[samhain]

Maybe this is a hot take, but maybe if a job doesn’t make a living wage, then it’s a job that shouldn’t even be offered? If someone can’t make it on a cashier job then the public shouldn’t be afforded the convenience of having a cashier. Same thing with any other service people provide. Maybe minimum wage destroying jobs (if that even actually happens) would be a good thing.

[djbebs]

How would that improve peoples lives?

What effect do you think reducing peoples options will have on their lives?

[tenacious_tuna]

[I am not OP]

You seem to be thinking that removing these jobs is removing choice from these peoples' lives, when in reality it's the opposite: Having to take those jobs removes the choice from their lives--because, as OP said, those jobs "kept their heads above water but gave them little chance of ever progressing."

Where OP suggests "maybe minimum wage destroying jobs ... would be a good thing," this would require the minimum wage to be high enough where people in those jobs would have the ability to exit them if they so desired--they would have the ability to make choices to do something else.

Which returns us to your question: if there exists a number of jobs that people would very happily _leave if they could_, but are unable to (either because they can't accord to take a day off to interview elsewhere, or they don't have a car to widen the range where they can look for other jobs, or because they have to accept the healthcare their current job offers even though the pay is way worse / the job itself horrible), these jobs are in effect exploiting people who are trapped in those positions. Those jobs should not continue to exist simply because they offer some measly payment in exchange for portions of a human lifespan. Our system should instead be structured in such a way where people do not have to be exploited to survive.

This means leveling the playing field by offering a living wage, and healthcare as a human right, and related activities.

Related quote, by Terry Pratchett[0]:

> The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

> Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances.

> A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars.

> Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

> But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

> This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...

[djbebs]

The problem with that sort of argument is that you're not actually fixing anything, you're just shoving it under the rug at great expense.

Minimum wages do not improve low wage earners lot in life, they simply make it impossible for them to survive because it becomes illegal to hire them.

Once again, what effect do you think that making it illegal to hire someone who is unproductive will have on that person's life?

Arguments about a living wage, and other appeals to emotion are very nice, and certainly convince a lot of people who did not think through the full extent of the incentives at play, but at the end of the day their only result is to harm those it supposedly is seeking to help.

[tenacious_tuna]

Could you explain more the relationship between there being a minimum wage, and it being illegal for a person to be hired? I'm not understanding that causal relationship, and it seems essential to your point.

[djbebs]

I'm not sure I understand your request?

The minimum wage is simply the process of illegalizing the hiring of labor for less than a certain value. This means that hiring anyone whose productivity is below that value is financially non-viable.

The practical result is that people whose productivity is below the minimum wage are only able to find gainful employment by illegally receiving less than minimum wage.

[tenacious_tuna]

Your arguments seem to be from the business perspective, of the value of labor. My arguments are from the human perspective, in terms of the value of a person.

> hiring anyone whose productivity is below that value is financially non-viable

I would argue that the minimum wage is an indicator of the minimum humane value of an individual's time, in the eyes of the government. That is, if someone is paid less than that for their labor, it is humanely non-viable.

> the practical result is that people whose productivity is below the minimum wage are only able to find gainful employment by illegally receiving less than minimum wage

Again, this just feels exploitative. Take someone who hasn't finished highschool, for whatever reason: by your measure, likely not a very "productive" worker, and your argument implies someone like this may not "deserve" the minimum wage. But this person now has no way to rectify this situation: they have to work more than one job, beyond "full time", just to have enough to survive (because by your measure their limited productivity means they don't deserve enough money to feed and house themselves--a "living wage", as GP said above). Working multiple jobs to earn enough to survive means they don't have the time nor energy to continue to educate themselves, so they cannot raise their value as a worker, in your eyes. They are now trapped in this cycle.

Admittedly, "minimum wage" is perhaps not the best tool to address this problem. I would argue that something akin to UBI would be the best way to approach this--guarantee that every citizen has access to some minimum standard of living, with access to housing/food/education/information, and then let the labor economy exist on top of that. However, in the absence of such a system, and with intense resistance to anything like that kind of system, minimum wages are one of few tools available to address the problem of giving people options to exit living on month-to-month paycheck lifestyles.