Go ahead, ask someone to explain why a guy at starbucks "deserves" to be making less than a living wage, it boils down to this. There's no real argument for it.
If you ask them why they shouldn't make more, they'll typically say something like "it's not meant to be a career" or some nonsense about inflation. Yet, society still needs people to pour coffee or serve fast food, so by arguing against a living wage in this manner you are actually arguing that people with menial service jobs should be poor by merit of the type of work they do. Granted that isn't a perfect 1:1 with what I said, but the attitude is definitely there. Why else would someone be so vehemently against a person making a living wage?
The question as "why does the guy at Starbucks deserve to be making less than minimum wage" assumes the counter-party agrees that the guy at Starbucks deserves this.
In reality, (I assume that) the people who disagree with you don't have malice for poor people, but are seeing different levels of the economic stack. I would bet (I'll put money down) that they'd argue a mix of labor supply/demand and regulatory arguments, and that they're NOT just hoping to put down those who are economically less well-off.
It's important to actually understand your counterparties if you actually want to improve things.
I think anyone who thinks a lot of people don’t think like this should spend some time in the last 20 years of minimum wage debates. I was heavily involved in the fight for a $15 min wage in california (and other states) which hilariously and ironically is already too low by the time it finally happened. I am well aware of the arguments people present against it, and very vocally. I understand the counterparties well and the levers of power they like to press to convince people a walmart worker doing 50 hour weeks shouldnt earn enough to survive. People expressed doubt in this thread people actually think like this - they do. Seriously go look at any argument about it online.
If you ask them why they shouldn't make more, they'll typically say something like "it's not meant to be a career" or some nonsense about inflation. Yet, society still needs people to pour coffee or serve fast food, so by arguing against a living wage in this manner you are actually arguing that people with menial service jobs should be poor by merit of the type of work they do. Granted that isn't a perfect 1:1 with what I said, but the attitude is definitely there. Why else would someone be so vehemently against a person making a living wage?