[ocdtrekkie]

I am not sure why people think minimum wage must be enough to afford a two-bedroom home. Ideally minimum wage should comfortably allow one person to support... Themselves, minimally. Which means a studio or one bedroom.

People should not aim to remain at minimum wage long, but use it as an entry point for somewhere better.

[djschnei]

Eh I'm not positive it should even be able to support a single person... Why do we insist on raising the bar for employment so high? If a 16 year old wants to get their first job, they shouldn't be required right of the bat have a productive output sufficient to support themselves. That's not the point of minimum wage jobs - or at least it never was until we started arbitrarily setting a minimum value.

[the_gastropod]

FDR proposed the minimum wage to guarantee anyone who works 40 hours a week a "living wage". It was signed into law in 1938. And, adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage has never been higher than it was in 1938. In other words, it's precisely the point of minimum wage, and it's increasingly failed to live up to its purpose ever since.

[djschnei]

Wooosh. Yes, I am specifically speaking to the fact that declaring an arbitrary "minimum wage" does not effect the true minimum wage which is $0. By enforcing an arbitrary floor all you're doing is making it illegal for someone to work unless their output is more valuable than the floor. Good intentions, completely illogical.

[the_gastropod]

I respectfully disagree. The U.S. has safety nets for those in poverty (e.g., TANF, Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, EITC, Supplemental Security Income, and housing assistance). Having the U.S. tax payer subsidize businesses unwilling to pay their workers living wages seems illogical to me. This is happening right now. Walmart, Amazon, and McDonalds, for example, all have huge numbers of employees dependent on welfare programs. Why is that logical, and how would dropping the already low minimum wage help this?

One solution gaining some attention is UBI. What are your thoughts on it?

[suby]

The average retail worker is 37 years old[0]. If it is possible to structure our society in a way that those who work a minimum wage job are able to support themselves, then we should do so. I'm kind of flabbergasted at the resistence to this. If the purpose of a minimum wage is not to guarantee a person a minimum standard of living, then what is the point?

Keep in mind that minimum wage jobs often make it hard to actually get 40 hours. You'll be lucky to get even 20 a week. And they rotate the schedules so that your hours are different every week, which makes it incredibly hard to get a second job.

[0] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

[maxlybbert]

> If the purpose of a minimum wage is not to guarantee a person a minimum standard of living, then what is the point?

In the US, minimum wage is defined as “the least you can pay anybody for any reason” with an exception for people who receive tips. As I understand it, some countries allow some people to make less than minimum wage.

I’m not entirely sure what the current point of the minimum wage is. The original idea was that it didn’t apply to everybody and was meant to make businesses less likely to hire people who were covered.

The minimum wage is not, and never has been, defined as “what an average worker should get for average effort.”

I agree that the average worker should have enough to live on, but I don’t see any connection between that and the minimum wage. People here are complaining about using “edge cases” to keep the minimum wage low, but by definition (“minimum”), the minimum wage is an edge case.

[ginko]

If that 16 year old works 40 hours a week, then they definitely should be able to live on it.

[simonsarris]

Why? What if the 16 year old wants to partly make money, partly learn the ropes of some job, and some place could use "some" help but not get meaningfully enough work to pay a kid [current minimum wage]? Right now, these kids and businesses are out of luck.

What if a 60 year old is feeling lonely and wants to be a greeter or lecter or something, more than they need money, but it is definitely not worth minimum wage for 99% of places to have such a job? Right now, these old folk and businesses are out of luck.

Why do you think money is the only operative thing here, or the only one ever possible, for all possible jobs for all possible people?

The sheer amount of work you exclude when you require all jobs to be livable is huge. Not everyone is trying to strike it out on their own. Some people want to help in small ways and are fine with commensurate pay. Why force these jobs out of existence? Are you sure doing so is solving the problem you want to solve, while creating no others?

[tcfunk]

That's all well and good if 16 year olds are the only ones making minimum wage.

And if their parents haven't kicked them out of the house already because they got pregnant too early.

Or have a sexual orientation that their parents don't agree with.

Or..

[imgabe]

Do we need to handle those edge cases by mandating what employers have to pay ALL employees? Maybe there is a better way to help people in needy situations without distorting the labor market for everyone.

[suby]

16 year olds working min wage is the edge case. The average retail worker for instance is 37.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

[imgabe]

Not all retail workers make minimum wage.

[true_religion]

It would be easier and better to just help out edge cases directly. A 16 year old kicked out of their house for a pregnancy shouldn’t be forced to work minimum wage, but rather receive community support so they can finish schooling and rise to the point where they can prosper.

[cwkoss]

It would be great if we could both implement a UBI and eliminate the minimum wage.

[willhk]

Nobody aims to remain at minimum wage... The problem is we've been doing a great job of hollowing out the middle of our economy and replacing it with a relatively small amount of upper middle-class tech jobs and massive VC backed profits. This often leaves minimum wage jobs the only option for people who used to make more but their career tanked for reasons outside their control

[shados]

Yeah this is a bit confusing. If minimum wage was enough to afford a 2 bedroom, why would we even bother building 1 bedroom and studios? So people who could otherwise afford 2 BR downgrade?

[Johnny555]

That's fine in an area where these better paying jobs are available, but in many areas of the country, well paying jobs for unskilled workers are scarce, and support systems to help these unskilled workers improve their skills are nonexistent. It can be hard to a person to pull himself out of life-long poverty.

[imgabe]

And housing in those areas is also much cheaper.

[Johnny555]

But 2 bedroom housing is still out of reach, even in those areas according to the article.

[overthemoon]

Why not? Why shouldn't it? Why is this the proper state of things?

[ocdtrekkie]

Because it in no way makes sense for someone to hire a first time employee who still lives with their parents for a zero skill job at the rate of "enough to afford a two-bedroom house".

[mlevental]

> a first time employee who still lives with their parents

what makes you think this is the typical minimum wage earner?

[maxlybbert]

The minimum wage is “the least you can pay anyone for any reason.” If you set it too high, then first time workers who still live with their parents won’t be able to get jobs. At all.

[mlevental]

that has almost nothing to do with what i asked

[maxlybbert]

You asked “what makes you think this is the typical minimum wage earner?” I answered “if you don’t take that case into account when setting minimum wage, then that worker won’t be able to get a job.”

Minimum wage is the least you can pay anyone for any reason. It is, by definition, an edge case.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Isn't there a huge conceit that that's who earns minimum wage? Looking around my local wal-mart, it would appear many people first entered the job market at weird times in their lives.

[sct202]

Walmart's starting pay is $11 now, so they aren't even at minimum wage anymore.

[leetcrew]

Walmart actually pays considerably more than minimum wage, so I'm not sure what point you are making here.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I see now that changed recently, though I didn't see any demographics shifts in who are being employed.

And you know exactly the point I was trying to make.

[pingpongchef]

Minimum wage is an artificial value which is propped up by law, and can change without respect to an individual's situation. It would be better to aim for the highest wage an individual can get in exchange for labor.

[Kalium]

People are using a 1950s-era nuclear family model, with the idea that a minimum wage should support a family of at least two adults and one child. Preferably with a yard, lawn, dog, and white picket fence.

[true_religion]

Minimum wage doesn’t track inflation. If it did, I would have no complaints. But it’s hard for me to understand people saying minimum wage should only be for one person eking out a bare existence, when it’s value in real money has fallen over the past 70 years.

[xienze]

What everyone fails to realize is that every job has a maximum value associated with it, and therefore a maximum wage, assuming your employer isn’t in the business of losing money. When you raise the minimum wage to $X/hr, by necessity employers (again, in the interests of not losing money) will no longer be able to offer jobs that generate less than $X/hr in revenue. This becomes a problem for people who lack the skill to perform a job that generates at least $X/hr — they become unemployable, either through job elimination or automation.

[true_religion]

I know what the minimum wage does. I would prefer directly supporting the unemployeable to increase their skills, rather than forcing them to accept multiple minimum wage jobs and have no free time to learn.

[RhysU]

...and when you encounter a person whose skills cannot, at present and for whatever reason, be elevated above the minimum wage floor what do you do?

[true_religion]

If they can’t be elevated at present or in future, then that ought to be an edge case. If it is widespread then we have a a larger societal problem to deal with than merely setting a minimum wage.

[Kalium]

Would you be happy if minimum wage was CPI-indexed to track the cost for one adult's bare-bones existence? Obviously this also requires defining what that minimum is, as social norms are also subject to inflation - when a US minimum wage was introduced boarding houses were common. Now they're unheard of.

[true_religion]

That would be fine, as it would mean that we as a society explicitly agree what minimum wage should be about. And we would probably have massive campaigns to get adults with families off the minimum wage, as well as ensure that adults never have to take a minimum wage job in the future.

We could leave minimum wage to children, and charity workers.

As it stands, it used to pay better but has slowly slid to being subsistence living.

[ufo]

Supporting only one person means that there is not enough left to support any children. Or a sick relative. Or to otherwise live a fulfilling life.

Not everyone has the opportunity to move on to a better paying job.

[fuzz4lyfe]

At this point the federal minimum wage is a anachronism. Market forces have risen wages well past it. It doesn't really serve much of a purpose anymore. For example the average Walmart employee makes twice the federal minimum wage.