Except minimum wage should support you fully because, as you may have noticed in high school, NOT everyone working at your minimum-wage workplace was “a high school kid”. Walmart and a lot of other places that skate by offering minimum wage effectively outsource the rest of the money they SHOULD be paying to the government - what you may know as “your fucking taxes”. You wanna see less people using welfare? You should be out there demanding companies pay more - some estimates are that Walmart’s profits are effectively buoyed as much as 40% by taxpayer-funded welfare programs like EBT, SNAP, TANF, and various forms of rent assistance, and there are similar numbers for other minimum-wage retailers and workplaces.
“BUT THAT MIGHT RAISE PRICES”, you cry? Well, here’s the good thing - by raising MINIMUM wage, you can go to your boss and say “hey I’m only making $17 an hour doing [highly skilled job], that’s only $2 more than minimum, could we work out a raise?” And if you get your whole workplace to do this, or enough of your fellow coworkers doing similar positions, they would definitely feel far more compelled.
Actually everyone I worked with in high school was a high school kid. The only person older than that was the store owner, and she obviously was making more due to her larger investment/risk.
Here’s the problem with your entire pitch, I’m going to be paying taxes regardless. They will never go down, they will only ever go up. If one problem is solved the government will simply use my taxes for something else. This is how government works. Additionally, increased wages get passed onto the customer. I know many people here like to pretend that they don’t, but prices either go up, or quality/quantity go down. That IS what happens, so I’ll be paying for it either way.
Your whole argument about an increase in minimums allowing other workers to request raises also doesn’t work. Instead what happens is the increase in pay causes an increase in prices, negating the gains across the board. We just saw this exact thing play out during covid. Stores had to very quickly increase the wages they were paying, prices went up, negating the increase in wages.
Except minimum wage should support you fully because, as you may have noticed in high school, NOT everyone working at your minimum-wage workplace was “a high school kid”. Walmart and a lot of other places that skate by offering minimum wage effectively outsource the rest of the money they SHOULD be paying to the government - what you may know as “your fucking taxes”. You wanna see less people using welfare? You should be out there demanding companies pay more - some estimates are that Walmart’s profits are effectively buoyed as much as 40% by taxpayer-funded welfare programs like EBT, SNAP, TANF, and various forms of rent assistance, and there are similar numbers for other minimum-wage retailers and workplaces.
“BUT THAT MIGHT RAISE PRICES”, you cry? Well, here’s the good thing - by raising MINIMUM wage, you can go to your boss and say “hey I’m only making $17 an hour doing [highly skilled job], that’s only $2 more than minimum, could we work out a raise?” And if you get your whole workplace to do this, or enough of your fellow coworkers doing similar positions, they would definitely feel far more compelled.
Actually everyone I worked with in high school was a high school kid. The only person older than that was the store owner, and she obviously was making more due to her larger investment/risk.
Here’s the problem with your entire pitch, I’m going to be paying taxes regardless. They will never go down, they will only ever go up. If one problem is solved the government will simply use my taxes for something else. This is how government works. Additionally, increased wages get passed onto the customer. I know many people here like to pretend that they don’t, but prices either go up, or quality/quantity go down. That IS what happens, so I’ll be paying for it either way.
Your whole argument about an increase in minimums allowing other workers to request raises also doesn’t work. Instead what happens is the increase in pay causes an increase in prices, negating the gains across the board. We just saw this exact thing play out during covid. Stores had to very quickly increase the wages they were paying, prices went up, negating the increase in wages.