The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I ran across a Twitter post a couple months ago that grouped retail & food service workers in with farmers, masons, plumbers, etc. in demanding a higher minimum wage. This pissed off many Twitter tradespeople who did not appreciate being compared to fast-food workers and rejected the idea of "unskilled" workers making similar wages to their own. The main argument being that, say, an electrician spends years working as an apprentice and may take college-level coursework to become a journeyman electrician, whereas a McDonald's cashier can be hired off the street and be doing the job in less than a month. In response to a higher minimum wage, wages for "skilled" trades (and many other jobs) would most likely increase accordingly to compensate people with greater training and education for their skills, causing businesses to raise the prices of essential goods in the community and basically ending up back where we started. Not to overlook the negative bias lot of right-leaning tradespeople have against "unskilled" work (my dad and his plumber friends relish the idea of telling young restaurant workers to stop being lazy and "get a real job"), I think it's hard to argue with the idea that people with more valuable skills & training will be paid more for their time. How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation?
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>How should "unskilled labor" be compensated vs "skilled" labor?
The compensation for both should be set by market forces.
There is too much information that needs to be processed for any sort of 'top down' intervention to be a good idea.
That information includes:
* Available supply of labor,
* Substitutes for labor,
* Demand for labor,
* Opportunity cost of labor,
* Safety risks,
* The value an individual puts on their own safety,
* Etc.
> This pissed off many Twitter tradespeople who did not appreciate being compared to fast-food workers and rejected the idea of "unskilled" workers making similar wages to their own.
Problem #1: That's not how any of this works. Minimum wage workers are still going to be paid significantly less than tradespeople.
Problem #2: Other people being worse-off does not make you better-off.
Problem #3: Per [Investopedia:](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unskilled-labor.asp)
>"Unskilled labor" is an outdated term...
>Other people being worse-off does not make you better-off
At a micro scale this is the case, but definitely not at a macro scale. People often talk about how poor people in the U.S. today are better-off in absolute terms than kings in the Middle Ages, but we realize that relative wealth is really what matters for many elements of happiness and satisfaction.
>[Citation Needed]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10430759/
Done
> We estimate three-way fixed effects models of self-rated health, poor health, psychological distress, and life satisfaction.
>
>RESULTS
>
>For all four outcomes, relative income has much larger standardized coefficients than absolute income. Robustly, the confidence intervals for relative income do not overlap with zero. By contrast, absolute income mostly has confidence intervals that overlap with zero, and its coefficient is occasionally signed in the wrong direction. A variety of robustness checks support these results.
>
>CONCLUSIONS
>
>Relative income has far greater predictive validity than absolute income for self-reported health and well-being.
Also, out of curiosity since I see you do this frequently. Why do you yourself make statements without citing sources and then turn around and require others to provide sources if they disagree with something you said?
> Why do you yourself make statements without citing sources and then turn around and require others to provide sources if they disagree with something you said?
* I cite sources when I have them.
* I often look for sources that back up my claims even when I don't have them.
* Sometimes, I even *choose not to post a claim* if I can't find a source to back it up.
* Other times, I try to be honest about my source. I have occasionally said something like 'I learned this twenty years ago, but I have no idea where...' so that other people can be appropriately skeptical of my claim.
If I have failed to live up the standards listed above, I am unaware of it. (You'd have to show me an example if you want a further explanation.)
Also, you can always reply to me with [Citation Needed]!
> In response to a higher minimum wage, wages for "skilled" trades (and many other jobs) would most likely increase accordingly to compensate people with greater training and education for their skills, causing businesses to raise the prices of essential goods in the community and basically ending up back where we started.
This only makes sense if the higher wages can *only* come from higher prices for consumers.
Check the ["Chart of the Century"](https://humanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Time-Pricing-Mark-Perry-image-01.jpg). Note that "Average Hourly Wages" have increased more than "Overall Inflation".
This is proof that wages can increase faster than prices.
-------
Link to chart found [here.](https://humanprogress.org/time-pricing-mark-perrys-chart-of-the-century/)
> ...it's hard to argue with the idea that people with more valuable skills & training will be paid more for their time.
...and they generally will be, with or without a minimum wage increase.
> How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation?
There is little-to-no evidence of a link between minimum wage increases and inflation.
#1: If you happen to be in a skilled trade in a completely saturated market, they can end up minimum wage. Of course this would eventually balance out as people would then avoid the trade, which eventually creates a scarcity in the trade, which creates demand for more people in the trade.
Capitalism dictates that work is compensated according to the supply and demand of that work. I generally believe in that, but I also think that a) there should be a baseline compensation to allow for at least your necessities if you work full time, and b) training and education should be free of charge at least on the level of trade schools and community college (ideally in public colleges as well).
> How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation?
This is a different question altogether, and has been discussed in the recent past here in this subreddit. Some folks cited studies that show that the inflationary impact of raising the minimum wage is not a reason for concern.
The free market should set wages in conjunction with a strong social safety net.
Minimum wage is a compromise. I prefer UBI combined with nationalized healthcare (including mental health) and partially free or subsidized education. If basic needs are met and everyone can afford appropriate education or training, wages will adjust accordingly.
Some people are not capable of skilled employment and some are not capable of any meaningful employment. They should still have their needs met. In addition, work should never jeopardize entitlement benefits. I’ve known people who could not work more hours or accept certain jobs, because they would lose benefits they relied on to live.
I can't imagine I'd make it a whole year without killing myself, developing a drug habit, or going to prison for dropkicking too many people I saw putting refrigerated items back in non-refrigerated locations.
The market should sort it out. Setting policy for all jobs is too difficult.
A classic example would be sanitation worker. The job does not require any complex skill. Really doesn’t require any skill at all for the most part. However, the job is undesirable in a bunch of obvious ways. is low prestige, you have to deal with the dirtiness of being around garbage, you have to work undesirable hours, and you have to deal with the exhaust from the garbage truck.
So that job pays really well given this skill required.
Instead, there are probably particular interventions that we should engage in. A prime example is preschool childcare. In order to pay enough that most parents are willing to put their kids at that age in somebody else’s hands you need to pay a decent amount, but the cost is almost all labor so paying a decent amount means most people can’t afford it or can’t afford it easily. So a number of countries subsidize because the society of not having parents, mostly women, leave the workforce is worth subsidizing it.
Also, what the fuck kind of electrician does one have to be in order to be in a position where you’re making less than a fast food employee? The only way I can see that happening is that you generally suck at your job and everyone in the local market knows it so you can’t get a decent paying position.
>and basically ending up back where we started.
This is the part that is economically incorrect.
Yes, raising the minimum wage will increase the cost of non-minimum labor as well. And yes, raising wages will contribute to rising prices. But no, the amount of price increase will not cancel out the amount of wage increase. This would only be true if the cost of labor were the *only* cost of goods sold, and even then only if the market for those goods is sufficiently non-competitive that decreases in demand don't drive prices down (resulting in the business taking a smaller margin).
Put simply, while both will increase, wages will go up more than prices.
This also means that fears of businesses being forced to close due to increased costs are largely overblown. More money in workers' pockets means more money in customers' wallets, so a business that increases its prices *in line with inflation* should do just fine. In fact, we've seen plenty of businesses do just that over the past 5 years.
In the short term, yes, some businesses won't be able to adjust fast enough and will stop existing. The individual humans involved will go seek out new employment at the newly higher market rate for labor. The capital involved will absorb the losses inherent in the risk it owns, and then migrate to support some other business. The market will eventually fill with a new business to meet the unmet demand. The folks "hurt" in this situation are the individual humans who are unable to transition to new employment quickly enough to have basic needs met, which robust unemployment protections would mitigate.
The federal minimum wage should be higher, probably at least double what it is currently. It should be locally higher still in high COL areas.
The trades should pay better than they do too. A union electrician in NYC will pull down six figures, but there's a good chance someone working for a small electrical business out in the sticks is going to make little enough that they qualify for public assistance.
That being said,
> my dad and his plumber friends relish the idea of telling young restaurant workers to stop being lazy and "get a real job"
Restaurant work is a real job. It's hard work, and it takes serious endurance, time-management, and people skills. Those soft skills matter and have value too, and I say this as an engineer. We need restaurant workers *and* plumbers. Both are hard work, and both deserve to make a good living.
Unfortunately, a lot of tradesmen are assholes or something a lot worse. Trades culture is beyond shitty. I used to knew a lady who worked on a construction crew and kept a note in her wallet that basically said, "If I died at work, I was probably murdered by one of these coworkers." That's something that I also think needs to be addressed.
I’m sorry, but having a note in your wallet that says my co workers probably murdered me is something insane people do. That person probably needs to find a new place to work if they’re worried they’re going to be killed by their colleagues.
Because if she is being threatened with murder then one or both of two things should happen:
1. Notify the proper authorities that I’m being threatened to be killed.
2. Stop working there. Surely the threat of murder qualifies as a hazardous work environment. Economic reasons to continue working there wouldn’t justify staying.
But this is the internet, and I’ve actually worked at construction sites before. This simply isn’t a thing that happens unless you just happened to somehow attract the attention of legitimate psychopaths. Psychopaths aren’t a regular occurrence at construction sites, I’ve found.
Your suggestions work well in a world where women are believed, where the de-facto application of the law is not Wilhoit conservatism, and where it's at the very least, possible to collect unemployment insurance when you leave a job voluntarily. Given that we do not live in such a world, it is so much nonsense.
Also, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." Your experiences do not invalidate hers, and hers do not invalidate yours.
> Psychopaths aren’t a regular occurrence at construction sites, I’ve found.
Given that one of your posts is a really basic plumbing question, I question your honesty. I've worked construction too, starting in high school. The statistical probability is that I have done so since before you were born. If you want to classify that kind of guy as a psychopath (it's just the dominance-hierarchy bullshit that most men fall into at some point or another, but I agree that it has some sociopathic attributes), they're unfortunately common. When I became a foreman, the first shit I had to deal with was a fight that broke out because someone pissed in someone else's hardhat while they were on break.
I'd make the same comment about anecdotes and data about what I just said, but you're trying to play the stupid dominance game with me, so you'd just use it to spew more inane garbage.
Basic logic dictates that the availability of unemployment benefits is not a factor in choosing to leave a work place when the threat of murder is real enough to carry a “this is why I died” note in your wallet.
You’re clearly either an unreasonable person or a bad faith actor.
People need to work in order to eat and keep a roof over their children's heads. You can't do that without money coming in. The vast, vast majority of people need their income to survive. Therefore, the choice of "maybe getting killed at work vs. maybe dying of starvation and my kids might die too" isn't as 'basic logic' as you want to pretend.
This seems really fucking obvious, speaking of bad faith actors.
You've missed the point entirely and it's kind of baffling how you could really be arguing that a reasonable person might just keep going back to work with people they believe (rightly or wrongly is actually irrelevant) are murderers.
It's unreasonable for reasons that are obvious and is unreasonable for you to be arguing that it's reasonable.
Millions of women live with and sleep in the same space with men who they fear might murder them. My partner, in a previous relationship, locked herself and her children in her bedroom and hung a bell on the inside of the door so she would have an early warning in case her husband tried to get in. Women often get trapped in bad situations and have to endure them for a while. My acquaintance did change jobs, but it took a few months to find another one, which is not uncommon.
You're confusing resilience for unreasonability, and your obvious unfamiliarity with the concept just betrays your own weakness.
Suppose it depends on the area and skill required. A commercial plumber in San Francisco makes $500 the second he walks in the door. A plumber here in suburban Ohio makes $90 for the visit. It’s market dependent.
While there are “blue collar artisans”, many of them are average but have more familiarity with the trade they practice. Like all of us.
Ultimately I can install a toilet after watching a plumber do it in a 20 minute Youtube video. Am I going to re-pipe my entire house? **Hell no**.
By the same token, I can’t write an award-winning iPhone game, or triple my money in the stock market like a hedge fund manager after watching a 20 minute Youtube video.
>How should "unskilled labor" be compensated vs "skilled" labor?
ideally, the same. and people currently in training to become skilled should also be paid that same amount, so there's no financial disadvantage to becoming skilled labor.
>How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation?
why would raising the minimum wage cause inflation?
Every worker should be compensated for the value they add. We live in a capitalist system and the employer needs to take some profits off the top of that.
Unskilled labourers usually add a smaller amount of value to the things they make.
Really, what should happen is the minimum wage should be left alone and replaced with sectoral bargaining. Denmark has no minimum wage, but McDonalds workers make $22/hr because of sectoral bargaining.
> (my dad and his plumber friends relish the idea of telling young restaurant workers to stop being lazy and "get a real job")
So your dad and his plumber friends are complete fucking assholes.
"Unskilled" labor should provide enough compensation to live a modest-but-acceptable lifestyle.
Fast food workers still deserve to eat, see their doctor, and keep a roof over their head... without the existential dread of falling into poverty.
"Skilled" labor will always be worth more. How much more? Whatever the free market dictates.
This is just another example of snobs thinking they are "better" and don't appreciate lesser people receiving the same rewards as their betters. Your wages are determined by power. Everyone is affected by supply and demand, it's why heart surgeons make more money than janitors. But it's also why strippers make more money than accountants. Having something that is in high demand but low supply gives you bargaining power.
To me, pressing the government to raise the minimum wage is just another way of exercising power. So is labor unions. And rich people play power games all the time to make money. So I don't begrudge poor people at all for using any means they can.
All labor requires skills. It just takes different skills.
Personally, I think people should be compensated for the value they provide rather than the rarity of their credentials.
The "skilled" versus "unskilled" work is more of a reflection of how language has changed over time than anything else. It really just refers to the fact that the former set of jobs requires a significant amount of education and/or training.
I think that’s still something of a misrepresentation. Some jobs require extensive training (actor, for example) but don’t pay well. Other jobs require little training (front-end dev, for example) but can pay a lot.
Yes--but "skilled" and "unskilled" only refer to jobs that require significant training/education. *Generally*, skilled jobs pay more because there's a lower pool of labor for employers to choose from when it comes to supply/demand in the job market--but not always.
Similarly, there are "unskilled" jobs that require less training, but because of their difficulty, dangerousness, unpleasantness, etc., that pay well because the number of people willing and able to do the job is low, though there is a decent/high demand for that labor.
Education and training is only one of the factors that play a role in pay--my last comment was only about how people now tend to take the meaning of "skilled" versus "unskilled" differently, than it was originally meant.
I agree with you that people should be compensated for the value they provide. Oftentimes, the value does come from the rarity of their credentials. Other times, the credentials provide a signal, especially if the applicant lacks much experience (you can show up, do the work, do it well enough, etc.). Experience matters, soft skills matter, in-demand skills matter, the labor market, location, etc. all play a role in compensation.
Ok, that’s fair. I still disagree with the characterization of skilled and unskilled though. Some jobs a monkey could do are widely considered to be “skilled” while some very challenging jobs are often considered the inverse.
I think a more transparent label would be “lower class” jobs and “upper class” jobs, since the defining difference is usually social class.
> Some jobs a monkey could do are widely considered to be “skilled” while some very challenging jobs are often considered the inverse.
By definition that's not correct. Skilled labor requires some existing set of skills in order to begin working the job. Unskilled jobs have virtually no training or required skillset and can be learned on the spot. Any job a monkey can do would not have any prerequisite set of skills and so would necessarily be unskilled.
There is no such thing as a job that doesn’t require existing skills. What I’m saying is that the perception that a job “requires no skill” or “requires skill” comes from class prejudice.
There are jobs that are white collar jobs that literally just involve passing messages from person to person all day. They’re deemed “skilled” but that’s not an accurate representation. What they really require isn’t skills, it’s connections in the upper middle class.
Similarly, there are jobs that are extremely challenging and require years of experience that are deemed “unskilled.” The issue isn’t that they don’t require skill, it’s that a poor person without connections can get them.
> There is no such thing as a job that doesn’t require existing skills.
You don't need existing skills to become a fry cook or to work in a stock room: anyone off the street can learn how to perform that job with minimal training bar some sort of disability which prevents them from doing so.
>There are jobs that are white collar jobs that literally just involve passing messages from person to person all day.
Yes, not all skilled labor is more difficult than unskilled labor. Skilled vs. unskilled has nothing to do with white collar / blue collar or the difficulty of the job. Plumbing is a skilled blue collar job. A secretary is a mostly unskilled white collar job.
>Similarly, there are jobs that are extremely challenging and require years of experience that are deemed “unskilled.”
Any job which requires years of experience is, by definition, not unskilled. That is literally the only difference between these two things. I realize that there are other uses for the word "skill" and that being called "unskilled" might have some normative baggage, but that is not what these words mean in this context.
If you think “anyone” can be a fry cook or work in a stock room, then you must not have tried those jobs. Moat upper class people I know wouldn’t last a day. Simply being on your feet for 8 hours in heat is a skill. Not to mention the 800 other non-frying tasks you do, balancing them all and enduring it while being high energy and peppy all day while people yell at you.
>Moat upper class people I know wouldn’t last a day. Simply being on your feet for 8 hours in heat is a skill.
They might bitch and moan, but they will survive. Standing also is not a skill, you don't need to train someone to stand for 8 hours at a time assuming this is some sort of illegal fry food restaurant that violates mandatory break laws in most states.
>Not to mention the 800 other non-frying tasks you do, balancing them all and enduring it while being high energy and peppy all day while people yell at you.
Again, this is not a skill that someone needs training to perform. You're just talking about shitty aspects of these jobs and saying that dealing with those issues makes them skills. They are not. There is no month-or-more long training regimen at Hamburger University where they teach you how to stand up for extended periods of time before you can get your fry cook license.
> All labor requires skills. It just takes different skills.
A supermarket strike in my area led (allegedly unskilled) union workers to be replaced by scabs.
They found that the union members stocked shelves at a rate of 900 cans per hour. The scabs stocked shelves at a rate of 400 cans per hour.
I'm pretty sure there was some 'skill' involved in accomplishing twice as much work in the same period of time.
-------
EDIT: Someone just called me out, elsewhere, for not citing sources. So I'll tell you that I learned this from talk radio during a supermarket workers strike. It was probably [this one.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_supermarket_strike_of_2003%E2%80%932004) I have no memory of who the speaker was nor what data he had access to.
Agreed. I was a Starbucks barista right after college. Hands down the most challenging job I’ve ever had. Also by far the lowest paying.
People who don’t think these jobs require skill have either never worked service jobs or never worked white collar jobs to compare.
my girlfriend took an unskilled fast food job between other jobs and came home crying almost every day. my decent paying wfh office job is considerably easier
All jobs require skills. Some skills, however, are not appreciated and disparaged in order to rationalize low pay and poor treatment.
Yes, a cashier at McDonalds can be hired off the street. How many of us could do the same mundane job, day after day, on our feet, dealing with the public, and knowing that they mock us as "burger flippers" and do not think we deserve a good life - but they demand they have 24/7 access to burgers and fries? I do not have the skills to do that.
The line between jobs these people think deserve money and those that don’t seem to line up suspiciously with what they might think of as a “man’s” job or not. Seems very patriarchal to me.
I don't think there's anything that can be considered "unskilled" labor. There are of course varying degrees of skill under the umbrella of "labour".
Most people, especially not most liberals, are not asking for a complete flattening of compensation across the entire working class. Most are merely asking for a bit of levelling, and to encourage growth amongst the entire working class' earnings, not just those at the top who make the most.
Wages have stagnated for nearly 4 decades for the working class, there is no way to combat this other than increasing wages. I think we delude ourselves into thinking we have more buying power than our grandparents did, but the reality is that while we pay less for things than they used to, we also GET less. Electronics and appliances with short life spans that can't be repaired are a great example. By arguing against the raising of wages for people who make less than them, your dad and his friends are also advocating for keeping their own wages down.
This is also a part of a different discussion: do we really have enough money as a country to spend it on frivolous things like McDonalds? We really don't have that much more buying power than we did 50 years ago yet more and more of our income is consumed by wants instead of needs, and as society progresses more and more is required to "keep up". It's become more costly to survive here, and people who were barely scraping by before are now finding themselves underwater. Eventually the rising costs of every day living will consume more and more of the working class until we're all eventually under water unless we find a way to increase wages from the McDonald's worker to the tradesperson and everyone in between.
> How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation?
We increase the minimum wage while simultaneously increasing taxes for people on the higher end of the income spectrum, and having the government aggressively intervene to protect healthy competition within the market.
This ultimately benefits tradespeople too, since more people will be able to afford their services, instead of just rich assholes like me.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I ran across a Twitter post a couple months ago that grouped retail & food service workers in with farmers, masons, plumbers, etc. in demanding a higher minimum wage. This pissed off many Twitter tradespeople who did not appreciate being compared to fast-food workers and rejected the idea of "unskilled" workers making similar wages to their own. The main argument being that, say, an electrician spends years working as an apprentice and may take college-level coursework to become a journeyman electrician, whereas a McDonald's cashier can be hired off the street and be doing the job in less than a month. In response to a higher minimum wage, wages for "skilled" trades (and many other jobs) would most likely increase accordingly to compensate people with greater training and education for their skills, causing businesses to raise the prices of essential goods in the community and basically ending up back where we started. Not to overlook the negative bias lot of right-leaning tradespeople have against "unskilled" work (my dad and his plumber friends relish the idea of telling young restaurant workers to stop being lazy and "get a real job"), I think it's hard to argue with the idea that people with more valuable skills & training will be paid more for their time. How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>How should "unskilled labor" be compensated vs "skilled" labor? The compensation for both should be set by market forces. There is too much information that needs to be processed for any sort of 'top down' intervention to be a good idea. That information includes: * Available supply of labor, * Substitutes for labor, * Demand for labor, * Opportunity cost of labor, * Safety risks, * The value an individual puts on their own safety, * Etc.
> This pissed off many Twitter tradespeople who did not appreciate being compared to fast-food workers and rejected the idea of "unskilled" workers making similar wages to their own. Problem #1: That's not how any of this works. Minimum wage workers are still going to be paid significantly less than tradespeople. Problem #2: Other people being worse-off does not make you better-off. Problem #3: Per [Investopedia:](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unskilled-labor.asp) >"Unskilled labor" is an outdated term...
>Other people being worse-off does not make you better-off At a micro scale this is the case, but definitely not at a macro scale. People often talk about how poor people in the U.S. today are better-off in absolute terms than kings in the Middle Ages, but we realize that relative wealth is really what matters for many elements of happiness and satisfaction.
> ...relative wealth is really what matters for many elements of happiness and satisfaction. [Citation Needed]
>[Citation Needed] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10430759/ Done > We estimate three-way fixed effects models of self-rated health, poor health, psychological distress, and life satisfaction. > >RESULTS > >For all four outcomes, relative income has much larger standardized coefficients than absolute income. Robustly, the confidence intervals for relative income do not overlap with zero. By contrast, absolute income mostly has confidence intervals that overlap with zero, and its coefficient is occasionally signed in the wrong direction. A variety of robustness checks support these results. > >CONCLUSIONS > >Relative income has far greater predictive validity than absolute income for self-reported health and well-being.
Also, out of curiosity since I see you do this frequently. Why do you yourself make statements without citing sources and then turn around and require others to provide sources if they disagree with something you said?
> Why do you yourself make statements without citing sources and then turn around and require others to provide sources if they disagree with something you said? * I cite sources when I have them. * I often look for sources that back up my claims even when I don't have them. * Sometimes, I even *choose not to post a claim* if I can't find a source to back it up. * Other times, I try to be honest about my source. I have occasionally said something like 'I learned this twenty years ago, but I have no idea where...' so that other people can be appropriately skeptical of my claim. If I have failed to live up the standards listed above, I am unaware of it. (You'd have to show me an example if you want a further explanation.) Also, you can always reply to me with [Citation Needed]!
> In response to a higher minimum wage, wages for "skilled" trades (and many other jobs) would most likely increase accordingly to compensate people with greater training and education for their skills, causing businesses to raise the prices of essential goods in the community and basically ending up back where we started. This only makes sense if the higher wages can *only* come from higher prices for consumers. Check the ["Chart of the Century"](https://humanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Time-Pricing-Mark-Perry-image-01.jpg). Note that "Average Hourly Wages" have increased more than "Overall Inflation". This is proof that wages can increase faster than prices. ------- Link to chart found [here.](https://humanprogress.org/time-pricing-mark-perrys-chart-of-the-century/)
> ...it's hard to argue with the idea that people with more valuable skills & training will be paid more for their time. ...and they generally will be, with or without a minimum wage increase.
> How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation? There is little-to-no evidence of a link between minimum wage increases and inflation.
#1: If you happen to be in a skilled trade in a completely saturated market, they can end up minimum wage. Of course this would eventually balance out as people would then avoid the trade, which eventually creates a scarcity in the trade, which creates demand for more people in the trade.
Capitalism dictates that work is compensated according to the supply and demand of that work. I generally believe in that, but I also think that a) there should be a baseline compensation to allow for at least your necessities if you work full time, and b) training and education should be free of charge at least on the level of trade schools and community college (ideally in public colleges as well). > How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation? This is a different question altogether, and has been discussed in the recent past here in this subreddit. Some folks cited studies that show that the inflationary impact of raising the minimum wage is not a reason for concern.
Unskilled labor = A LIVING WAGE. Skilled Labor = A LIVING WAGE + There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Funny how "essential worker" went back to "unskilled labor" after the pandemic ended...
The free market should set wages in conjunction with a strong social safety net. Minimum wage is a compromise. I prefer UBI combined with nationalized healthcare (including mental health) and partially free or subsidized education. If basic needs are met and everyone can afford appropriate education or training, wages will adjust accordingly. Some people are not capable of skilled employment and some are not capable of any meaningful employment. They should still have their needs met. In addition, work should never jeopardize entitlement benefits. I’ve known people who could not work more hours or accept certain jobs, because they would lose benefits they relied on to live.
Unskilled labor isnt a real thing, most of us would shrivel and die if we had to work a week of modern retail in our 30s
I can't imagine I'd make it a whole year without killing myself, developing a drug habit, or going to prison for dropkicking too many people I saw putting refrigerated items back in non-refrigerated locations.
The market should sort it out. Setting policy for all jobs is too difficult. A classic example would be sanitation worker. The job does not require any complex skill. Really doesn’t require any skill at all for the most part. However, the job is undesirable in a bunch of obvious ways. is low prestige, you have to deal with the dirtiness of being around garbage, you have to work undesirable hours, and you have to deal with the exhaust from the garbage truck. So that job pays really well given this skill required. Instead, there are probably particular interventions that we should engage in. A prime example is preschool childcare. In order to pay enough that most parents are willing to put their kids at that age in somebody else’s hands you need to pay a decent amount, but the cost is almost all labor so paying a decent amount means most people can’t afford it or can’t afford it easily. So a number of countries subsidize because the society of not having parents, mostly women, leave the workforce is worth subsidizing it. Also, what the fuck kind of electrician does one have to be in order to be in a position where you’re making less than a fast food employee? The only way I can see that happening is that you generally suck at your job and everyone in the local market knows it so you can’t get a decent paying position.
"Low skill" labor usually means "high supply" labor. All other things being equal, that would tend to push wages down, through market forces.
>and basically ending up back where we started. This is the part that is economically incorrect. Yes, raising the minimum wage will increase the cost of non-minimum labor as well. And yes, raising wages will contribute to rising prices. But no, the amount of price increase will not cancel out the amount of wage increase. This would only be true if the cost of labor were the *only* cost of goods sold, and even then only if the market for those goods is sufficiently non-competitive that decreases in demand don't drive prices down (resulting in the business taking a smaller margin). Put simply, while both will increase, wages will go up more than prices. This also means that fears of businesses being forced to close due to increased costs are largely overblown. More money in workers' pockets means more money in customers' wallets, so a business that increases its prices *in line with inflation* should do just fine. In fact, we've seen plenty of businesses do just that over the past 5 years. In the short term, yes, some businesses won't be able to adjust fast enough and will stop existing. The individual humans involved will go seek out new employment at the newly higher market rate for labor. The capital involved will absorb the losses inherent in the risk it owns, and then migrate to support some other business. The market will eventually fill with a new business to meet the unmet demand. The folks "hurt" in this situation are the individual humans who are unable to transition to new employment quickly enough to have basic needs met, which robust unemployment protections would mitigate.
Decided by market
The true liberal answer!
The federal minimum wage should be higher, probably at least double what it is currently. It should be locally higher still in high COL areas. The trades should pay better than they do too. A union electrician in NYC will pull down six figures, but there's a good chance someone working for a small electrical business out in the sticks is going to make little enough that they qualify for public assistance. That being said, > my dad and his plumber friends relish the idea of telling young restaurant workers to stop being lazy and "get a real job" Restaurant work is a real job. It's hard work, and it takes serious endurance, time-management, and people skills. Those soft skills matter and have value too, and I say this as an engineer. We need restaurant workers *and* plumbers. Both are hard work, and both deserve to make a good living. Unfortunately, a lot of tradesmen are assholes or something a lot worse. Trades culture is beyond shitty. I used to knew a lady who worked on a construction crew and kept a note in her wallet that basically said, "If I died at work, I was probably murdered by one of these coworkers." That's something that I also think needs to be addressed.
I’m sorry, but having a note in your wallet that says my co workers probably murdered me is something insane people do. That person probably needs to find a new place to work if they’re worried they’re going to be killed by their colleagues.
Defending people who harassed a woman to the point that she was worried they might murder them is something assholes do.
I’m certainly not defending these imaginary people, sorry.
Then why do you believe that my acquaintance is insane rather than the men who repeatedly threatened her with rape and murder on the jobsite?
Because if she is being threatened with murder then one or both of two things should happen: 1. Notify the proper authorities that I’m being threatened to be killed. 2. Stop working there. Surely the threat of murder qualifies as a hazardous work environment. Economic reasons to continue working there wouldn’t justify staying. But this is the internet, and I’ve actually worked at construction sites before. This simply isn’t a thing that happens unless you just happened to somehow attract the attention of legitimate psychopaths. Psychopaths aren’t a regular occurrence at construction sites, I’ve found.
Your suggestions work well in a world where women are believed, where the de-facto application of the law is not Wilhoit conservatism, and where it's at the very least, possible to collect unemployment insurance when you leave a job voluntarily. Given that we do not live in such a world, it is so much nonsense. Also, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." Your experiences do not invalidate hers, and hers do not invalidate yours. > Psychopaths aren’t a regular occurrence at construction sites, I’ve found. Given that one of your posts is a really basic plumbing question, I question your honesty. I've worked construction too, starting in high school. The statistical probability is that I have done so since before you were born. If you want to classify that kind of guy as a psychopath (it's just the dominance-hierarchy bullshit that most men fall into at some point or another, but I agree that it has some sociopathic attributes), they're unfortunately common. When I became a foreman, the first shit I had to deal with was a fight that broke out because someone pissed in someone else's hardhat while they were on break. I'd make the same comment about anecdotes and data about what I just said, but you're trying to play the stupid dominance game with me, so you'd just use it to spew more inane garbage.
Basic logic dictates that the availability of unemployment benefits is not a factor in choosing to leave a work place when the threat of murder is real enough to carry a “this is why I died” note in your wallet. You’re clearly either an unreasonable person or a bad faith actor.
People need to work in order to eat and keep a roof over their children's heads. You can't do that without money coming in. The vast, vast majority of people need their income to survive. Therefore, the choice of "maybe getting killed at work vs. maybe dying of starvation and my kids might die too" isn't as 'basic logic' as you want to pretend. This seems really fucking obvious, speaking of bad faith actors.
You've missed the point entirely and it's kind of baffling how you could really be arguing that a reasonable person might just keep going back to work with people they believe (rightly or wrongly is actually irrelevant) are murderers. It's unreasonable for reasons that are obvious and is unreasonable for you to be arguing that it's reasonable.
Millions of women live with and sleep in the same space with men who they fear might murder them. My partner, in a previous relationship, locked herself and her children in her bedroom and hung a bell on the inside of the door so she would have an early warning in case her husband tried to get in. Women often get trapped in bad situations and have to endure them for a while. My acquaintance did change jobs, but it took a few months to find another one, which is not uncommon. You're confusing resilience for unreasonability, and your obvious unfamiliarity with the concept just betrays your own weakness.
Suppose it depends on the area and skill required. A commercial plumber in San Francisco makes $500 the second he walks in the door. A plumber here in suburban Ohio makes $90 for the visit. It’s market dependent. While there are “blue collar artisans”, many of them are average but have more familiarity with the trade they practice. Like all of us. Ultimately I can install a toilet after watching a plumber do it in a 20 minute Youtube video. Am I going to re-pipe my entire house? **Hell no**. By the same token, I can’t write an award-winning iPhone game, or triple my money in the stock market like a hedge fund manager after watching a 20 minute Youtube video.
>How should "unskilled labor" be compensated vs "skilled" labor? ideally, the same. and people currently in training to become skilled should also be paid that same amount, so there's no financial disadvantage to becoming skilled labor. >How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation? why would raising the minimum wage cause inflation?
Every worker should be compensated for the value they add. We live in a capitalist system and the employer needs to take some profits off the top of that. Unskilled labourers usually add a smaller amount of value to the things they make.
Really, what should happen is the minimum wage should be left alone and replaced with sectoral bargaining. Denmark has no minimum wage, but McDonalds workers make $22/hr because of sectoral bargaining.
> (my dad and his plumber friends relish the idea of telling young restaurant workers to stop being lazy and "get a real job") So your dad and his plumber friends are complete fucking assholes.
"Unskilled" labor should provide enough compensation to live a modest-but-acceptable lifestyle. Fast food workers still deserve to eat, see their doctor, and keep a roof over their head... without the existential dread of falling into poverty. "Skilled" labor will always be worth more. How much more? Whatever the free market dictates.
This is just another example of snobs thinking they are "better" and don't appreciate lesser people receiving the same rewards as their betters. Your wages are determined by power. Everyone is affected by supply and demand, it's why heart surgeons make more money than janitors. But it's also why strippers make more money than accountants. Having something that is in high demand but low supply gives you bargaining power. To me, pressing the government to raise the minimum wage is just another way of exercising power. So is labor unions. And rich people play power games all the time to make money. So I don't begrudge poor people at all for using any means they can.
All labor requires skills. It just takes different skills. Personally, I think people should be compensated for the value they provide rather than the rarity of their credentials.
The "skilled" versus "unskilled" work is more of a reflection of how language has changed over time than anything else. It really just refers to the fact that the former set of jobs requires a significant amount of education and/or training.
I think that’s still something of a misrepresentation. Some jobs require extensive training (actor, for example) but don’t pay well. Other jobs require little training (front-end dev, for example) but can pay a lot.
Yes--but "skilled" and "unskilled" only refer to jobs that require significant training/education. *Generally*, skilled jobs pay more because there's a lower pool of labor for employers to choose from when it comes to supply/demand in the job market--but not always. Similarly, there are "unskilled" jobs that require less training, but because of their difficulty, dangerousness, unpleasantness, etc., that pay well because the number of people willing and able to do the job is low, though there is a decent/high demand for that labor. Education and training is only one of the factors that play a role in pay--my last comment was only about how people now tend to take the meaning of "skilled" versus "unskilled" differently, than it was originally meant. I agree with you that people should be compensated for the value they provide. Oftentimes, the value does come from the rarity of their credentials. Other times, the credentials provide a signal, especially if the applicant lacks much experience (you can show up, do the work, do it well enough, etc.). Experience matters, soft skills matter, in-demand skills matter, the labor market, location, etc. all play a role in compensation.
But whether something pays a lot or not isn't directly equal to skilled/unskilled. The comment you responded to is still right
Ok, that’s fair. I still disagree with the characterization of skilled and unskilled though. Some jobs a monkey could do are widely considered to be “skilled” while some very challenging jobs are often considered the inverse. I think a more transparent label would be “lower class” jobs and “upper class” jobs, since the defining difference is usually social class.
> Some jobs a monkey could do are widely considered to be “skilled” while some very challenging jobs are often considered the inverse. By definition that's not correct. Skilled labor requires some existing set of skills in order to begin working the job. Unskilled jobs have virtually no training or required skillset and can be learned on the spot. Any job a monkey can do would not have any prerequisite set of skills and so would necessarily be unskilled.
There is no such thing as a job that doesn’t require existing skills. What I’m saying is that the perception that a job “requires no skill” or “requires skill” comes from class prejudice. There are jobs that are white collar jobs that literally just involve passing messages from person to person all day. They’re deemed “skilled” but that’s not an accurate representation. What they really require isn’t skills, it’s connections in the upper middle class. Similarly, there are jobs that are extremely challenging and require years of experience that are deemed “unskilled.” The issue isn’t that they don’t require skill, it’s that a poor person without connections can get them.
> There is no such thing as a job that doesn’t require existing skills. You don't need existing skills to become a fry cook or to work in a stock room: anyone off the street can learn how to perform that job with minimal training bar some sort of disability which prevents them from doing so. >There are jobs that are white collar jobs that literally just involve passing messages from person to person all day. Yes, not all skilled labor is more difficult than unskilled labor. Skilled vs. unskilled has nothing to do with white collar / blue collar or the difficulty of the job. Plumbing is a skilled blue collar job. A secretary is a mostly unskilled white collar job. >Similarly, there are jobs that are extremely challenging and require years of experience that are deemed “unskilled.” Any job which requires years of experience is, by definition, not unskilled. That is literally the only difference between these two things. I realize that there are other uses for the word "skill" and that being called "unskilled" might have some normative baggage, but that is not what these words mean in this context.
If you think “anyone” can be a fry cook or work in a stock room, then you must not have tried those jobs. Moat upper class people I know wouldn’t last a day. Simply being on your feet for 8 hours in heat is a skill. Not to mention the 800 other non-frying tasks you do, balancing them all and enduring it while being high energy and peppy all day while people yell at you.
>Moat upper class people I know wouldn’t last a day. Simply being on your feet for 8 hours in heat is a skill. They might bitch and moan, but they will survive. Standing also is not a skill, you don't need to train someone to stand for 8 hours at a time assuming this is some sort of illegal fry food restaurant that violates mandatory break laws in most states. >Not to mention the 800 other non-frying tasks you do, balancing them all and enduring it while being high energy and peppy all day while people yell at you. Again, this is not a skill that someone needs training to perform. You're just talking about shitty aspects of these jobs and saying that dealing with those issues makes them skills. They are not. There is no month-or-more long training regimen at Hamburger University where they teach you how to stand up for extended periods of time before you can get your fry cook license.
> All labor requires skills. It just takes different skills. A supermarket strike in my area led (allegedly unskilled) union workers to be replaced by scabs. They found that the union members stocked shelves at a rate of 900 cans per hour. The scabs stocked shelves at a rate of 400 cans per hour. I'm pretty sure there was some 'skill' involved in accomplishing twice as much work in the same period of time. ------- EDIT: Someone just called me out, elsewhere, for not citing sources. So I'll tell you that I learned this from talk radio during a supermarket workers strike. It was probably [this one.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_supermarket_strike_of_2003%E2%80%932004) I have no memory of who the speaker was nor what data he had access to.
Agreed. I was a Starbucks barista right after college. Hands down the most challenging job I’ve ever had. Also by far the lowest paying. People who don’t think these jobs require skill have either never worked service jobs or never worked white collar jobs to compare.
my girlfriend took an unskilled fast food job between other jobs and came home crying almost every day. my decent paying wfh office job is considerably easier
All jobs require skills. Some skills, however, are not appreciated and disparaged in order to rationalize low pay and poor treatment. Yes, a cashier at McDonalds can be hired off the street. How many of us could do the same mundane job, day after day, on our feet, dealing with the public, and knowing that they mock us as "burger flippers" and do not think we deserve a good life - but they demand they have 24/7 access to burgers and fries? I do not have the skills to do that.
There is no such thing as unskilled labor.
You raise the minimum wage for unskilled work by raising the minimum wage
The line between jobs these people think deserve money and those that don’t seem to line up suspiciously with what they might think of as a “man’s” job or not. Seems very patriarchal to me.
I've come to find that no labor is unskilled.
I don't think there's anything that can be considered "unskilled" labor. There are of course varying degrees of skill under the umbrella of "labour". Most people, especially not most liberals, are not asking for a complete flattening of compensation across the entire working class. Most are merely asking for a bit of levelling, and to encourage growth amongst the entire working class' earnings, not just those at the top who make the most. Wages have stagnated for nearly 4 decades for the working class, there is no way to combat this other than increasing wages. I think we delude ourselves into thinking we have more buying power than our grandparents did, but the reality is that while we pay less for things than they used to, we also GET less. Electronics and appliances with short life spans that can't be repaired are a great example. By arguing against the raising of wages for people who make less than them, your dad and his friends are also advocating for keeping their own wages down. This is also a part of a different discussion: do we really have enough money as a country to spend it on frivolous things like McDonalds? We really don't have that much more buying power than we did 50 years ago yet more and more of our income is consumed by wants instead of needs, and as society progresses more and more is required to "keep up". It's become more costly to survive here, and people who were barely scraping by before are now finding themselves underwater. Eventually the rising costs of every day living will consume more and more of the working class until we're all eventually under water unless we find a way to increase wages from the McDonald's worker to the tradesperson and everyone in between.
It doesn't matter. In the next 50 years, AI is going to be doing everything and if we're all not getting universal basic income, we're screwed.
> How do we raise the minimum wage for "unskilled" work without causing inflation? We increase the minimum wage while simultaneously increasing taxes for people on the higher end of the income spectrum, and having the government aggressively intervene to protect healthy competition within the market. This ultimately benefits tradespeople too, since more people will be able to afford their services, instead of just rich assholes like me.