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Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
Honestly, consumers don't want to pay what things are actually worth and that is a big issue. The cost of the product or service would be passed on to the consumer, and suddenly the new minimum wage is no different than the old minimum wage.
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Is the problem that consumers "don't want to pay" or that they
cannot afford to pay.
I'm sure it's a little of both. But when you're barely making enough money to keep a roof over your head, yeah, you're going to look to pay as little as possible for everything. It's the circuitous model that keeps Walmart employees spending their paycheck at Walmart.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
It’s not just a left problem. How many people do you know that believe minimum wage jobs should be “stepping stones” for teens or shouldn’t be a career? What are their politics? How many do you know believe it’s ok for educated immigrants to be relegated to minimum wage jobs or hire undocumented immigrants for cheap labour (we know one!)? What are their politics? How many executives and hiring professionals require increasingly higher levels of education and work experience for entry level jobs? Do you think they’re all leftists?
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Just piggybacking on this because it's part of the conversation that I think gets overlooked in the minimum wage debate.
If all minimum wage jobs are for teenagers, shouldn't we expect fast food places to only be open from 4-9pm? Should grocery stores also be like this? Should you only be able to grab a coffee on your drive home from work but not to?
Early days in the pandemic we lauded these "low skill" jobs as essential but we cannot find a way to make sure these essential jobs keep people fed and clothed and housed?
If we all agree that these jobs should exist, how can we then tell those workers that they deserve to live in poverty?
And re: small businesses, as someone who worked for one for 15 years...oh well. If your business model requires you to keep your employees below a living wage you are a bad business owner. You're bad at it and you shouldn't have a business. You're not entitled to a profit.
This also applies to big businesses, and stopping them would do a lot to help small businesses. Go back to taxing big businesses and the wealthiest earners at 1960s levels and use that money to buoy small businesses through the process of increasing overall wages. Provide tax cuts only to businesses that have a reasonable executive-to-lowest salary discrepancy, which stops Amazon and McDonalds and Walmart from getting tax breaks while they have employees drawing public benefits.
When poor people get more money they spend it, it's been proven time and time again. Lower and middle income earners having more money helps all businesses, including the small ones. And no, a minimum wage increase across the board will not fix all of the problems but it's like the gun debate:
you cannot simply do nothing . People are losing their homes, children are going without food. Something has to give and the absolute bare minimum we can do is get the lowest wages up to something slightly dignified. If we hadn't waited 15 years maybe we wouldn't need drastic change.