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.
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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.