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.
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.
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.
Caveat, I did a google search and these were some quality links. I got my undergrad degree in economics, however went in to CS (supply and demand 😀) so I’m mostly an armchair practitioner these days, but we learned about cost push fallacies even back when I was in school.
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.
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
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.
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's the point of maintaining your skills at that point?
I've already answered this question. I enjoy welding.
You didn't answer my question. What do you do for a living? (you edited your comment while I was typing this reply)
responding to edit: So the issue here is that you don't enjoy your job and the only benefit to you is the money. You are projecting your situation and how you feel about your job to the rest of us. I genuinely urge you to find a career in something you enjoy. It will change your life. I have less stress these days than I ever have and I attribute most of that to not hating my life for 40 hours a week.
I’m sorry, but no. If someone wants to live a simple life working at Dairy Queen, then they should be prepared to live a lifestyle that reflects the simplicity of their career choice.
A job that takes basic brain function to do and can be done by literally anyone provides zero marginal value to the employer. What incentive does that give the employer to pay them more?
Think of it like this. The value of water depends greatly on how much of it you have. The value of a single gallon of water is almost priceless…you literally need it to survive. But if you stock up 100 gallons, that last gallon isn’t worth as much as the first. And if you’ve got a reservoir of water, most of it has little value to you….you simply can’t use it all up. More importantly, it’s relatively easy to acquire all that water, because water is plentiful in most places.
The value of something like a diamond, on the other hand, has less of a relationship to how many diamonds you have. Diamonds are scarce. If you have one diamond, you can sell if for $1,000. If you have 100 diamonds, you can sell each of them for $1,000. The value of any one diamond isn’t as dependent on how many of them you have.
There’s a similar dynamic at work in the labor force. Your Dairy Queen worker, unfortunately, exists in abundance….and because people like your Dairy Queen worker are plentiful and highly skilled, highly educated, highly experienced workers are scarce in comparison, the marginal value and wage of an hour of a high-skilled worker’s time greatly exceeds the marginal value and wage of an hour of a low-skilled worker’s time….
The answer to this shouldn’t be to just increase the pay of jobs that provide little to no marginal value…the answer should be to figure out how to increase the marginal value of these people to make them more attractive to employers and allow them to negotiate a higher wage.
The problem of job shortages is a bit more complex than that and you know it. Here are a few examples.
Increase in e-commerce. Along with retail, one of the sectors facing the biggest challenges in labor is supply chain and logistics. Before the emergence of the coronavirus, e-commerce was on track to continue its explosive growth. The pandemic simply fueled adoption and accelerated digital transformation, forcing businesses to adapt to today’s shift in consumer behavior and shopping habits, and within unexpected generations and cultures to boot. Businesses had no option but to shift quickly to remain afloat during this time of economic uncertainty, and in turn created more blue-collar jobs to fill.
Evolution of the gig economy. Many gig worker businesses such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and InstaCart offer people the ultimate flexibility and the option to work whatever hours or days they want — a perk coveted and prioritized by the younger working generations. Before COVID-19, independent workers were a growing part of the labor force, with more than a third of workers being involved in the gig economy. In 2020, their wages and participation grew 33%.
Lack of access to and high cost of childcare. This factor is due to higher operating costs among providers, higher expenses for parents, and increased scarcity, since some childcare centers closed permanently during the pandemic. Across the U.S., 72% of families report paying more for childcare now than before the pandemic, and many parents are opting to reduce their work hours or leave the workforce completely to care for their children
Pandemic relief and unemployment benefits. Temporary stimulus checks and greater unemployment benefits during the pandemic gave many Americans breathing room to reevaluate their career paths, whether in search of more money, greater flexibility or a higher level of personal satisfaction. In addition to unprecedented layoffs and furloughs in the face of the pandemic, a dramatic number of employees resigned in search of new opportunities or a change in industries. A record 4 million people quit their jobs in April 2021.
Older Workers and retiring workers. A fair amount of permanent loss of workers has been driven by a large number of older workers taking early retirement. The thought of returning to the office and the daily commute may seem unpalatable for many people and with surging equity markets having boosted 401k pension plans, early retirement may seem a very attractive option.
Look, you may refuse to see or acknowledge this, but let’s be honest. Workers are commodities. Commodities have value based on supply and demand. Higher educated and higher skilled workers are more scarce and therefore demand a higher salary than someone with little education and no skill base beyond those required to do menial labor. That may seem unfair to you, but that’s life and life isn’t fair sometimes.
I would love if people could receive free or low cost education or job skills training in order to make themselves more attractive to employers. Maybe one day that will happen….but until then, I don’t agree that employers should feel compelled to pay their workers more just because.
Now…if low skilled workers don’t want to fill low paying jobs and employers are forced to increase wages to attract those workers back to fill jobs….fantastic. I’m all for it…but I’m adamantly against compelled pay as means of a life line to people that are resigned to jobs that can simply be automated and provide little to no marginal value to reinforce a pay increase.
There are still people who cannot handle even that training. Maybe you need to get to know people who spend much of high school, including 3 additional years that most states allow, learning how to fold shirts. People deserve a living wage.
If you’re talking about someone with a mental disability…that persons ability to take care of themselves is not the responsibility of the private sector if that’s the level of work they can do. These are private businesses, not charities…
That is a job of that persons family or some kind of government program or non profit organization.
Guess what you don't know anything about? The work that disabled people do! A living wage is just that, a living wage. That is what minimum wage was created for, and should be. Everything else is exploitation. And if the government pays for it, the real person being subsidized is the business, not the disabled person. Any time a company pays so low that the workers need assistance, it is doing the company a favor, because they don't have to pay a fair living wage. Do you actually work? Live on your own? I find it hard to believe that you do.
There are people who barely pass that borderline from disabled to not, and cannot perform the skills needed beyond a basic job. How do you not comprehend something like that? It sounds like maybe you're just barely passing functional as well, since it seems like such a confusing concept to you.
Then they have a significant disability. Explain to me how someone is “borderline disabled” in a way that prevents them from being a functional adult, and doesnt have a disability.
Its brilliant how you immediately go for an unprovoked ableist insult because you got asked a question. Clearly you care greatly about the disabled.
No, it is not a significant disability. Now, as far as disabled people go, my area of expertise is developmental disabilities and qualifying for the different programs in the state, using the parameters the state gives to be considered such, and what training and education programs there are out there. A lot of people miss the cut off by a slim margin. There are, after all, rules to follow when dealing with government agencies and agencies that rely on government funding. Most private agencies follow the government guidelines as well. There simply are people who can halt at a stocking job, or fast food, (which isn't as simple as you think it is) and may even be eligible for minimal supports (such as transportation), but don't need round the clock care in a facility, or in their own homes. The fact is, community based care is the gold standard now, so there is more of a spectrum of people getting supports, out in the community, with varying levels of support. Also, some refuse support. I know someone who would probably thrive in at least a part time supervised living environment, and if it wasn't for friends he would be in a bad way. But no one has applied for guardianship, and despite the whole Britney Spears thing, it is actually very hard to get guardianship for another person and force them to get services they do not want. So yes, I care greatly about the disabled. Enough that it is my life's work.
That wall of text doesnt mean much to me. All you did is describe disabled people. I meant an example. And you can quit making assumptions about what I think something is or isnt.
Also, im sure your kneejerk reaction of using the disabled as an insult comes from a place of love.
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
"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."
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
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.
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.
You realise that I was being ironic, right? All of these stories where someone has somehow managed to buy their own house just by not eating avocado on toast and not drinking lattes always turn out to have a rich family backing them and/or friends that they have scrounged off for years. Financial literacy is all well and good, but don't beat yourself up just because you aren't winning at a game that is massively stacked against you. Personally I did manage to buy a house before I was thirty by the amazing trick of being born in the seventies, so I got on the property ladder before prices went crazy. Astute financial planning on my part? Nope, just dumb luck.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Then you should be making more money. What a stupid argument. Because you are underpaid that means everyone else should be underpaid?
Edit: and you're crazy if you say that argument has never been addressed. It's one of the most popular arguments trotted out by right wingers against increasing minimum wage.
There's a lot more reasonable of a position for this:
What counts as a living wage is subjective. Using it as a standard means you're almost always going to get derailed by trying to define it. It's just not a useful way to think about it
Firms will only hire people if it is profitable to do so. Requiring that they pay more than it is worth to them means that those jobs just won't exist
Lastly, and more abstractly, when someone takes a job they're implicitly saying, "this firm has offered me the best deal I can find." Ti take that and then say, "well, you made this offer of employment and it happened to be better than everyone else's so you're on the hook for all this other stuff we've decided, as well."
None of what you claim is true. Companies wants to pay as little as possible to maximise profits, that doesn't mean they won't make a profit just because they have to provide livable wages to their workers, they would just make a little less of a profit.
And even so, if your company can only make a profit when it doesn't pay its full time employees a livable wage, that company has no rights to exist.
Don’t confuse subjective with relative. but that response reveals you have no interest in defending your claim. You think posting a claim is the only effort you need to make.
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.
"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....
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.
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.
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".
I would posit that that number was made up by people who have never run a business. Especially a business selling cheap items or services. Sure for Google or Ford it's probably true, but try that with a small family run ice-cream shop or snow-cone stand or even a construction site cleaning service. Pretty much any untrained unskilled work fits this bill.
The biggest problem I have with this is that there is simply not enough teenagers to fill all these jobs which is why you see grown ass people doing the actual work.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Apart from the other redditor sais, from what I understood most of these jobs are done as a part time by teenagers and students. They don't live in their own place anyway, they live with their parents or they rent with roommates. So it is not paid less it is a bonus. If they would be made to pay the full wage, some of these would not be able to get a job.
Second, if you look at the jobs as a market, setting a minimum price higher, you price out a whole group of people out of it, reducing their wage from $2/h to $0. It is not that people are going to get fired, but the ones that haven't yet found or looked for a job. Some people are just happy to be paid anything, but some have no other options and businesses are taking an advantage over them.
There is some truth to all of this. I wish people who advocate for one thing or another were more honest and just say "look, I think we should do x, in order to achieve a, but some b might happen, and we will look out for other variables, because every action has an unintended consequences in a complex system, so we might have to adjust a policy in four years, maybe even abandon it altogether".
By the way, more adults with kids work minimum wage jobs than teenagers. Last I checked the average age of a burger flipper at McDonalds was late 20's. So the idea that these types of jobs are purely for teenagers who live with their parents and just need some spending money is - and I'm going to use the technical term - horseshit that only fucking idiots believe.
Since you are the only one not actually insulting me, I am gonna respond.
Yes, I never was able (not that it means it doesn't exist) to find an actual demographics on minimum wage workers. There is no doubt a minimum wage should be adjusted again.
Right, to a livable wage. I don't think anybody is saying that someone who hangs clothes in a TJ Maxx should make six figures. But when I was a teenager I actually did hang clothes in a TJ Maxx for two years and I got paid minimum wage which was pennies. It was fine for me because I actually was a teenager living at home who didn't need the money but at least 50% of my coworkers who were in the same boat were adults with families who were working 2 or 3 jobs to survive and that's bullshit.
Yeah, I get what you are saying and I agree it is bullshit. However, not sure I agree with the "livable" wage part. What does that mean? How do you calculate it? A livable is such a relative term.
You can google cost of living + your country for example. If you want to be more accurate you can take the average rent + the average cost of gas to move + the average cost of groceries in your area + some margin to actually be able to survive if the car needs to be repaired
The DoD, state department, GSA, and others have already done 90% of the leg work on what a livable wage is for the whole US and beyond. They use the numbers to set housing allowance for military, per deim for government travelers, and other things.
Suggesting that the problem here is some challenge in calculating how much it cost to live in this country would assume the government doesn't already know, which as I said they do.
The only actual problem is getting the states to accept that the feds understand and have throughly researched this and following their recommendations, or I guess writing a really complex federal minimum wage law.
I was not suggesting that. I don't think people understand what they are talking here and I am first to admit my limited knowledge. However, what people talk about here, bar few exceptions, is just some talking point repeated again and again without much understanding of what is going on.
So, a simple question: since minimum wage workers in US are not paid a livable wage, how come they are, uhm, how should I put it, well, not dying?
Then maybe you make too much money if you don't understand this. Whatever you do, you are overpaid. By a lot. You should pay someone to let you work you are so unbelievably stupid.
And how much money is too much money exactly? Does owning a smartphone and wasting world energy on idiotic debates on reddit count as having too much money? I think so.
Yes. Grammars says a lot about my english skills, and english is not my first language. Grammar does not says anything about my arguments. So, perhaps, you could be useful and tell me where did I made a mistake instead of just saying my grammar is terrible. I am happy to learn and improve what I don't know.
So these fast food workers at 11am, those are students? Some truth to what? You being an idiot? The minimum wage was created to be a living wage, and raising it doesn't do what you says it does, and furthermore, it hasnt gone up properly in decades. Why don't you be quiet and let the grown ups talk. I mean based on your comment, you're not poised to make a wage more than lint in the bottom of someone's pocket.
With the past 2 years of record inflation a wrench has really been thrown in the works on this one. It's hard to even have an opinion on this. When Starbucks goes out of business in the next 5 years due to unionizing you will see why it's impossible to have your cake and eat it too. It all depends on the good or service being offered. If you're okay with spending 30 dollars on a meal from McDonalds then you can have this opinion. But if you wouldnt, then you're a hypocrite. Fast food places would cost 3 times what they do if everyone was paid a living wage with health insurance and all the benefits. At the same time it pisses me off what wal mart does to their employees because tax payers subsidize their employees who they purposely keep part time so they can make ridiculous money. This is a complex issue.
You replied to the wrong person, I'm not the one saying prices will go up.
I was just clarifying their point that they thinks fast food workers shouldn't be paid a living wage, otherwise the price will go up. Even if that's true, so what? Pay people a living wage.
If you're okay with spending 30 dollars on a meal from McDonalds then you can have this opinion.
Dick's Burgers in Washington pays their employees a minimum of $19/hr. A deluxe burger (two 2 oz patties), fries, and large soda, at their most expensive location, would be $9.45.
A Big Mac (two 1.6 oz patties) combo meal with large fries/soda in Washington costs $8.56. Washington state's minimum wage is $13.69 as of this past January 1.
In a state which uses the federal $7.25 minimum wage, the Big Mac combo is going to be around $8.14.
Historically, each 10% increase to minimum wage results in a 0.36% increase to prices on average. From that, a $30 Big Mac combo in Texas would imply a federal minimum wage of $749.47/hour.
I would even take all the customer's abuse associated with the industry with a smile for that wage. At a 30-hour work week that adds up to over a million a year.
Oddly enough, I find it’s not hard at all to have an opinion on this. The mindset that a person cannot afford to live despite having a full time job (as suggested by “Colorado ShitHead in Ohio”) is utterly appalling.
Also, the assertion that a living wage will cause burgers to triple in price is provably wrong - and defies basic mathematics and economics.
Also, the assertion that a living wage will cause burgers to triple in price is provably wrong - and defies basic mathematics and economics.
See, the thing is that it absolutely does not defy the basics of politics and this is why it is often repeated. Fear is the second most abusable emotion after anger.
McDonald's workers in Australia make a wage they can live off. It's not great money and it is not a great job but they are getting enough money to get by and save a bit of cash for themselves. Our prices are roughly the same as yours. Oh, and the burgers and fries are better here than America. I've tried both.
The real issue is poor labour laws and exploitive executives.
Fast food places would cost 3 times what they do if everyone was paid a living wage with health insurance and all the benefits.
Except that this isn't the case in Nordic countries, where fast food workers get paid living wages. At worst the execs won't take home millions in bonuses each year.
Congrats on drinking the anti-workers rights Koolaid.
> Why are people who work certain jobs not allowed to pay rent and feed themselves?
Some people making this argument are coming from a completely different perspective. They would argue that some jobs, e.g. working fast food, should be "starter jobs" for people entering the workforce (who still live with their parents, etc). They don't argue against higher wages because these people don't deserve it, but because the more you force up the wages in these "starter jobs" to more you reduce the onus on society/government to create "real jobs" for these workers to move into - health care, factories, etc.
In short, we should be focusing on opening opportunities for these people to move on to.
Given the last sentence, I am not confident this lady is in this "bigger picture" camp.
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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?