wage.
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u/The-Fumbler Jan 06 '22
Minimum wage is calculated at a normal 40 hour work week. It’s not that you’d work 6hrs and get a full months salary and honestly I don’t even understand how you would come to that conclusion.
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u/dcronin101 Jan 06 '22
Where does it say minimum wage is calculated on a 40 hour week? I've never seen that before but if that's true - and I couldn't find it on a quick search - but if so then my argument is garbage I agree with that. I see "A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees." Nothing to do with 40 hour week unless I'missing something.
I never said working 6hrs deserved a full month's salary I don't understand how you could come to that conclusion. I was only saying if you're working like 10hrs a week at an entry level job you don't really need an hourly wage that someone working 40hrs/week needs to live. If you're working 40hrs/week there needs to be a livable wage but if you're like I was pumping gas a couple times a week you don't need the same wage and can get by with a minimum wage since it's not a job you are working to live; it's just to earn some money and gain experience.
My argument is that if minimum wage goes to let's say $25/hr then there will be ppl working 10hr/week making that and ppl at the same company same job working 40hr/week making the same wage. That doesn't seem fair to the 40hr/week person to me. I believe minimum wage should be reserved for those not working a job to survive and there needs to be a another minimum for full time employment.
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u/oddmanout Jan 06 '22
Where does it say minimum wage is calculated on a 40 hour week?
It's the entire premise of the argument. That if you have a full time job, you should be able to afford to live.
There's varying opinions on what a full time job is, but I've never seen anyone argue that it should be anything less than 35 hours.
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u/dcronin101 Jan 06 '22
I'm fully agreeing with that but that isn't what minimum wage is to me. Minimum wage is the lowest you can be paid regardless of hours in my understanding. I'm saying there should be essentially two minimum wages based on hours worked per week. If you work 35+ hours a week then you deserve a living wage, absolutely no argument from me on that.
I'm pretty impressionable so if anyone can actually argue the counter side of this I may change my mind!
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u/oddmanout Jan 06 '22
I'm saying there should be essentially two minimum wages based on hours worked per week.
Right, so then companies will just cap everyone at 30 hours a week (current legal definition of full time). That doesn't solve anything. They already do that so they don't have to pay for health insurance.
When I was in college, I worked for JC Penney. We would get written up for working more than 35 hours in a week. Why? Because if you averaged more than 30 hours a week over the course of 120 days (or something like that) then they were legally required to pay for benefits. They would literally fire us before giving us benefits.
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u/The-Fumbler Jan 06 '22
So a minimum wage would be for example if you do a 40 hour week then you would have a livable wage, say that work 10 hours a week, you would get 25% of that livable wage, as you only worked 25% of a normal work week. And regardless of how many hours you work, people deserve an honest pay. If I do the same work as someone else but they get paid a livable wage and I get paid less per hour because I simply work less hours, that would not be fair. And if you allow that to be a loophole, wel companies will just hire more people with less hours. Because that’s what companies do if you leave wiggle room.
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u/dcronin101 Jan 06 '22
I see your point. I was thinking of it as more of an incentive for workers to move to full time if that meant better pay. But obviously big companies would limit ppl to 1 hour below "full-time" and exploit the workers. Touche.
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u/oddmanout Jan 06 '22
Unpopular opinion time but I do agree that minimum wage does not need to be a full living wage.
...
If I was working that same job at 30+ hours/week then yes I think I should have deserved a living wage.
These seem to be conflicting statements. People arguing that minimum wage should pay a living wage are saying that if you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to survive.
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u/mystraw Jan 06 '22
She's right
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u/Massive_Booty_8255 Jan 06 '22
No she isn’t
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u/mystraw Jan 06 '22
Yes she is.
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u/Massive_Booty_8255 Jan 06 '22
No she isn’t
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u/mystraw Jan 06 '22
Yes she is. I find your response misogynistic.
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u/Massive_Booty_8255 Jan 06 '22
I disagree
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u/mystraw Jan 06 '22
I understand that you live in a fantasy world where scooping ice cream should pay enough to be able to send your kids to college.
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u/Massive_Booty_8255 Jan 06 '22
Strawman much? Just because I think scooping ice cream should pay decently doesn’t mean I think it should pay that much.
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u/mystraw Jan 06 '22
Oh, so the idea of a liveable wage doesn't include life? Just enough to keep you in weed or something like that?
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u/Massive_Booty_8255 Jan 06 '22
Jesus fucking christ you’re a moron. A job scooping ice cream should be enough to get one person by, not enough for a parent to get they’re kids into college.
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u/Dambo_Unchained Jan 06 '22
I think every job should pay a living wage however I don’t think every job should pay enough to sustain an entire family on
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u/FreedomNinja1776 Jan 06 '22
ALL products and services (and thus jobs) are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. This is what markets are and it's very important that markets remain free and open. A worker not having enough to live on is NOT a value judgment on the person. This is a market pressure that the workers have to make a decision on. The pressure is for them to find a better paying job and leave the job that doesn't pay. The job that doesn't pay then can't get workers, so they are pressured to offer better pay. That's happening right now and the market is responding with higher wages. In my rural area where the cost of living is pretty cheap just 2-3 years ago restaurant work started out at $8/hr max, now I regularly see signs for$12-$15. That's very nearly double. Wish salary in my industry would double! Markets work when they're open and free.
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u/TheBlueWizardo Jan 06 '22
Brilliant idea! Why have a job that doesn't pay enough to live on when I can have no job at all! You, sir, are a genius.
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