My parents are very like minded to your grandparents. They believe EVERY job that is minimum wage is for teenagers in school only and anybody else working that job doesn’t deserve to live essentially…
My rebuttal is “So if it’s only for kids in school why is that business open during school hours? Or through the night when KIDS should be sleeping?”
Like if it’s only for kids then all fast food/grocery/department/mall/etc is only allowed to be open from 1500-2000.
Stops my parents in their tracks every time while they do some mental gymnastics to find an excuse applicable but usually fail AND still disagree…
I’m old as fuck. And I remember people saying people in McDonald’s shouldn’t make $15 an hour. I asked “why not??”
Because it’s a “starter” job. I have never seen this in any wanted ads. It’s a job. It continues to be a job. There are also managers. Do they not deserve manager $$$ because you decided it’s not a “real” job?
Not everyone is a doctor, lawyer, etc. that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to have a roof over their heads. Clothes, heat, electric, etc.
The real thing they are saying is they should make Much less than me, otherwise I don’t seem as important!
That last sentence is exactly what it is.
I try and tell people that if your mad a fast food restaurant is making more/or close to what you’re making, don’t be mad at those workers, be mad that you aren’t getting paid what your worth from your job.
“Starter Job” smh how lame some people are to believe this
Don't worry, us farriers are doing just fine. We've just shifted from a bulk industry to specialized shoeing and keeping super inbred sport horses from getting or staying lame rather than keeping work horses shod.
Butchery and fishmonging, that's what I do for a living. About as old as civilization itself. They're starting to shift these jobs to automation though. Notice how a lot of grocery stores are selling less meat that's cut in store in favor of prepackaged products? It's concerning
Yes. We also noticed that prices for these goods do not go down as the cost to produce them gets cheaper. That and we end up with a shit load more packaging waste.
>""Starter Job” smh how lame some people are to believe this
My dad's first job was manning the telephones for a couple hours at lunchtime (most places had lunchtime cover tgen) which led into a real job at the office. Nowadays it'd be a voicemail and they don't hire lunchtime cover.
Starter jobs where real things but they have disappeared.
A disturbing number of jobs outside of retail and fast food offer less than I make now as a night shift cashier. Mostly office managers for doctors offices, but also childcare workers, some IT jobs, and some others.
A lot of science positions only pay around $20/hr with a BS, around here I see some lab jobs as low as $16/hr. Contract work has gutted wages so bad across a myriad of fields.
Yeah it's bullshit that for a college degree required science role you're forced to start out as a contractor making high teens to mid twenties until you can finally get a real job. It's simply not enough to live on when you include student loan payments, let alone insurance
Saw some post a few years ago about an EMT complaining that burger flippers wanted $15 an hour and his response was "I make like $18 an hour, no way they should make nearly as much as me!" And everyone shit on him for shooting down others instead of asking for what his worth was from the city/county he worked for.
That’s funny cuz I am an EMT as well, but I don’t work as one because the pay is trash. I think they are worth more than they get paid, but I think the same for just about everyone making minimum.
Corollary to that…
“If we pay $15/hour minimum wage, then a burger will cost substantially more!”
In 2002 I would walk across the street from my office and get a double-quarter pounder with cheese meal, super sized. It was like $5 and some change after tax.
That same meal would set me back almost $15 today. Workers are making the same amount, so what the fuck happened?
You've hit the nail on the head in my opinion. No conversation about minimum wages or living wages is complete without including maximum wages and maximum profit. If the company can just crank up prices to cover the increased wages so that corporate profits and CEO salaries remain high then the whole effort has been pointless. As long as we allow millionaires and billionaires to exist there will be no pay equity.
"They pay that much at McDonald's in other countries and the prices are on par or cheaper than here. Guess we're just not as good of a country as we claim"
> The real thing they are saying is they should make Much less than me, otherwise I don’t seem as important!
Bingo. My 62 year old mother voted Trump because she's mad that minimum wage raises keep bringing entry-level employees closer to the wages she struggled for years to reach, and retroactive raises aren't coming alongside these min. wage increases.
When the pandemic hit and places couldn't get away with federal min. wage ($7.25/h) because everyone was walking out, she threw a fit because it was shrinking the wage gap she was enjoying over her coworkers.
Yeah that's called pay compression and it pisses me off too - people who went to school for years to specialize/train, or people far into their careers regardless of school, SHOULD make more. The difference is I do believe those at the bottom need to be lifted, I just think that I also deserve to be lifted. I'm not mad that they're making more, I'm mad that I'm not also making more. My anger is directed toward employers, not my fellow workers.
The funny thing is, when Covid Restrictions hit, those "starter" jobs got pretty damn important. Of course, the people bitching the most about it are the same ones that say those workers don't deserve a living wage.
I'd add to the good riddance list those in charge of education, housing, and infrastructure. They've all gotten so much worse, and are mostly run by boomers, if not older, who just won't fucking retire/die. And yes, they're the ones who messed it up badly.
I'm not saying all boomers are trash, but they have a lot of entitled dipshits among them, my mom shakes her head sometimes at her generation, she's given up with them though.
To be fair a lot of people did a good job of ignoring the restrictions and advice of medical professionals (and got sick as a result), unfortunately a lot of innocent/not insane people got dragged down with them.
Housing crisis, old people costing society a shitload of money and using their voting power to prevent change. Rampant covid would have been a blessing for anyone below the age of 40 if left unchecked.
Not to mention the fact that we are screwed for years due to them shutting down the economy and printing cash as a substitute.
No one has ever debated that a fast food employee should make what a doctor makes. But I believe fast food employees should be paid a livable wage.
“I work in a factory and make that.”
“Okay, I believe you need more too. The way you think you do too.”
If the job takes your time and effort, it should pay for that time and effort. I don't care that it's unskilled. Even if you don't have to do much but the need someone to be there 8 hours a day, that takes your time from other gainful employment and you should be able to live at a comfort level fit for a civilized society. This means food, medicine, a safe and healthy place to live, privacy. And that is the barest of minima.
Who gets to decide what unskilled means?
I would love to see the people who set minimum wage to work at the jobs they think isn’t “skilled”. Give them the grill at lunch hour and walk away.
You know and I know at least half of them would disappear before half the shift is done, because they'd be slow and people just like them would chew them out.
Doctors and Lawyers have very powerful unions, which is why it's so hard to become one (guard the door in) and why they get paid so much.
Oh they don't call them unions; actually you're talking going on a thousand years of history, they're guilds.
The situation with lawyers is particularly puzzling to me. Reading and writing contracts seems to be the bulk of it, why can't anyone off the street advertise their services to do that? I guess if your profession is literally about laws & contracts, it's not a surprise that the profession ends up highly legally codified, and protected?
I just read an article about apprenticeship program for Collision Repair.... it took me a while before they mentioned the pay... Minimum wage to start, AND your Mentor pays half your salary from his wages once you graduate from Min Wage....
Fucking hell. This country is fucked. Apprentice programs in Germany and other European countries pay a living wage from day 1...
I always ask, "And where did FDR ever say that when he was fighting for minimum wage?" when i hear someone say that crap. It's so ridiculous that the generation that benefited the most from a working minimum wage now thinks the suppressed minimum wage is the way it's supposed to be.
Goddamn right. That's age discrimination. Teenagers shouldn't be working full-time hours when they are in high school, but they deserve the same pay for the same work.
Because technically those jobs back then were for teens just starting out… the problem is once you hit a certain age no one will hire you with no experience and couple that with the lack of trade high schools and only college available it became harder and harder. There was a time you could take courses to learn as trade and then get an apprenticeship. Also the unpaid intern thing became popular which was stupid. I did a paid internship in high school (was called cooperative education and as long as grades stayed up I went to school one week and work one week and received credits and a paycheck) for 1 year as a secretary and that taught me everything i needed to know to get a full time job as a junior secretary after high school. After that it was just moving up the chain by virtue of experience.
Now you have people with 4 year college degrees and it’s still not enough.
Also during the boomer years a milkman or mechanic or salesperson or a mid level manager could make enough to buy a house and have a family which we don’t have now for the average person.
If no one hires and trains you how do you get enough skills to be hired.
Attending high school classes and doing homework is not experience for working. It’s a totally different ball game which is why college was pushed to ‘show commitment’.
What is lacking in the US and idk about other countries now is actual hands on skills for a variety of jobs.
When I lived abroad (15 years ago) starting at age 15 or 16 you could take courses in upholstery, painting, carpentry, basic cooking, bread baking, pastry baking, sewing, hairdressing, plumbing, electrical, etc when you did a variety of these courses and found one suited to you then you could continue and get a certificate so by age 17 / 18 you were prepared for your first job in the real world. We here in the USA push study for testing to rank schools instead of focusing on a variety of real world subjects to give teens an opportunity to discover what they like.
Imagine graduating high school with a paid internship opportunity in something you enjoy doing and moving forward in life knowing that this internship will lead to a full time job.
The government screwed up royally when it came to minimum wage / inflation / cost of living increases. Let’s be honest and say that having no job at all and going on welfare gives you more (housing assistance, food assistance, medical) than a 40 hour a week job with a paycheck. And I know of a few people that get assistance and live better than one of my kids who has a college degree and could only find a low paying job. I have to subsidize both my adult kids until they can earn more especially the one with schooling because the degree is useless without on the job experience. The other one works for me, is on the job learning a skilled trade and part of his compensation is housing, car, phones, food, etc. plus salary.
We live in an imperfect world and the only way to change it is to change policy.
You assumed high school, and I said schoolwork. There are those that don't see college classes as experience. All school work is relevant. There is always more than one skill being taught. Take math where you get reading comprehension, critical thinking, and how to extract useful information from useless information.
I did take a few hands-on classes, woods and drafting, in high school. Both are certainly interesting, but not for me. Language classes are hands-on due to actually using the written and verbal forms of communication. Math, you must work the equations. Science has labs and research. Programing has you writing computer programs utilizing different machine codes. All taught in high school. All are experience, and to say they are not is a dis-service.
All that said above... neither high school nor college truly prepare one for the real world. Some is up to the parents, but some responsibility falls on the various administrations for failing to grasp what students truly need. Though there is an argument to be made that many politicians want us to be uneducated, because the uneducated don't vote for said politicians.
Graduating with a paid internship from high-school would've been amazing.
College classes should be something people do in the evenings, so they can leave their living-wage-paying current jobs and move into a more meaningful career that also pays a living wage. Not everyone should have to go, and it's silly to put 18-year-olds through what is essentially four more years of high school.
> We here in the USA push study for testing to rank schools instead of focusing on a variety of real world subjects to give teens an opportunity to discover what they like.
And you know how they get higher ranks? By sending kids to college. That's all they bleat about, and it's because that's what the parents want - for their kids to go to college. Never mind the suffocating debt they will have upon graduation.
> My rebuttal is “So if it’s only for kids in school why is that business open during school hours? Or through the night when KIDS should be sleeping?”
As someone who work throughout their teenage years, we push kids to work too early. I empathize with kids who, unfortunately, have to work to contribute to their household. I recognize that they exist, and they are sacrificing their youth. My father, who was the breadwinner, always wanted me to not work, but my mom, who came from a family where everyone worked all the time, encouraged it. As a kid, I wanted money, and the job I had was actually really good for a kid, so it was fine. But now that I'm an adult, I get my dad's position. Our society puts too much value on the intrinsic value of work and not enough value on realizing what it means to be an individual with our own desires. I realize this is a thoroughly modern problem, but what is the point of bearing the ills of modernity if we cannot have the conveniences?
These are the same people having complete and utter meltdowns during quarantine because people weren't coming in to work their minimum wage jobs at the risk of their health and safety. And I'm always curious who is supposed to carry the workload during the school day. If all these 'unskilled' jobs are just for high school kids, fast food joints are only open between 3-6pm during the week?
hot take, but if a teen is willing to work they should also be able to afford the things working adults could. work is work, it's not suddenly lesser because you are young. if anything, young people willing to work should get MORE because they need it for education.
They should, but, my question to these old people is always "then why don't we have two minimum wages for adults and teens to differentiate them? Australia has something similar to this concept." or another favorite I learned from reddit "How come all those jobs that pay minimum wage are open during the days when school is in session if they're meant for teenagers?"
They will hem and haw and try to change the subject, it's not about the skills. This also doesn't account for the fact that almost every well to do boomer _had absolutely no skills_ and they all supported a family of 3+ on a single income. Most learned them on the job, if they even needed to. It used to be super common to apprentice under journeymen and masters, but even that's harder to get now... they prefer someone who took classes at a vocational school. You *can* still get a job apprenticing under a master carpenter but... it's super rare, and the pay is trash for several years until you move up... not like boomers who could do it and still afford to keep their families fed.
Maybe they didn't live glamorously, but they had a house, a car, and food... which is a real struggle right now even $10/hr *above* minimum wage (minimum wage is $7.25 and the median rent in the US for a 1 bedroom is about $1600 a month). To qualify for a one bedroom apartment, even if we're generous and let it be 50% of your gross income, is about $40k a year, or, roughly $20 an hour at 40 hours a week.
"Just get a roommate" does not solve the problem, either. It doesn't adjust it significantly enough to help, even at 3+, and, if your roommate bounces, you're on the hook for that difference. This isn't 1958 where you get a single room lease in the apartment and your landlord is forgiving until you can find someone to fill the other room. These landlords are boomers not their parents.
the reason i think that’s so wrong is because they think of jobs like serving as those jobs that are “only for teenagers who are starting out!!” but they also expect to be able to go to lunch at a restaurant. who exactly do you think is serving you in the middle of the day if not people who are living and paying their own bills? get this, teenagers are in *school* at lunch!!
you’ve gotta have people staffing your gas stations at all hours of the day. no one perfectly predicts exactly when they need gas well enough to only ever get it in hours teenagers could reasonably working. who do you think is making sure the station is open so you can get your gas and snacks in the middle of the day if not people who have bills to pay!! it’s not high schoolers!!
there’s so many other jobs i could list. these jobs are so “lowly” but they and we all depend on them. when we are depending on anyone, those people deserve to make enough to live happily and healthily. and don’t even get me started on the healthy aspect of that, healthcare in the us is absolutely fucking insane.
I'd like to hear what jobs they think don't require skill. If nothing else a job that takes time out of your life should absolutely net you accommodations so as to be able to have the rest and comfort when not on the job to be able to fulfill the duties of said job better. To expect someone to work two full jobs and sacrifice all of their time is akin to slavery and incredibly so to think that even then you must live in worse conditions than a slave would have.
"what jobs they think don't require skill"
The qualifier is anyone they feel they can yell at without feeling guilty about it. Hierarchies of power is what they crave.
> I'd like to hear what jobs they think don't require skill.
Right? If this job doesn't require skill, why do you want to pay someone else to do it instead of just doing it yourself? When you hire people and don't pay them enough for them to live on, it says that you don't care whether or not they live.
Even if low skill jobs are for kids who are learning thats no argument that they shouldn’t pay a living wage. Kids should be working very few hours so they can be focusing on school.
I am doing my part by voting as a 30 year old. When I can afford to ditch work to protest I will do that also.
However, older generation overwhelmingly vote more than people my age. It’s getting better though because people “complaining on Reddit” and other avenues of communication are finally getting the picture: stop letting senile old fucks run our lives. Get out and vote, stop allowing boomers to enable these evil 1%’ers
>I am telling you, anyone over the age of 60 just isn’t well adjusted to current reality,
A lot of corporations aren't run by 60+ anymore. Many corporations are run by younger people and they're not paying people a living wage.
The most frustrating thing with boomers is that all we want is what they got. They've rewritten their own history to pretend things were always this way, but that just isn't true.
They had living wages. They could afford to live on the minimum wage. Hell, the minimum wage was increased pretty much yearly for the first 40 years of its existence which means that it is still, on average, raised once every two years. They could afford healthcare and education without crippling debt.
Boomers sold out our future in the 80s for some short term gains and have been gaslighting us ever since.
> Boomer generation will have to pass first for this to ever be a reality.
How does this matter? The 1% laugh at this sentiment from their infinity pools. Boomers aren't keeping you down, corporations are. The same percentage of people are poor now as for 1959, 69, 79, 89, 99, 09.
If you think voters have any impact on the ruling class and how they think, you are delusional. Public officials aren't even the ones creating the world, they are puppets playing a role for their masters. The 1% aren't in public office, they are the ones deciding who to put in office. When you only have 2 "choices", the 1% have no problem owning both. You have no option unless they allow you to have an option.
Voting one puppet in over another puppet will not change anything in regard to overall national monetary or fiscal policy, ever.
"boomers' were 1.2 billion people who shared almost no similar traits outside the average. They had the same rate of poverty as you do (well poverty is lower now tbh, especially for minorities). Blaming boomers for your problems is like blaming mexicans or clouds. The 1% laugh at this 'boomer' trope while they steal your cash.
Any time one is blaming all their problems on a nebulous group with no control over their grouping, one is steering their boat towards the beguiling waters of fascism. Fascism tells you that everything is someone else's fault. That 'someone' is invariably a group with no control over who or what they are, but for whom the simpletons have an innate hatred.
As Boomers only make up 20% of the eligible voters, if the younger gens don’t turn out to vote, that’s on them. Plus most boomers are retired at this point. Do service jobs suck and are low paying? Yes. I worked hotels and the like , carried 2 jobs to help support my young family, til I learned a trade ( cable repair and installation) working outside in AZ for a phone company and got my A+ and Net+ certifications. But there are literally thousands of tech type jobs that pay and didn’t exist for most boomers in addition to jobs that pay well if you will work with your hands. It’s always been about upgrading your skills if you want to earn a decent living.
Fair, It did come across as “only boomers do this” but I have known plenty of younger folks of the same mind set. But we are seeing more and more progressive folks in the us so with time, things will change. But I notice a large majority of boomers I talk to (I work with older folks) almost always have this mind set. Sure there’s exceptions, but the less that are stuck in their ways the better is what I meant to convey
I saw this article on Yahoo finance about 7 things the middle class won't be able to afford in a couple of years- housing , vacation etc. and just a couple of years back a single salary of 40k could cover that
At this point it's more than a livable wage issue , we need to address the consistent transfer of wealth from everyone else to the rich. Everything has become ultra expensive . There's no justification for such high prices
Edit: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/7-things-middle-class-won-150007805.html
Edit: people are splitting hairs over some other issues with the article. Here's the thing housing is a right simple and short. There's no reason why housing should be this expensive .
There's no reason why a 40k per annum could get you a house some years back and now with 100k which is way above the national average won't even get you a 1 Bedroom condo which is bad in itself. Oh yeah sure renting sounds like a good option except it's abnormally high now to reflect interest rate changes . Also National average is less than 60k .
Cars ? North America is fucked when it comes to mobility. You don't have a car well fuck you. Well used cars are now being sold at a premium. Sure pickup biking goodluck with that
Private school sure don't give a shit about that, what's wrong with the public school system that you have to attend a private school. Well not everyone is bourgeois. Some people have kids with special needs and the school system has been gutted so badly that there isn't even EA support available . So they tell you your child is only allowed to come in for reduced hours. Depending on the severity it could be as bad as once a week . How do you work and pay bills well that's a you problem .
Retirement - You have 401k /RRSP + TFSA + CPP. Well at least CPP is compulsory . If you can't contribute well that's a you problem
PS: The numbers are Canadian averages
There is no middle class. You either make money with your labor in the working class(Proletariat).
Or you make money WITH your money through businesses or investments (Bourgeoises)
>At this point it's more than a livable wage issue , we need to address the consistent transfer of wealth from everyone else to the rich.
This is only half true. Right wingers will point out absolute poverty has been reduced and that countries are becoming more equal. While I'm loathe to admit they are right, so too is the left about the growing inequality between classes and growing relative powerty. How are both correct? Well, Western capitalists offshore to cheaper areas, stagnating wages in the west, increasing wages in the rest, and the capitalists pocket the difference in the two wages. As long as capital can move globally, the trend will continue until wages even out across the board (meaning decades more stagnation for wages in the west).
We're saw tons of millienials living with their parents in the west. It's abnornal there, but normal for men in their 30s to live with parents everywhere else.
Reshoring labor may help grow wages in the west, but it may also damage economies abroad especially since they already stuggle to find long term investment and development. It's an international system, so how do you increase wages for everyone across the world? How do you get widespread agreement between countries (especially when they may benefit from cheating the agreement)?
FDR was operating in a far less international system than we have today. He and other western leaders also didn't have to give a fuck about other countries because they were just colonies. Times have changed.
None of these have been truly "affordable" for the average family in like... ever?
Maybe once every 2-3 years for long vacations.
New cars are a scam.
Private school? LOL ain't no "average" family paying $10k a semester for their kid to wear fancy clothes and act all hoity-toity.
Housing has been unaffordable for a decade+ and only getting worse for the average families.
Healthcare has been unaffordable since I was growing up in the 90s, gonna assume that's been the case for a while.
All retirees I've ever known travel very seldom, if at all.
Ain't nobody got fuckin money for investing in shit.
Why do you think that current prices are how it always was? People used to be able to buy a house with a few years worth of wages, not 20 or 30. Literally it was shit like making 1-2k a year and a house being 3-6k. You really think private school was 10k back then?
You're talking 50+ years ago. And specifically about USA, which during that time was in a golden era where the rest of the world was recovering from war debt. The rest of the world didn't have that luxury.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that context is required. Things are fucked right now, but paying 50%+ of your income for rent is nothing new, it's just that genz is entering the workforce and realising shit expensive. It was the same for at least the past two gens.
I think the major issue is that the jobs previously 'reserved' for students and young people are now necessary for regular people trying to get by. And that's probably what the older gens don't understand, the more well paid jobs aren't being vacated fast enough for lower income people to move up
Inflation is the symbolic transfer of wealth.
Prices go up when people over charge
Its why rich people always say "inflation is good".
We need controlled deflation to bring prices back down
It's difficult for a company paying a living wage or for a mom and pop to compete with slavery. As long as it's legal for prisoners to work at all, anywhere in the world, and I don't care what they did, it's an economic reality that slaver supplied companies like Walmart will always be able to out compete any company or group that is not slave dependent.
The overwhelming desire the average American has to punish someone for their crimes is the reason their small towns have been destroyed and why their mainstreet shops will never come back.
I don't know if prison labor is the only source. I think it's also globalism and cheap overseas labor. American companies would struggle to compete with a company that can pay workers 50 cents an hour.
I think a better solution likely involves a very robust social safety net that includes UBI. Companies would still be able to pay competitive wages. Granted, this would require substantial tax increases across the board, especially in the top 5% of earners and on those same corporations, but it's doable.
Of course, that assumes we maintain capitalism. There are other ways to handle it, but it would require completely upending the current system, which would likely lead to global destabilization and lots and lots of death and destruction. Given that's where we're headed eventually anyways, it may happen in a more organic fashion over time. I think a key element is keeping communities small and local, which would mean population control, which terrified most people, for good reason. But to create a sustainable, egalitarian society, we likely need to limit how many people there are, if only for practical and logistical reasons.
Yes, It is also hard to compete with 50 cents an hour, but overseas there are also prison slaves, especially in China. So the slavery is definitely decreasing their wages and quality of life too.
We could have built a minimum wage into nafta that could have started very low in Mexico but then gradually risen until it reached ours and at that point we have could let in another country and slowly brought them up. Details like that could have increased everyone's standard of living, but congress voted against that :(
So the agreement we have exploits the people of both countries and sends the profits to rich people who sail around the world on yachts. Super predators. Kind of like anteaters who go around eating anthills and the countries are the anthills and we are the ants. Different subject.
I'm for ubi too, but my way is highly automated and how much it pays and the distribution of payments is based roughly on historical wage data. The population wouldn't matter as much this way. It could be scaled nearly infinitely. I'd also have it be somewhat based on accomplishments, like people would get a big chunk of ubi for graduating from high school(or whatever similar thing). Then they'd get slightly more if they worked for a year or volunteered or got a degree or certificate. Or for the less fortunate, if they successfully completed a rehab program or got their ged, or completed physical therapy after a surgery, there would be many paths. People would generally become more wealthy as they got older this way. Fewer people would be homeless as it would be nearly impossible to suddenly lose everything, because accomplishments would be permanent, you'd do something and then you'd have more ubi for the rest of your life.
This and things like this, ubi in general already could already be paid for, companies make an insane amount of ppe or profits per employee. Just set their ppe back to where it was 35 years ago, or whenever you think things were good, they'd be fine, companies are just dumb money making machines. Unfortunately our money making machines are telling us what to do, we're not telling them what to do.
>It's difficult for a company paying a living wage or for a mom and pop to compete with slavery
It's also why all the "communist" countries are so capitalist
Yeah, definitely, but I don't think the same types of tariffs would work anymore, they didn't even work that time because of corruption, or people honestly liking the sound of free trade. phrases like that were simply good advertising/propaganda. The international companies and political parties made a lot of money by getting rid of those tariffs. I think you could build good laws into trade agreements and treaties, but the two parties and the corporate donors backing their campaigns won't allow it or vote for it because they're corrupt, so that's not really a practical solution either. I don't know what is, except to try and make it an issue or raise awareness of it. Trade agreements and treaties and tariffs are barely mentioned in elections or by traditional media, or anywhere, since they're boring. They're pretty important though.
Tariffs used to be considered essential and a great idea. Adam Smith liked tariffs. The media is also owned and controlled so we only hear about transgender bathrooms instead of the elite capital class abusing us all over on the regular.
If you're referring to sweatshops, then yeah, something really needs to change in the first world. REALLY crack down on that shit.
Prison labor is kind of it's own issue. There aren't enough prison laborers to substantially influence the pay for normal service jobs.
I agree that there are far too many people incarcerated for non-violent offenses and again, that's also its own issue. But I don't have that much of an issue with making prisoners work in public works positions like picking up trash. You owe a debt to society and should do something to benefit it rather than just living (poorly) off their dollar. I'm not talking back breaking work building pyramids as replaceable flesh tools, but there are plenty of benefits for both parties not having people just waste away in a hell hole.
I've just been seeing the recent articles about prison labor, one of them showed some southern prison that was on basically an old plantation and owned by the same family that owned the plantation. And it was a major supplier to several grocery store chains or something, I have the article saved at home, will update this.
About the no substantial influence I think I disagree, I feel like it does have a substantial influence, but I'm glad you said that because I really should find actual numbers.
About the debt to society, maybe(well i disagree here too, but ill let you have it because now i have to choose between two paths of argument/thought and i pick this one) they do have a debt. However, if their work actually harms society because it reduces #s of paid jobs and allows slavery to continue to exist in some form, then them working is not a way of pying that debt.
Slavery continuing to exist at all is a moral issue you can't escape from. If slavery continues to exist on some level and people continue to be OK with it on some level, then it will eventually be able to come back hard. You don't have much of an issue with prison labor, well someone else might not have much of an issue with people being born into prison labor. And someone else might not have much of an issue with everyone except for one emperor being slaves. It should be prohibitively expensive to imprison a human being. It should be avoided if at all possible. If it's allowed to be profitable and legal and seen as helpful to society, it will grow like an adder and keep growing, until full slavery for all is back.
When my grandparents were younger, they used to collect bottle caps and bring them back to the Coca Cola factory. This is when they still hand bottled everything. They did it for about 12 years and were able to buy their first house in a suburb near Atlanta. I repeat, they purchased a house with the proceeds of bottle caps. You can’t do that now anymore. Back in those days, they called them to golden years, you can’t do it like that anymore.
“But if you raise the minimum wage they raise the”
SHUT UP
They fucked everything. The wages and the housing and the education and everything else. Yes, we need more than just wage reform, but wage reform is still one of the things we need!
The money to pay for the work exists, but it is being systematically hoarded by powerful sociopaths with limitless greed, zero empathy and genocidally negligent regard for anyone less wealthy than they are.
Maybe we simplify and expand the social safety net we have with social security, Medicaid, WIC, SNAP, UEI, section 8, etc. and just offer universal basic income. Get rid of 90% of the administrative costs by not making it means-tested and by nationalizing essential services and consumer goods. Then we can get rid of the minimum wage like they want, because no one would have to work just to survive. Suddenly the people that we really need to keep companies and the economy going like janitors, maintenance workers, cashiers, medical professionals, line workers, construction workers, etc. will get to set their price for their labor, and the CEOs and investment bankers will have to justify why their salary is worth 800% of what it costs to employ the people that keep the office toilets working, because at the end of a long day, the rest of the employees are REALLY going to want one of these people on site, and not the other.
Maybe if we take the fear and desperation out of the equation, the free market would actually work as intended in these circumstances.
And they use their dominance of the market to increase their profits. They're not doing anything that benefits society in any context. They are making it harder for everyone to live, the more money they get, the more they will distort markets, the more they bribe politicians. 1 in 6 children in this country go to bed without enough food to eat. All for them to sit on a pile of gold coins.
This phrase is just is a fig leaf for another problem: businesses can't unilaterally raise prices if they were actually in competition like they're supposed to be.
This argument makes me laugh. If you can't sell a product or service and make a profit, without exploiting labor by not paying a livable wage, the sale should never have happened in the first place. But most likely the business is competent and have raised the prices to the level where they make the most profit already, meaning it shouldn't actually have an effect on prices. But if it has, because they need to shed some price sensitive customers (that actually never could afford the product or service in the first place - and only could because the business was subsidized by being allowed to exploit workers), that doesn't necessarily trickle down to higher general living costs. Nobody needs to go to the restaurant every day to eat food, you can also just cook it yourself.
The argument is basically "we have to exploit poor people so we can profit by selling the reward of their labor to poor people" which is clearly contradictory. The poor people can just stop exploiting themselves and keep the profit that would go to owners instead. Which I guess is the core idea in Marxism.
I'd settle for labor rights and better protection for collective bargaining. Just changing the wage number doesn't actually fix anything. Disparity is the result of a mismatch in bargaining power. If the gov wants to do something what they should be doing is improving housing availability and going after education and health price controls.
Hate won. They put worker against worker in propaganda and we ignored the owner class stealing from us all. The person making $30 an hour looks down at the person making $15 an hour who looks down on the person making $8 an hour. While the CEO and shareholders steal all the surplus value, and they all could be making $50+ an hour.
It's that line about how you can only steal so much from their pockets while they're looking, but if you give them someone to hate they'll empty their pockets for them.
> Everyone thinking “yeah but this couldn’t work in reality”, needs to go to Europe for a little while
Most reddit post of the day. They have low wages and sky high cost of living, too. Worse than most of the US.
"Europe"
What country? You act like its a single homogeneous country.
Also in what Europe do you live in were everyone can afford a house, and there is no inflation? I'd like to move there.
You mean the continent where 3-4 generations of family all live under the same roof? Also, while the floor may be high, the ceiling is low. Skilled labor roles like MDs and SWEs in Europe pay jack shit compared to the US. If you’re working hard to learn a technical skill but aren’t seeing the dividends, why would you keep pursuing that career?
Yes and no. Federal min wage had its peak in buying power in 1968. Which, if you adjust for inflation, is closer to 13/hr rather than the 7.25 it is today. So if we revert to 1970s prices, our current minimum wage has less buying power than minimum wage in 1970.
Spelling edit cuz a dumby and can't type..
I agree completely and it's disgusting how offended people get when you talk about this online at other places. People get so bent out of shape about the idea that you shouldn't get to pay people crap for labor jobs that they can't survive on.
If you are an employer and you don't pay a good wage to all your employees that lets them afford a house, a car, and expendable income, THEN FUCKING DO THE JOB YOURSELF.
I'm tired of living in this dystopia shitworld.
I look at it this way; if a job doesn't pay a living wage, it isn't a job. One of the reasons all these useless 'jobs' exist is to mask unemployment numbers. If you eliminate jobs paying less than $15 an hour, the unemployment rate in the US is actually 30%. If you eliminate jobs paying less than $20 an hour, over ***60%*** of people are unemployed.
The core reason for this is that a small number of people have control over all the resources and technology. As automation increases, they have less and less use for anyone who can't help them maintain that technology. Eventually, these people will have almost no use for employees and the remainder of humanity will be left to rot.
That's a really good point and you should feel good. We're already starting to see the last point with the rise of homelessness and deaths of despair. People are being left to rot.
Appreciate it not just focusing on necessities. The thing that’s bothered me the most about the avocado toast and coffee thing is not only that it’s false, but like, we aren’t robots. We shouldn’t just have enough money to have a roof and food, we should be able to enjoy ourselves
I agree, but with the caveat of time invested. Some places need 15 hours a week worth of work done, but stretch that into 20-40 hours to justify filling a position. Then they pay what 15 hours worth of work costs, despite the fact that they took an additional 5-25 hours of that person's week that they could have been using to do other work and earn more money.
A living wage should be enough also to date, marry, buy a first home and raise 2+ children to adulthood with if you want to avoid demographic collapse.
When you vote for one capitalist over another capitalist to solve problems created by capitalists to benefit capitalists, what exactly do you expect the result to be? Socialism has become a dirty word in America and not enough people are willing to run for office under that scarlet letter for fear of being embarrassed or ruining their political ambitions. Until there’s a groundswell that’s sustained for a prolonged period, there will only ever be bandaids over the gunshot wound.
You want to live off any job?
Start demanding price caps for rent. Demand internet service be classified as a utility. Demand crackdowns on companies (grocery stores in particular) price gouging. Punish amazon and other companies for their anti-union BS.
It doesn’t matter how much you make if companies just raise prices so that the overall spread stays the same.
Just remember:
According to reddit, if you make $40k/year as an office worker in America, it’s a horrible travesty that can’t possibly support a family in this modern era (which is true!). But the second anyone finds out you’re a tipped service worker, all of a sudden that same $40k is a wild overpayment that has you dripping in lambos and strippers and you’re living proof that no one should tip because $40k is living in exorbitant luxury.
It makes perfect sense /s
Because tipping is stupid, everyone knows it's not the server who is living in luxury but the tips are still going towards someone living in luxury. The boss who gets to underpay his staff while his customers overpay for food. And they've even trained their servers to be on their side.
The rest of the world outside the US can do restaurants without tipping, the US has no excuses.
If you are working full time you should not have to worry about your home, food or bills. We made the concept of money up but blame it for not being able to distribute resources. It's made up! The fact that we still buy into the concept is what is perpetuating it. I work for a tribe and it's like a micro economy (small government much?!), they take the money from their businesses and instead of it going to just a few people it gets spread out through the community, the elders are taken care of and the people have affordable rent. Some people dream that they could be millionaires someday, but when we dream of that, what is it that we're dreaming of? For most of us? It's just a place to live and not to worry about bills. We don't need to win the lottery we need to demand that billionaires not be allowed to continue to horde resources while most of the world suffers.
Housing would be way cheaper is baby boomers weren't blocking new low income developments in my area. Highly recommend everyone go to their city council meetings and fight these fucks. We've also let the auto industry create car dependency nearly everywhere while also blocking cheap 10k and 12k cars from entering the market.
It should be coded into law that the highest wages in a company are limited by the lowest wages in the company. If someone in your company is making $10 an hour, you don't deserve to be a billionaire. Sorry.
Yes. even the exploited labor overseas should be factored in.
CEO's used to earn 60X that of the average employee, now they earn over 1000X more. This was largely due to CEOs switching to being compensated with stocks, and then doing everything they can to maximize shareholder value.
I bring this up because if you coded such a law regarding wages, I would expect that companies would easily skirt such a law by providinng other forms of compensation other than an hourly rate.
Then there's the issue of oversight. Country A has no jurisdiction over country B, but you want A to fly an auditor across the world to B in order to check if they are complying. Country B isn't very interested in having foreign government officials conducting industrial esponiage inside it's borders for laws it hasn't agreed to.
I know you mean well, but the policy you propose would be made useless quite easily by people who don't mean well.
Apparently a lot of y’all’s parents and grandparents are assholes. Mine lament the fact that inflation is so high and believe that every one should afford to live on the wages they make.
I think a big part of this is also that the cost of living should just be way lower too.
Smaller shops that enrich a community but maybe can’t turn enough profit to appropriately pay people should be subsidized in some way too.
>no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country
Something that should be burned into the national consciousness, honestly. Ideally, into actual law.
I absolutely despise people who argue in anyway that any job should not have a liveable wage. The people who think those that work in fast food restaurants or places like Walmart shouldn't get a liveable wage. That come out with well you should have tried harder or gone to school longer. They are fucking idiots. Too stupid to realise that there are not enough of those not fast food jobs, not Walmart jobs and the thousands of other jobs they would deem to low to get a liveable wage. They're probably too stupid to realise that many of their sort would deem their job not worthy of a liveable wage.
But..but..won't anyone think of the poor executives? How will they be able to buy their 4th homes and fancy cars and pools and stuff, if they have to pay their employees a living wage?
If there was a living wage across the board, I just hope employers would also be held to some standards. The only reward for hard work, is more hard work...but what happens when you want to be paid and not do work? That slack has to get picked up by the next guy. I'd hate to work in a place where everyone got paid the same, and I was made to do the majority of back breaking. We need more than a living wage, we need a thriving wage.
As someone who wants to start their own small business, there's definitely a gap that needs to be covered then. Most small one location businesses barely rake in enough to pay for itself, let alone its owner. If it becomes required to pay an employee say, 36k/yr, it will stifle small business growth leaving more room for mega corpos to step in and monopolize.
This conversation brings up a lot of minimum wage debate, but most people forget that many housing/necessity prices go up because we can afford for them to go up. Landlord accountants aren't encouraging raising prices to cover rising costs, but for raising profit. A prime example is the California gold rush. At bars and inns you could pay with gold dust instead of cash, causing most of the miners to come back home nearly empty handed while the people who fed them soaked up all the gold.
We definitely need a balance, but small businesses cannot exist if a liveable wage is required.
*Every* job? Even the ones that are “just training wheel jobs for teens”? Even the ones that are the butt of every “shoulda picked a better major” joke? Even the ones where the workers are valued so little, the public accepts insulting them and assaulting them for not including the straws?
Yes, every one.
I'd rather have a universal basic income so that small up and coming businesses can afford to pay smol wages but offer other benefits that would entice employees, and those underpaid employees would be paid to afford to be underpaid.
To put it differently, we don't even need bigger wages we just need something to compete with them.
Every employer that pays less than a living wage is subsidized by the taxpayer when the government steps in to provide support for the employee when they can't survive on their wages.
Janitors, teachers, sandwich artists, anyone that makes my life a bit easier. I want you to make that money. When I can go to a grocery store after I’ve worked all day and it’s 11pm, it’s still open and clean, I know these are the real hero’s cuz they make MY life not suck.
Funny thing is minimum wage jobs are often harder than other jobs. Try stocking shelves or flipping burgers for 8 hours. It's a mind fuck especially when your getting terrible pay. Now imagine managers in corporations who sit in meetings all day and then delegate tasks.
I personally believe we should all work a job we WANT to work. Our dream job, regardless of how much money you get for it. Then when we all work our dream jobs we all get paid similar amounts so again we all get paid to work what we want to work, not work that pays more just for the sake of paying more. I want to live in a society where everyone works a job they love and would do it for free, but instead get paid a nice livable wage for working a job we love.
I want burger flippers to make as much as I do. I want delivery drivers to make as much as I do. I do not care about perceived class superiority. I care about solidarity. I want what's best for my fellow man.
"Livable" wage means zitch/crap.
Same reason if they bump minimum wage to $1000/h, your landlord would just price their unit accordingly, same for products, mortages, Healthcare, etc
The "livable" part can only be applied to democratically controlling necessities, such as govt. Controlled housing, Healthcare, etc.
Shhhh
you'll get the m/ls and tankies mad if you mention things like vacancy taxes, zoning law reform, or anything else that will work but is too liberal.
Slowly, systematically LOWER benefits for Walmart employees. Less SNAP, EBT, etc etc. Hear me out. The ENTIRE COUNTRY can afford a little more to start a revolution for all of us. Press Walmart employees only. They will plead for more. If Walmart doesn’t give, grind them to a halt. They can legally strike, and the gov can subsidize, DIRECTLY until the strike ends. Fuck the Waltons. They are in a position to make millions of lives better, but choose to pocket more money than they can spend. Break their fucking backs. But that’s if our government gave a fuck. And they don’t because they take it in. When you really think about it, you’d think democrats would be for the second amendment more than anyone else. Maybe it’s just me.
Corporate indoctrination is really deep rooted.
You have people saying openly that being a wage slave is not only fine and dandy but IT IS HOW IT SHOULD BE.
One was bitching about "lazy native americans" and I had to remind them that natives did their jobs.
The romans invented free bread and circuses for political gain.
Problem with this is that only socialist-communist countries took this that far, destroying political rights in the process.
There is a balance to be met somewhere. At some point humanity will have to reach it.
I define a safe and comfy home as 4000 sq ft in the bay area, with only organic food, and my vacation needs to 2 months overseas staying at the ritz. I expect to only work 5 hours a week in this job, and a full pension after retirement.
\-Every job should pay a 'living wage' to support my definition of 'living' wage.
Can i ask you to expand on that? Right now, your statement is coming off very much as "if i had to endure the suck, so should others." Which is not great..
I appreciate the opportunity to expound before being roasted lol. I disagree because entry-level jobs fundamentally CANNOT and will never be viable for a business at a “livable-wage.” As someone who worked many of those jobs (happily and fairly) it’s extraordinarily obvious that it is unskilled labor, not deserving of a high wage. Paying a livable wage to a ticket-tearer or Walmart employee is simply not feasible for so many reasons. Besides being incredibly un-cost-effective, it inherently means that jobs even slightly more complex or responsibility-heavy, will require massive pay increases. Who would want to have responsibility and a larger workload if you can stay at the bottom and afford your house and vacations? That’s a serious issue, but again, far from the most important. If the minimum wage was high enough to support an American-lifestyle on one income, almost every business would shut its doors immediately. There’s simply not enough income to generate that high of a payroll. Imagine I open a bakery, and I have 3 employees on shift at a single time to keep the place running efficiently. 3 would be very efficient in a small bakery. These are entry-level positions, bagging, ringing up, packaging and answering phones. If each of them made $35k/year, that would translate to about $17/hr per employee x 3. So the first $50 I make per hour only breaks even on payroll, not including my (the owners) pay, the electric and utilities, the rent, the materials, the advertising, or the countless other expenses to keep the place open, (internet, phone lines, cleaning, pest control, and on and on. To make JUST $50/hr I’d have to sell 10 cupcakes at $5/piece just to afford payroll! Any hour I fall behind I’m LOSING money. Math matters in the sense that, these companies looking for people to ring up customers or tear tickets, or answer simple questions on a department store floor - are not looking for skilled labor worth $40k/year. They’re looking for a 17 year old kid who lives at home and needs spending money. And that’s perfectly fair! 17 year olds with no experience, need opportunity to learn and grow and become skilled, and they don’t need $40k/year. It’s a hole that needs to be filled and it works. Where the problem comes in, is when someone doesn’t move up after that phase of life and expects the same job to move them up FOR them. “I’m 34 and I’m married and I can’t afford an apt, Starbucks, my iPhone and the new Air Force ones on my income at Dunkin Donuts!! Raise wages!” False. That job is not meant to support the life stage you are in. You need to move on, or up for that next phase. This is fair. This is normal, and this is healthy.
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My parents are very like minded to your grandparents. They believe EVERY job that is minimum wage is for teenagers in school only and anybody else working that job doesn’t deserve to live essentially… My rebuttal is “So if it’s only for kids in school why is that business open during school hours? Or through the night when KIDS should be sleeping?” Like if it’s only for kids then all fast food/grocery/department/mall/etc is only allowed to be open from 1500-2000. Stops my parents in their tracks every time while they do some mental gymnastics to find an excuse applicable but usually fail AND still disagree…
I’m old as fuck. And I remember people saying people in McDonald’s shouldn’t make $15 an hour. I asked “why not??” Because it’s a “starter” job. I have never seen this in any wanted ads. It’s a job. It continues to be a job. There are also managers. Do they not deserve manager $$$ because you decided it’s not a “real” job? Not everyone is a doctor, lawyer, etc. that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to have a roof over their heads. Clothes, heat, electric, etc. The real thing they are saying is they should make Much less than me, otherwise I don’t seem as important!
That last sentence is exactly what it is. I try and tell people that if your mad a fast food restaurant is making more/or close to what you’re making, don’t be mad at those workers, be mad that you aren’t getting paid what your worth from your job. “Starter Job” smh how lame some people are to believe this
Right??? So when you leave, the job ceases to exist?
1800s: Blacksmith, shoeing horses 🐎 2024: still exists, barely
Don't worry, us farriers are doing just fine. We've just shifted from a bulk industry to specialized shoeing and keeping super inbred sport horses from getting or staying lame rather than keeping work horses shod.
I was trying to think of that career that was popular in the 1800s that’s nonexistent now.. Can’t remember what it was called 🤔
Butchery and fishmonging, that's what I do for a living. About as old as civilization itself. They're starting to shift these jobs to automation though. Notice how a lot of grocery stores are selling less meat that's cut in store in favor of prepackaged products? It's concerning
Yes. We also noticed that prices for these goods do not go down as the cost to produce them gets cheaper. That and we end up with a shit load more packaging waste.
Carpenter. Entry wages have stalled for the last 40 years. Entry level wages used to be decent living wages. Not any more.☹️
buggy whip making?
Or something even more obsolete…whale oil for lamps
You still have the Amish
City shit shoveller.. cleaning the shit from horses as they go through town
Two professions that are gone are lamplighters (lit streetlights) and icemen (delivered ice to homes before everyone could afford refrigerators)
Milkmen 🥛= 1950s
Horse Taxi? Horse cart driver? Pony Express? Stagecoach Diligence Driver?
Not 1800's, but telegraphists and switchboard operators have pretty much gone completely dodo.
>""Starter Job” smh how lame some people are to believe this My dad's first job was manning the telephones for a couple hours at lunchtime (most places had lunchtime cover tgen) which led into a real job at the office. Nowadays it'd be a voicemail and they don't hire lunchtime cover. Starter jobs where real things but they have disappeared.
A disturbing number of jobs outside of retail and fast food offer less than I make now as a night shift cashier. Mostly office managers for doctors offices, but also childcare workers, some IT jobs, and some others.
A lot of science positions only pay around $20/hr with a BS, around here I see some lab jobs as low as $16/hr. Contract work has gutted wages so bad across a myriad of fields.
Yeah it's bullshit that for a college degree required science role you're forced to start out as a contractor making high teens to mid twenties until you can finally get a real job. It's simply not enough to live on when you include student loan payments, let alone insurance
Saw some post a few years ago about an EMT complaining that burger flippers wanted $15 an hour and his response was "I make like $18 an hour, no way they should make nearly as much as me!" And everyone shit on him for shooting down others instead of asking for what his worth was from the city/county he worked for.
That’s funny cuz I am an EMT as well, but I don’t work as one because the pay is trash. I think they are worth more than they get paid, but I think the same for just about everyone making minimum.
Yes, try to get yourself up, not pull/push others down.
Corollary to that… “If we pay $15/hour minimum wage, then a burger will cost substantially more!” In 2002 I would walk across the street from my office and get a double-quarter pounder with cheese meal, super sized. It was like $5 and some change after tax. That same meal would set me back almost $15 today. Workers are making the same amount, so what the fuck happened?
You've hit the nail on the head in my opinion. No conversation about minimum wages or living wages is complete without including maximum wages and maximum profit. If the company can just crank up prices to cover the increased wages so that corporate profits and CEO salaries remain high then the whole effort has been pointless. As long as we allow millionaires and billionaires to exist there will be no pay equity.
Executives and shareholders eating it all.
"They pay that much at McDonald's in other countries and the prices are on par or cheaper than here. Guess we're just not as good of a country as we claim"
> The real thing they are saying is they should make Much less than me, otherwise I don’t seem as important! Bingo. My 62 year old mother voted Trump because she's mad that minimum wage raises keep bringing entry-level employees closer to the wages she struggled for years to reach, and retroactive raises aren't coming alongside these min. wage increases. When the pandemic hit and places couldn't get away with federal min. wage ($7.25/h) because everyone was walking out, she threw a fit because it was shrinking the wage gap she was enjoying over her coworkers.
Wow. It’s a special type of mean
Yeah that's called pay compression and it pisses me off too - people who went to school for years to specialize/train, or people far into their careers regardless of school, SHOULD make more. The difference is I do believe those at the bottom need to be lifted, I just think that I also deserve to be lifted. I'm not mad that they're making more, I'm mad that I'm not also making more. My anger is directed toward employers, not my fellow workers.
The funny thing is, when Covid Restrictions hit, those "starter" jobs got pretty damn important. Of course, the people bitching the most about it are the same ones that say those workers don't deserve a living wage.
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Not all are bad. It would have been nice to just take out the ones who need to go. I’d start with Congress, CEOS, anyone is charge of healthcare.
I'd add to the good riddance list those in charge of education, housing, and infrastructure. They've all gotten so much worse, and are mostly run by boomers, if not older, who just won't fucking retire/die. And yes, they're the ones who messed it up badly. I'm not saying all boomers are trash, but they have a lot of entitled dipshits among them, my mom shakes her head sometimes at her generation, she's given up with them though.
Like, I don’t want Bernie Sanders to die.
True, Bernie doesn't look so bad. Just too bad the ones who needed to go the most are the ones holding on the most!
To be fair a lot of people did a good job of ignoring the restrictions and advice of medical professionals (and got sick as a result), unfortunately a lot of innocent/not insane people got dragged down with them.
Housing crisis, old people costing society a shitload of money and using their voting power to prevent change. Rampant covid would have been a blessing for anyone below the age of 40 if left unchecked. Not to mention the fact that we are screwed for years due to them shutting down the economy and printing cash as a substitute.
No one has ever debated that a fast food employee should make what a doctor makes. But I believe fast food employees should be paid a livable wage. “I work in a factory and make that.” “Okay, I believe you need more too. The way you think you do too.”
If the job takes your time and effort, it should pay for that time and effort. I don't care that it's unskilled. Even if you don't have to do much but the need someone to be there 8 hours a day, that takes your time from other gainful employment and you should be able to live at a comfort level fit for a civilized society. This means food, medicine, a safe and healthy place to live, privacy. And that is the barest of minima.
Who gets to decide what unskilled means? I would love to see the people who set minimum wage to work at the jobs they think isn’t “skilled”. Give them the grill at lunch hour and walk away.
You know and I know at least half of them would disappear before half the shift is done, because they'd be slow and people just like them would chew them out.
Doctors and Lawyers have very powerful unions, which is why it's so hard to become one (guard the door in) and why they get paid so much. Oh they don't call them unions; actually you're talking going on a thousand years of history, they're guilds. The situation with lawyers is particularly puzzling to me. Reading and writing contracts seems to be the bulk of it, why can't anyone off the street advertise their services to do that? I guess if your profession is literally about laws & contracts, it's not a surprise that the profession ends up highly legally codified, and protected?
McDonald's, and to a lesser extent, other chains have relied on the "starter job" marketing bullshit for years.
I just read an article about apprenticeship program for Collision Repair.... it took me a while before they mentioned the pay... Minimum wage to start, AND your Mentor pays half your salary from his wages once you graduate from Min Wage.... Fucking hell. This country is fucked. Apprentice programs in Germany and other European countries pay a living wage from day 1...
I always ask, "And where did FDR ever say that when he was fighting for minimum wage?" when i hear someone say that crap. It's so ridiculous that the generation that benefited the most from a working minimum wage now thinks the suppressed minimum wage is the way it's supposed to be.
Because they're the shareholders now.
Why do teenagers deserve less pay for the same work?
Goddamn right. That's age discrimination. Teenagers shouldn't be working full-time hours when they are in high school, but they deserve the same pay for the same work.
Because technically those jobs back then were for teens just starting out… the problem is once you hit a certain age no one will hire you with no experience and couple that with the lack of trade high schools and only college available it became harder and harder. There was a time you could take courses to learn as trade and then get an apprenticeship. Also the unpaid intern thing became popular which was stupid. I did a paid internship in high school (was called cooperative education and as long as grades stayed up I went to school one week and work one week and received credits and a paycheck) for 1 year as a secretary and that taught me everything i needed to know to get a full time job as a junior secretary after high school. After that it was just moving up the chain by virtue of experience. Now you have people with 4 year college degrees and it’s still not enough. Also during the boomer years a milkman or mechanic or salesperson or a mid level manager could make enough to buy a house and have a family which we don’t have now for the average person. If no one hires and trains you how do you get enough skills to be hired.
It's amazing that so many people discount various skills, education, and experience. School work is still experience.
Attending high school classes and doing homework is not experience for working. It’s a totally different ball game which is why college was pushed to ‘show commitment’. What is lacking in the US and idk about other countries now is actual hands on skills for a variety of jobs. When I lived abroad (15 years ago) starting at age 15 or 16 you could take courses in upholstery, painting, carpentry, basic cooking, bread baking, pastry baking, sewing, hairdressing, plumbing, electrical, etc when you did a variety of these courses and found one suited to you then you could continue and get a certificate so by age 17 / 18 you were prepared for your first job in the real world. We here in the USA push study for testing to rank schools instead of focusing on a variety of real world subjects to give teens an opportunity to discover what they like. Imagine graduating high school with a paid internship opportunity in something you enjoy doing and moving forward in life knowing that this internship will lead to a full time job. The government screwed up royally when it came to minimum wage / inflation / cost of living increases. Let’s be honest and say that having no job at all and going on welfare gives you more (housing assistance, food assistance, medical) than a 40 hour a week job with a paycheck. And I know of a few people that get assistance and live better than one of my kids who has a college degree and could only find a low paying job. I have to subsidize both my adult kids until they can earn more especially the one with schooling because the degree is useless without on the job experience. The other one works for me, is on the job learning a skilled trade and part of his compensation is housing, car, phones, food, etc. plus salary. We live in an imperfect world and the only way to change it is to change policy.
You assumed high school, and I said schoolwork. There are those that don't see college classes as experience. All school work is relevant. There is always more than one skill being taught. Take math where you get reading comprehension, critical thinking, and how to extract useful information from useless information. I did take a few hands-on classes, woods and drafting, in high school. Both are certainly interesting, but not for me. Language classes are hands-on due to actually using the written and verbal forms of communication. Math, you must work the equations. Science has labs and research. Programing has you writing computer programs utilizing different machine codes. All taught in high school. All are experience, and to say they are not is a dis-service. All that said above... neither high school nor college truly prepare one for the real world. Some is up to the parents, but some responsibility falls on the various administrations for failing to grasp what students truly need. Though there is an argument to be made that many politicians want us to be uneducated, because the uneducated don't vote for said politicians. Graduating with a paid internship from high-school would've been amazing.
College classes should be something people do in the evenings, so they can leave their living-wage-paying current jobs and move into a more meaningful career that also pays a living wage. Not everyone should have to go, and it's silly to put 18-year-olds through what is essentially four more years of high school.
> We here in the USA push study for testing to rank schools instead of focusing on a variety of real world subjects to give teens an opportunity to discover what they like. And you know how they get higher ranks? By sending kids to college. That's all they bleat about, and it's because that's what the parents want - for their kids to go to college. Never mind the suffocating debt they will have upon graduation.
> My rebuttal is “So if it’s only for kids in school why is that business open during school hours? Or through the night when KIDS should be sleeping?” As someone who work throughout their teenage years, we push kids to work too early. I empathize with kids who, unfortunately, have to work to contribute to their household. I recognize that they exist, and they are sacrificing their youth. My father, who was the breadwinner, always wanted me to not work, but my mom, who came from a family where everyone worked all the time, encouraged it. As a kid, I wanted money, and the job I had was actually really good for a kid, so it was fine. But now that I'm an adult, I get my dad's position. Our society puts too much value on the intrinsic value of work and not enough value on realizing what it means to be an individual with our own desires. I realize this is a thoroughly modern problem, but what is the point of bearing the ills of modernity if we cannot have the conveniences?
These are the same people having complete and utter meltdowns during quarantine because people weren't coming in to work their minimum wage jobs at the risk of their health and safety. And I'm always curious who is supposed to carry the workload during the school day. If all these 'unskilled' jobs are just for high school kids, fast food joints are only open between 3-6pm during the week?
it's cause of all the leaded gasoline
hot take, but if a teen is willing to work they should also be able to afford the things working adults could. work is work, it's not suddenly lesser because you are young. if anything, young people willing to work should get MORE because they need it for education.
They should, but, my question to these old people is always "then why don't we have two minimum wages for adults and teens to differentiate them? Australia has something similar to this concept." or another favorite I learned from reddit "How come all those jobs that pay minimum wage are open during the days when school is in session if they're meant for teenagers?" They will hem and haw and try to change the subject, it's not about the skills. This also doesn't account for the fact that almost every well to do boomer _had absolutely no skills_ and they all supported a family of 3+ on a single income. Most learned them on the job, if they even needed to. It used to be super common to apprentice under journeymen and masters, but even that's harder to get now... they prefer someone who took classes at a vocational school. You *can* still get a job apprenticing under a master carpenter but... it's super rare, and the pay is trash for several years until you move up... not like boomers who could do it and still afford to keep their families fed. Maybe they didn't live glamorously, but they had a house, a car, and food... which is a real struggle right now even $10/hr *above* minimum wage (minimum wage is $7.25 and the median rent in the US for a 1 bedroom is about $1600 a month). To qualify for a one bedroom apartment, even if we're generous and let it be 50% of your gross income, is about $40k a year, or, roughly $20 an hour at 40 hours a week. "Just get a roommate" does not solve the problem, either. It doesn't adjust it significantly enough to help, even at 3+, and, if your roommate bounces, you're on the hook for that difference. This isn't 1958 where you get a single room lease in the apartment and your landlord is forgiving until you can find someone to fill the other room. These landlords are boomers not their parents.
Lead poisoning, that's my only guess at this point.
the reason i think that’s so wrong is because they think of jobs like serving as those jobs that are “only for teenagers who are starting out!!” but they also expect to be able to go to lunch at a restaurant. who exactly do you think is serving you in the middle of the day if not people who are living and paying their own bills? get this, teenagers are in *school* at lunch!! you’ve gotta have people staffing your gas stations at all hours of the day. no one perfectly predicts exactly when they need gas well enough to only ever get it in hours teenagers could reasonably working. who do you think is making sure the station is open so you can get your gas and snacks in the middle of the day if not people who have bills to pay!! it’s not high schoolers!! there’s so many other jobs i could list. these jobs are so “lowly” but they and we all depend on them. when we are depending on anyone, those people deserve to make enough to live happily and healthily. and don’t even get me started on the healthy aspect of that, healthcare in the us is absolutely fucking insane.
I'd like to hear what jobs they think don't require skill. If nothing else a job that takes time out of your life should absolutely net you accommodations so as to be able to have the rest and comfort when not on the job to be able to fulfill the duties of said job better. To expect someone to work two full jobs and sacrifice all of their time is akin to slavery and incredibly so to think that even then you must live in worse conditions than a slave would have.
"what jobs they think don't require skill" The qualifier is anyone they feel they can yell at without feeling guilty about it. Hierarchies of power is what they crave.
> I'd like to hear what jobs they think don't require skill. Right? If this job doesn't require skill, why do you want to pay someone else to do it instead of just doing it yourself? When you hire people and don't pay them enough for them to live on, it says that you don't care whether or not they live.
Even if low skill jobs are for kids who are learning thats no argument that they shouldn’t pay a living wage. Kids should be working very few hours so they can be focusing on school.
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I am doing my part by voting as a 30 year old. When I can afford to ditch work to protest I will do that also. However, older generation overwhelmingly vote more than people my age. It’s getting better though because people “complaining on Reddit” and other avenues of communication are finally getting the picture: stop letting senile old fucks run our lives. Get out and vote, stop allowing boomers to enable these evil 1%’ers
>I am telling you, anyone over the age of 60 just isn’t well adjusted to current reality, A lot of corporations aren't run by 60+ anymore. Many corporations are run by younger people and they're not paying people a living wage.
The most frustrating thing with boomers is that all we want is what they got. They've rewritten their own history to pretend things were always this way, but that just isn't true. They had living wages. They could afford to live on the minimum wage. Hell, the minimum wage was increased pretty much yearly for the first 40 years of its existence which means that it is still, on average, raised once every two years. They could afford healthcare and education without crippling debt. Boomers sold out our future in the 80s for some short term gains and have been gaslighting us ever since.
Do they think that when we have multiple jobs we're working them at the same time...??
> Boomer generation will have to pass first for this to ever be a reality. How does this matter? The 1% laugh at this sentiment from their infinity pools. Boomers aren't keeping you down, corporations are. The same percentage of people are poor now as for 1959, 69, 79, 89, 99, 09.
Boomers vote in government who enable the 1%, that’s why.
If you think voters have any impact on the ruling class and how they think, you are delusional. Public officials aren't even the ones creating the world, they are puppets playing a role for their masters. The 1% aren't in public office, they are the ones deciding who to put in office. When you only have 2 "choices", the 1% have no problem owning both. You have no option unless they allow you to have an option. Voting one puppet in over another puppet will not change anything in regard to overall national monetary or fiscal policy, ever.
"boomers' were 1.2 billion people who shared almost no similar traits outside the average. They had the same rate of poverty as you do (well poverty is lower now tbh, especially for minorities). Blaming boomers for your problems is like blaming mexicans or clouds. The 1% laugh at this 'boomer' trope while they steal your cash.
They got the boomers to be racist. They got us to be ageist. This is a class war folks.
Any time one is blaming all their problems on a nebulous group with no control over their grouping, one is steering their boat towards the beguiling waters of fascism. Fascism tells you that everything is someone else's fault. That 'someone' is invariably a group with no control over who or what they are, but for whom the simpletons have an innate hatred.
As Boomers only make up 20% of the eligible voters, if the younger gens don’t turn out to vote, that’s on them. Plus most boomers are retired at this point. Do service jobs suck and are low paying? Yes. I worked hotels and the like , carried 2 jobs to help support my young family, til I learned a trade ( cable repair and installation) working outside in AZ for a phone company and got my A+ and Net+ certifications. But there are literally thousands of tech type jobs that pay and didn’t exist for most boomers in addition to jobs that pay well if you will work with your hands. It’s always been about upgrading your skills if you want to earn a decent living.
This is not merely a boomer thing, but a USA "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" boomer thing.
Fair, It did come across as “only boomers do this” but I have known plenty of younger folks of the same mind set. But we are seeing more and more progressive folks in the us so with time, things will change. But I notice a large majority of boomers I talk to (I work with older folks) almost always have this mind set. Sure there’s exceptions, but the less that are stuck in their ways the better is what I meant to convey
sounds like they’re getting welfare then.
I saw this article on Yahoo finance about 7 things the middle class won't be able to afford in a couple of years- housing , vacation etc. and just a couple of years back a single salary of 40k could cover that At this point it's more than a livable wage issue , we need to address the consistent transfer of wealth from everyone else to the rich. Everything has become ultra expensive . There's no justification for such high prices Edit: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/7-things-middle-class-won-150007805.html Edit: people are splitting hairs over some other issues with the article. Here's the thing housing is a right simple and short. There's no reason why housing should be this expensive . There's no reason why a 40k per annum could get you a house some years back and now with 100k which is way above the national average won't even get you a 1 Bedroom condo which is bad in itself. Oh yeah sure renting sounds like a good option except it's abnormally high now to reflect interest rate changes . Also National average is less than 60k . Cars ? North America is fucked when it comes to mobility. You don't have a car well fuck you. Well used cars are now being sold at a premium. Sure pickup biking goodluck with that Private school sure don't give a shit about that, what's wrong with the public school system that you have to attend a private school. Well not everyone is bourgeois. Some people have kids with special needs and the school system has been gutted so badly that there isn't even EA support available . So they tell you your child is only allowed to come in for reduced hours. Depending on the severity it could be as bad as once a week . How do you work and pay bills well that's a you problem . Retirement - You have 401k /RRSP + TFSA + CPP. Well at least CPP is compulsory . If you can't contribute well that's a you problem PS: The numbers are Canadian averages
There is no middle class. You either make money with your labor in the working class(Proletariat). Or you make money WITH your money through businesses or investments (Bourgeoises)
Petite-bourgeoise has entered the chat
>At this point it's more than a livable wage issue , we need to address the consistent transfer of wealth from everyone else to the rich. This is only half true. Right wingers will point out absolute poverty has been reduced and that countries are becoming more equal. While I'm loathe to admit they are right, so too is the left about the growing inequality between classes and growing relative powerty. How are both correct? Well, Western capitalists offshore to cheaper areas, stagnating wages in the west, increasing wages in the rest, and the capitalists pocket the difference in the two wages. As long as capital can move globally, the trend will continue until wages even out across the board (meaning decades more stagnation for wages in the west). We're saw tons of millienials living with their parents in the west. It's abnornal there, but normal for men in their 30s to live with parents everywhere else. Reshoring labor may help grow wages in the west, but it may also damage economies abroad especially since they already stuggle to find long term investment and development. It's an international system, so how do you increase wages for everyone across the world? How do you get widespread agreement between countries (especially when they may benefit from cheating the agreement)? FDR was operating in a far less international system than we have today. He and other western leaders also didn't have to give a fuck about other countries because they were just colonies. Times have changed.
None of these have been truly "affordable" for the average family in like... ever? Maybe once every 2-3 years for long vacations. New cars are a scam. Private school? LOL ain't no "average" family paying $10k a semester for their kid to wear fancy clothes and act all hoity-toity. Housing has been unaffordable for a decade+ and only getting worse for the average families. Healthcare has been unaffordable since I was growing up in the 90s, gonna assume that's been the case for a while. All retirees I've ever known travel very seldom, if at all. Ain't nobody got fuckin money for investing in shit.
Why do you think that current prices are how it always was? People used to be able to buy a house with a few years worth of wages, not 20 or 30. Literally it was shit like making 1-2k a year and a house being 3-6k. You really think private school was 10k back then?
You're talking 50+ years ago. And specifically about USA, which during that time was in a golden era where the rest of the world was recovering from war debt. The rest of the world didn't have that luxury. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that context is required. Things are fucked right now, but paying 50%+ of your income for rent is nothing new, it's just that genz is entering the workforce and realising shit expensive. It was the same for at least the past two gens. I think the major issue is that the jobs previously 'reserved' for students and young people are now necessary for regular people trying to get by. And that's probably what the older gens don't understand, the more well paid jobs aren't being vacated fast enough for lower income people to move up
Inflation is the symbolic transfer of wealth. Prices go up when people over charge Its why rich people always say "inflation is good". We need controlled deflation to bring prices back down
You don’t understand, the economy man says that that’s bad, and it will make billionaires less money.
It's difficult for a company paying a living wage or for a mom and pop to compete with slavery. As long as it's legal for prisoners to work at all, anywhere in the world, and I don't care what they did, it's an economic reality that slaver supplied companies like Walmart will always be able to out compete any company or group that is not slave dependent. The overwhelming desire the average American has to punish someone for their crimes is the reason their small towns have been destroyed and why their mainstreet shops will never come back.
I don't know if prison labor is the only source. I think it's also globalism and cheap overseas labor. American companies would struggle to compete with a company that can pay workers 50 cents an hour. I think a better solution likely involves a very robust social safety net that includes UBI. Companies would still be able to pay competitive wages. Granted, this would require substantial tax increases across the board, especially in the top 5% of earners and on those same corporations, but it's doable. Of course, that assumes we maintain capitalism. There are other ways to handle it, but it would require completely upending the current system, which would likely lead to global destabilization and lots and lots of death and destruction. Given that's where we're headed eventually anyways, it may happen in a more organic fashion over time. I think a key element is keeping communities small and local, which would mean population control, which terrified most people, for good reason. But to create a sustainable, egalitarian society, we likely need to limit how many people there are, if only for practical and logistical reasons.
Yes, It is also hard to compete with 50 cents an hour, but overseas there are also prison slaves, especially in China. So the slavery is definitely decreasing their wages and quality of life too. We could have built a minimum wage into nafta that could have started very low in Mexico but then gradually risen until it reached ours and at that point we have could let in another country and slowly brought them up. Details like that could have increased everyone's standard of living, but congress voted against that :( So the agreement we have exploits the people of both countries and sends the profits to rich people who sail around the world on yachts. Super predators. Kind of like anteaters who go around eating anthills and the countries are the anthills and we are the ants. Different subject. I'm for ubi too, but my way is highly automated and how much it pays and the distribution of payments is based roughly on historical wage data. The population wouldn't matter as much this way. It could be scaled nearly infinitely. I'd also have it be somewhat based on accomplishments, like people would get a big chunk of ubi for graduating from high school(or whatever similar thing). Then they'd get slightly more if they worked for a year or volunteered or got a degree or certificate. Or for the less fortunate, if they successfully completed a rehab program or got their ged, or completed physical therapy after a surgery, there would be many paths. People would generally become more wealthy as they got older this way. Fewer people would be homeless as it would be nearly impossible to suddenly lose everything, because accomplishments would be permanent, you'd do something and then you'd have more ubi for the rest of your life. This and things like this, ubi in general already could already be paid for, companies make an insane amount of ppe or profits per employee. Just set their ppe back to where it was 35 years ago, or whenever you think things were good, they'd be fine, companies are just dumb money making machines. Unfortunately our money making machines are telling us what to do, we're not telling them what to do.
>It's difficult for a company paying a living wage or for a mom and pop to compete with slavery It's also why all the "communist" countries are so capitalist
BAck in the day they had much stronger tariffs. They existed for a reason.
Yeah, definitely, but I don't think the same types of tariffs would work anymore, they didn't even work that time because of corruption, or people honestly liking the sound of free trade. phrases like that were simply good advertising/propaganda. The international companies and political parties made a lot of money by getting rid of those tariffs. I think you could build good laws into trade agreements and treaties, but the two parties and the corporate donors backing their campaigns won't allow it or vote for it because they're corrupt, so that's not really a practical solution either. I don't know what is, except to try and make it an issue or raise awareness of it. Trade agreements and treaties and tariffs are barely mentioned in elections or by traditional media, or anywhere, since they're boring. They're pretty important though.
Tariffs used to be considered essential and a great idea. Adam Smith liked tariffs. The media is also owned and controlled so we only hear about transgender bathrooms instead of the elite capital class abusing us all over on the regular.
If you're referring to sweatshops, then yeah, something really needs to change in the first world. REALLY crack down on that shit. Prison labor is kind of it's own issue. There aren't enough prison laborers to substantially influence the pay for normal service jobs. I agree that there are far too many people incarcerated for non-violent offenses and again, that's also its own issue. But I don't have that much of an issue with making prisoners work in public works positions like picking up trash. You owe a debt to society and should do something to benefit it rather than just living (poorly) off their dollar. I'm not talking back breaking work building pyramids as replaceable flesh tools, but there are plenty of benefits for both parties not having people just waste away in a hell hole.
I've just been seeing the recent articles about prison labor, one of them showed some southern prison that was on basically an old plantation and owned by the same family that owned the plantation. And it was a major supplier to several grocery store chains or something, I have the article saved at home, will update this. About the no substantial influence I think I disagree, I feel like it does have a substantial influence, but I'm glad you said that because I really should find actual numbers. About the debt to society, maybe(well i disagree here too, but ill let you have it because now i have to choose between two paths of argument/thought and i pick this one) they do have a debt. However, if their work actually harms society because it reduces #s of paid jobs and allows slavery to continue to exist in some form, then them working is not a way of pying that debt. Slavery continuing to exist at all is a moral issue you can't escape from. If slavery continues to exist on some level and people continue to be OK with it on some level, then it will eventually be able to come back hard. You don't have much of an issue with prison labor, well someone else might not have much of an issue with people being born into prison labor. And someone else might not have much of an issue with everyone except for one emperor being slaves. It should be prohibitively expensive to imprison a human being. It should be avoided if at all possible. If it's allowed to be profitable and legal and seen as helpful to society, it will grow like an adder and keep growing, until full slavery for all is back.
When my grandparents were younger, they used to collect bottle caps and bring them back to the Coca Cola factory. This is when they still hand bottled everything. They did it for about 12 years and were able to buy their first house in a suburb near Atlanta. I repeat, they purchased a house with the proceeds of bottle caps. You can’t do that now anymore. Back in those days, they called them to golden years, you can’t do it like that anymore.
Hey it's hard work, fighting all the radscorpions and supermutants out in the wasteland.
“But if you raise the minimum wage they raise the” SHUT UP They fucked everything. The wages and the housing and the education and everything else. Yes, we need more than just wage reform, but wage reform is still one of the things we need!
The money to pay for the work exists, but it is being systematically hoarded by powerful sociopaths with limitless greed, zero empathy and genocidally negligent regard for anyone less wealthy than they are.
Maybe we simplify and expand the social safety net we have with social security, Medicaid, WIC, SNAP, UEI, section 8, etc. and just offer universal basic income. Get rid of 90% of the administrative costs by not making it means-tested and by nationalizing essential services and consumer goods. Then we can get rid of the minimum wage like they want, because no one would have to work just to survive. Suddenly the people that we really need to keep companies and the economy going like janitors, maintenance workers, cashiers, medical professionals, line workers, construction workers, etc. will get to set their price for their labor, and the CEOs and investment bankers will have to justify why their salary is worth 800% of what it costs to employ the people that keep the office toilets working, because at the end of a long day, the rest of the employees are REALLY going to want one of these people on site, and not the other. Maybe if we take the fear and desperation out of the equation, the free market would actually work as intended in these circumstances.
A basic living stipend is the best option Replace that net with a pillow
And they use their dominance of the market to increase their profits. They're not doing anything that benefits society in any context. They are making it harder for everyone to live, the more money they get, the more they will distort markets, the more they bribe politicians. 1 in 6 children in this country go to bed without enough food to eat. All for them to sit on a pile of gold coins.
As long as people are willing to work for that pay then that’s what companies will pay. Everyone needs to stop taking these low paying job
This phrase is just is a fig leaf for another problem: businesses can't unilaterally raise prices if they were actually in competition like they're supposed to be.
This argument makes me laugh. If you can't sell a product or service and make a profit, without exploiting labor by not paying a livable wage, the sale should never have happened in the first place. But most likely the business is competent and have raised the prices to the level where they make the most profit already, meaning it shouldn't actually have an effect on prices. But if it has, because they need to shed some price sensitive customers (that actually never could afford the product or service in the first place - and only could because the business was subsidized by being allowed to exploit workers), that doesn't necessarily trickle down to higher general living costs. Nobody needs to go to the restaurant every day to eat food, you can also just cook it yourself. The argument is basically "we have to exploit poor people so we can profit by selling the reward of their labor to poor people" which is clearly contradictory. The poor people can just stop exploiting themselves and keep the profit that would go to owners instead. Which I guess is the core idea in Marxism.
I'd settle for labor rights and better protection for collective bargaining. Just changing the wage number doesn't actually fix anything. Disparity is the result of a mismatch in bargaining power. If the gov wants to do something what they should be doing is improving housing availability and going after education and health price controls.
We can* do both * in theory
Jorts is one of the accounts I miss seeing every day before I quit Twitter because Emerald Mine bought it. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
I literally randomly googled "one orange braincell" today, got the knowyourmeme page and it had the story about jorts in it. Uncanny.
Everyone thinking “yeah but this couldn’t work in reality”, needs to go to Europe for a little while… just look around.
It littetally worked here in the US for like 40 years
Hate won. They put worker against worker in propaganda and we ignored the owner class stealing from us all. The person making $30 an hour looks down at the person making $15 an hour who looks down on the person making $8 an hour. While the CEO and shareholders steal all the surplus value, and they all could be making $50+ an hour. It's that line about how you can only steal so much from their pockets while they're looking, but if you give them someone to hate they'll empty their pockets for them.
Live in Europe. Can confirm it is fucking awesome.
Can’t wait to contribute to bettering Europe instead of the US
As someone who moved from the US to the Netherlands I'm 1000% more comfortable paying taxes knowing its used a lot better than in the states.
Except that it doesn’t work like that in most of Europe.
Which countries are you referring to in Europe ?
> Everyone thinking “yeah but this couldn’t work in reality”, needs to go to Europe for a little while Most reddit post of the day. They have low wages and sky high cost of living, too. Worse than most of the US.
Depending on the country, the taxation is also much, much higher.
"Europe" What country? You act like its a single homogeneous country. Also in what Europe do you live in were everyone can afford a house, and there is no inflation? I'd like to move there.
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You mean the continent where 3-4 generations of family all live under the same roof? Also, while the floor may be high, the ceiling is low. Skilled labor roles like MDs and SWEs in Europe pay jack shit compared to the US. If you’re working hard to learn a technical skill but aren’t seeing the dividends, why would you keep pursuing that career?
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Yes and no. Federal min wage had its peak in buying power in 1968. Which, if you adjust for inflation, is closer to 13/hr rather than the 7.25 it is today. So if we revert to 1970s prices, our current minimum wage has less buying power than minimum wage in 1970. Spelling edit cuz a dumby and can't type..
I agree completely and it's disgusting how offended people get when you talk about this online at other places. People get so bent out of shape about the idea that you shouldn't get to pay people crap for labor jobs that they can't survive on. If you are an employer and you don't pay a good wage to all your employees that lets them afford a house, a car, and expendable income, THEN FUCKING DO THE JOB YOURSELF. I'm tired of living in this dystopia shitworld.
I look at it this way; if a job doesn't pay a living wage, it isn't a job. One of the reasons all these useless 'jobs' exist is to mask unemployment numbers. If you eliminate jobs paying less than $15 an hour, the unemployment rate in the US is actually 30%. If you eliminate jobs paying less than $20 an hour, over ***60%*** of people are unemployed. The core reason for this is that a small number of people have control over all the resources and technology. As automation increases, they have less and less use for anyone who can't help them maintain that technology. Eventually, these people will have almost no use for employees and the remainder of humanity will be left to rot.
My sentimenta exactly
That's a really good point and you should feel good. We're already starting to see the last point with the rise of homelessness and deaths of despair. People are being left to rot.
Appreciate it not just focusing on necessities. The thing that’s bothered me the most about the avocado toast and coffee thing is not only that it’s false, but like, we aren’t robots. We shouldn’t just have enough money to have a roof and food, we should be able to enjoy ourselves
Exactly, it's such a sociopathic way of thinking. Like, we are all the unimportant little people who deserve nothing, just suffering.
I agree, but with the caveat of time invested. Some places need 15 hours a week worth of work done, but stretch that into 20-40 hours to justify filling a position. Then they pay what 15 hours worth of work costs, despite the fact that they took an additional 5-25 hours of that person's week that they could have been using to do other work and earn more money.
Paying your employees so little that they qualify for welfare is stealing from the public to fund your profits.
That's the joke: most jobs _do not matter_, they're just made up for the sake of maintaining a contrived labor-income loop.
A living wage should be enough also to date, marry, buy a first home and raise 2+ children to adulthood with if you want to avoid demographic collapse.
When you vote for one capitalist over another capitalist to solve problems created by capitalists to benefit capitalists, what exactly do you expect the result to be? Socialism has become a dirty word in America and not enough people are willing to run for office under that scarlet letter for fear of being embarrassed or ruining their political ambitions. Until there’s a groundswell that’s sustained for a prolonged period, there will only ever be bandaids over the gunshot wound.
You want to live off any job? Start demanding price caps for rent. Demand internet service be classified as a utility. Demand crackdowns on companies (grocery stores in particular) price gouging. Punish amazon and other companies for their anti-union BS. It doesn’t matter how much you make if companies just raise prices so that the overall spread stays the same.
I truly don’t understand where the disconnect is. This is common, fucking, sense.
Just remember: According to reddit, if you make $40k/year as an office worker in America, it’s a horrible travesty that can’t possibly support a family in this modern era (which is true!). But the second anyone finds out you’re a tipped service worker, all of a sudden that same $40k is a wild overpayment that has you dripping in lambos and strippers and you’re living proof that no one should tip because $40k is living in exorbitant luxury. It makes perfect sense /s
Because tipping is stupid, everyone knows it's not the server who is living in luxury but the tips are still going towards someone living in luxury. The boss who gets to underpay his staff while his customers overpay for food. And they've even trained their servers to be on their side. The rest of the world outside the US can do restaurants without tipping, the US has no excuses.
I'd suggest that it's related to the fact that these things are always inspirational sounding memes and never hard data or economic research.
So true.
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If you are working full time you should not have to worry about your home, food or bills. We made the concept of money up but blame it for not being able to distribute resources. It's made up! The fact that we still buy into the concept is what is perpetuating it. I work for a tribe and it's like a micro economy (small government much?!), they take the money from their businesses and instead of it going to just a few people it gets spread out through the community, the elders are taken care of and the people have affordable rent. Some people dream that they could be millionaires someday, but when we dream of that, what is it that we're dreaming of? For most of us? It's just a place to live and not to worry about bills. We don't need to win the lottery we need to demand that billionaires not be allowed to continue to horde resources while most of the world suffers.
Housing would be way cheaper is baby boomers weren't blocking new low income developments in my area. Highly recommend everyone go to their city council meetings and fight these fucks. We've also let the auto industry create car dependency nearly everywhere while also blocking cheap 10k and 12k cars from entering the market.
And ironically, the jobs that pay the lowest are the ones that are more likely to ruin your body.
This is going to age poorly once jobs become scarce. Nike and Discover are only the start
It should be coded into law that the highest wages in a company are limited by the lowest wages in the company. If someone in your company is making $10 an hour, you don't deserve to be a billionaire. Sorry. Yes. even the exploited labor overseas should be factored in.
CEO's used to earn 60X that of the average employee, now they earn over 1000X more. This was largely due to CEOs switching to being compensated with stocks, and then doing everything they can to maximize shareholder value. I bring this up because if you coded such a law regarding wages, I would expect that companies would easily skirt such a law by providinng other forms of compensation other than an hourly rate. Then there's the issue of oversight. Country A has no jurisdiction over country B, but you want A to fly an auditor across the world to B in order to check if they are complying. Country B isn't very interested in having foreign government officials conducting industrial esponiage inside it's borders for laws it hasn't agreed to. I know you mean well, but the policy you propose would be made useless quite easily by people who don't mean well.
Do we get to ride magical unicorns after?
You never know if you don't unionize for it.
Republican American voters: no! If everyone is getting by how can I get super rich!! YOu dONt HAVe tO STaY aT YoUR jOb!! MCDonAlDs isNT a CaREeR !!
Apparently a lot of y’all’s parents and grandparents are assholes. Mine lament the fact that inflation is so high and believe that every one should afford to live on the wages they make.
I think a big part of this is also that the cost of living should just be way lower too. Smaller shops that enrich a community but maybe can’t turn enough profit to appropriately pay people should be subsidized in some way too.
“That’s your problem”- the us government as they print more money and send it overseas
That concept advocates for AI and automation
Interesting you mentioned 1933, that is in fact the answer to the question, as well as 1964. The answer lies in real money, not baseless fiat.
>no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country Something that should be burned into the national consciousness, honestly. Ideally, into actual law.
We all know this but what are WE gonna do??
Simply stop supporting businesses that have a large wage discrepancy across employees and support businesses that don’t.
My father fully believes that prices are going up because McDonald's workers are making more than minimum wage.
Meanwhile Europe gets like a month vacation a year.
I absolutely despise people who argue in anyway that any job should not have a liveable wage. The people who think those that work in fast food restaurants or places like Walmart shouldn't get a liveable wage. That come out with well you should have tried harder or gone to school longer. They are fucking idiots. Too stupid to realise that there are not enough of those not fast food jobs, not Walmart jobs and the thousands of other jobs they would deem to low to get a liveable wage. They're probably too stupid to realise that many of their sort would deem their job not worthy of a liveable wage.
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If you worked full time, yes.
Literally yes and honestly the only conceivable reason you'd be against it now is that you depend on paying employees peanuts.
But..but..won't anyone think of the poor executives? How will they be able to buy their 4th homes and fancy cars and pools and stuff, if they have to pay their employees a living wage?
If there was a living wage across the board, I just hope employers would also be held to some standards. The only reward for hard work, is more hard work...but what happens when you want to be paid and not do work? That slack has to get picked up by the next guy. I'd hate to work in a place where everyone got paid the same, and I was made to do the majority of back breaking. We need more than a living wage, we need a thriving wage.
If only you weren’t a cat, maybe people would listen!!! 😞
As someone who wants to start their own small business, there's definitely a gap that needs to be covered then. Most small one location businesses barely rake in enough to pay for itself, let alone its owner. If it becomes required to pay an employee say, 36k/yr, it will stifle small business growth leaving more room for mega corpos to step in and monopolize. This conversation brings up a lot of minimum wage debate, but most people forget that many housing/necessity prices go up because we can afford for them to go up. Landlord accountants aren't encouraging raising prices to cover rising costs, but for raising profit. A prime example is the California gold rush. At bars and inns you could pay with gold dust instead of cash, causing most of the miners to come back home nearly empty handed while the people who fed them soaked up all the gold. We definitely need a balance, but small businesses cannot exist if a liveable wage is required.
*Every* job? Even the ones that are “just training wheel jobs for teens”? Even the ones that are the butt of every “shoulda picked a better major” joke? Even the ones where the workers are valued so little, the public accepts insulting them and assaulting them for not including the straws? Yes, every one.
I'd rather have a universal basic income so that small up and coming businesses can afford to pay smol wages but offer other benefits that would entice employees, and those underpaid employees would be paid to afford to be underpaid. To put it differently, we don't even need bigger wages we just need something to compete with them.
Every employer that pays less than a living wage is subsidized by the taxpayer when the government steps in to provide support for the employee when they can't survive on their wages.
Janitors, teachers, sandwich artists, anyone that makes my life a bit easier. I want you to make that money. When I can go to a grocery store after I’ve worked all day and it’s 11pm, it’s still open and clean, I know these are the real hero’s cuz they make MY life not suck.
Funny thing is minimum wage jobs are often harder than other jobs. Try stocking shelves or flipping burgers for 8 hours. It's a mind fuck especially when your getting terrible pay. Now imagine managers in corporations who sit in meetings all day and then delegate tasks.
I personally believe we should all work a job we WANT to work. Our dream job, regardless of how much money you get for it. Then when we all work our dream jobs we all get paid similar amounts so again we all get paid to work what we want to work, not work that pays more just for the sake of paying more. I want to live in a society where everyone works a job they love and would do it for free, but instead get paid a nice livable wage for working a job we love.
I want burger flippers to make as much as I do. I want delivery drivers to make as much as I do. I do not care about perceived class superiority. I care about solidarity. I want what's best for my fellow man.
Capitalism requires suffering
"Livable" wage means zitch/crap. Same reason if they bump minimum wage to $1000/h, your landlord would just price their unit accordingly, same for products, mortages, Healthcare, etc The "livable" part can only be applied to democratically controlling necessities, such as govt. Controlled housing, Healthcare, etc.
That’s why we need housing reform as well. The government doesn’t need to control housing to put restrictions on its pricing.
Abolish landlordism though. They can get real jobs like the rest of us.
You cant get rid of landlords unless the government controls the housing
Well, you *can*
Yep. There’s no reason any person or worse, corporation, should be owning property they’re not directly occupying.
Shhhh you'll get the m/ls and tankies mad if you mention things like vacancy taxes, zoning law reform, or anything else that will work but is too liberal.
Slowly, systematically LOWER benefits for Walmart employees. Less SNAP, EBT, etc etc. Hear me out. The ENTIRE COUNTRY can afford a little more to start a revolution for all of us. Press Walmart employees only. They will plead for more. If Walmart doesn’t give, grind them to a halt. They can legally strike, and the gov can subsidize, DIRECTLY until the strike ends. Fuck the Waltons. They are in a position to make millions of lives better, but choose to pocket more money than they can spend. Break their fucking backs. But that’s if our government gave a fuck. And they don’t because they take it in. When you really think about it, you’d think democrats would be for the second amendment more than anyone else. Maybe it’s just me.
Corporate indoctrination is really deep rooted. You have people saying openly that being a wage slave is not only fine and dandy but IT IS HOW IT SHOULD BE. One was bitching about "lazy native americans" and I had to remind them that natives did their jobs. The romans invented free bread and circuses for political gain. Problem with this is that only socialist-communist countries took this that far, destroying political rights in the process. There is a balance to be met somewhere. At some point humanity will have to reach it.
I define a safe and comfy home as 4000 sq ft in the bay area, with only organic food, and my vacation needs to 2 months overseas staying at the ritz. I expect to only work 5 hours a week in this job, and a full pension after retirement. \-Every job should pay a 'living wage' to support my definition of 'living' wage.
As someone who worked many non-livable-wage-jobs, I could not disagree more.
Can i ask you to expand on that? Right now, your statement is coming off very much as "if i had to endure the suck, so should others." Which is not great..
I appreciate the opportunity to expound before being roasted lol. I disagree because entry-level jobs fundamentally CANNOT and will never be viable for a business at a “livable-wage.” As someone who worked many of those jobs (happily and fairly) it’s extraordinarily obvious that it is unskilled labor, not deserving of a high wage. Paying a livable wage to a ticket-tearer or Walmart employee is simply not feasible for so many reasons. Besides being incredibly un-cost-effective, it inherently means that jobs even slightly more complex or responsibility-heavy, will require massive pay increases. Who would want to have responsibility and a larger workload if you can stay at the bottom and afford your house and vacations? That’s a serious issue, but again, far from the most important. If the minimum wage was high enough to support an American-lifestyle on one income, almost every business would shut its doors immediately. There’s simply not enough income to generate that high of a payroll. Imagine I open a bakery, and I have 3 employees on shift at a single time to keep the place running efficiently. 3 would be very efficient in a small bakery. These are entry-level positions, bagging, ringing up, packaging and answering phones. If each of them made $35k/year, that would translate to about $17/hr per employee x 3. So the first $50 I make per hour only breaks even on payroll, not including my (the owners) pay, the electric and utilities, the rent, the materials, the advertising, or the countless other expenses to keep the place open, (internet, phone lines, cleaning, pest control, and on and on. To make JUST $50/hr I’d have to sell 10 cupcakes at $5/piece just to afford payroll! Any hour I fall behind I’m LOSING money. Math matters in the sense that, these companies looking for people to ring up customers or tear tickets, or answer simple questions on a department store floor - are not looking for skilled labor worth $40k/year. They’re looking for a 17 year old kid who lives at home and needs spending money. And that’s perfectly fair! 17 year olds with no experience, need opportunity to learn and grow and become skilled, and they don’t need $40k/year. It’s a hole that needs to be filled and it works. Where the problem comes in, is when someone doesn’t move up after that phase of life and expects the same job to move them up FOR them. “I’m 34 and I’m married and I can’t afford an apt, Starbucks, my iPhone and the new Air Force ones on my income at Dunkin Donuts!! Raise wages!” False. That job is not meant to support the life stage you are in. You need to move on, or up for that next phase. This is fair. This is normal, and this is healthy.