[icebraining]

This[1] discussion on the minimum wage (specifically centered on Seattle's recent laws) provides a more nuanced goal than just "helping workers" or "getting them dependent"; essentially he's saying there are two types of minimum wage workers - teenagers looking for summer money, and adults making a living -, and you can help the latter if you don't mind screwing the former.

[1] http://www.econtalk.org/jacob-vigdor-on-the-seattle-minimum-...

[setr]

I think the teenage bit is unnecessary; they’re talking more about anyone trying to find entry-level work. Which happens to often be teenagers, but would presumably also include low-level career transitions, homeless, etc.

The restaurant part is particularly notable: “'We're going to be fine. Our members of this [Washington Restaurant] Association--the minimum wage, it's not going to break them.' And the reason why, he said, is because, 'there are so many strategies that we have to basically reduce our labor.'”

And then it goes on to basically list alternatives to having any entry-level jobs in the first place; buying cut fruits from offsite, self-order machines, etc.

That is, its a bit more dangerous than the simple job-hour reduction; its a more permanent transition to the total removal of low-level full-service work

[rtkwe]

It'd be very interesting to see the history of who was working minimum wage jobs over time and what kind of jobs were paid minimum wage. Anecdotally it seems more and more people are working a lot of minimum wage jobs that formerly wouldn't be minimum wage like retail or food service (a la fast food places) and there's more people working full time minimum wage.

No matter what the goal of raising it I think the fact that it's now a fraction of what it was in real dollars demands we either raise it or completely rethink how it's applied and what kinds of jobs can be min wage. People working full time should be able to live on their wages, anything else is just subsidizing the labor costs for huge profitable companies.

[leetcrew]

> there are two types of minimum wage workers - teenagers looking for summer money, and adults making a living -, and you can help the latter if you don't mind screwing the former.

when you put it like this, it seems obvious to say that the right move is to screw over the teenagers who are much less likely to be supporting a family or themselves.

I'm not sure this is great in the long run though. imo, having some kind of part time job is very important in highschool. for a lot of teens, it might be the first time they are exposed to an environment that has no inherent reason to make things work for them. until we finally get luxury space communism, this is a really important experience to have early in life.

[jlokier]

I don't know about other countries, but in the UK the approach is to set the minimum wage significantly lower for teenagers.

Which sucks if you're an adult making a living who happens to be young, but that's what we do.

There's also a dirty hack: We call some young people "apprentices"(1), which sometimes means the same job as before and not having to pay the minimum wage, with a veneer of marketing. See also "unpaid interns".

(1) I don't want to disparage proper apprenticeships, which from reports can be excellent, e.g. at engineering firms like Rolls-Royce.

[leetcrew]

the obvious problem here is that if you have a different minimum wage for teenagers, they will be preferred over adult candidates.

by the way, we do have special rules in the US for what kind of work you are allowed to give to interns. in general you are not allowed to give work to interns that would otherwise be performed by a full employee. this is intended to prevent adult employees being put out of a job by low pay interns. unfortunately, I don't think most minimum wage employers are interested in dealing with these complicated rules for interns.

[icebraining]

It may be an important experience, but it's not such a common one: https://www.oecd.org/statistics/students-at-work.htm

[leetcrew]

if it's important and uncommon, isn't that a good reason not to add additional barriers?