I'm not inclined to get hyperbolic for the sake of being silly or arguing. Every region has a minimum wage level that allows people to pay rent, buy food and clothing. And it's nowhere near $100 an hour.
For those unfamiliar with the acronym AMOC, it stands for the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (the main current system in the Atlantic Ocean).
Well, why shouldn't the minimum wage be $100 an hour? Wouldn't that be better for the worker?
Of course everyone would love $100 an hour, but then how high would other wages have to be? Repairing your car? $500 an hour? Building houses, dental hygienists.....$$$$$$$$$$$$. And yes, there are people who are earning minimum wage who are trying to help support families with kids. My son in law had to work for Walmart for a couple years because that was the only employment in a tiny Nova Scotia town and he was supporting a wife and child on that. And yes, minimum wage! In Canada today, our minimum wage level is $17.00 and people just barely get by and are sometimes having to go to food banks because the rents are so high here.
Just a thought: it used to be that you could afford to work your way through college, not anymore. As corporate profits continued to rise, everything became increasingly expensive. Over time, those "entry-level" jobs taken to work your way through college, buy a new car, or supplement the budget became a necessity to survive. Those jobs became less and less effective as a supplement as the minimum wage stayed more or less stagnant. In addition, as more and more manufacturing jobs moved to foreign countries, the entry-level jobs became more sought after and more of a requirement than a supplement.
Minimum wage should be enough for a single person to afford an apartment, food, and clothing... the basic necessities of life. That's not the case in many cities across the country today. We have homeless people working full time. That has got to be demoralizing and depressing.
I worked for just over minimum wage for about six months back in the '70s because there was nothing else — no other jobs to be found no matter how hard I looked. I was a "breadwinner," but I was just supporting myself — no family to support. It was depressing. I worked in a run-down factory with a bunch of lowlifes and afterwards went home to my slum apartment. There were times that I didn't have any money for food and went to bed hungry. Or I'd find a quarter in the couch cushions and be able to afford a loaf of bread, and that's what I'd eat for dinner. I'd put a little catsup on it for flavor.
You've hit on one of the chief fallacies of instituting minimum wage laws. When governments force an artificially high wage, costs go up, wages in other businesses have to go up, inflation increases along with taxes, and eventually there is the same disparity between low wage jobs and other jobs.
Tell you what, why don't you tell someone who only makes $7 an hour and who has to go to food banks because he can't afford to eat and pay his rent, how ineffective a raise would be for him. I also find it interesting how you get all worked up and suggest an outrageously high minimum wage for the sake of hyperbole and then go after me for suggesting a potential outcome that you think would not happen? And not even a nod to the idea of a wage that is pegged to at the very least, the lowest common level of being able to afford to pay a low rent and continue to eat. Nobody has suggested that minimum wage should make anyone rich.
And corporations and just every day businesses are working to keep wages down as low as possible. What's happening in Canada is that employers are refusing to offer a livable wage and then when they can't get workers, they go to the government and ask for permission to apply for temporary foreign workers who'll be happy to work for way less (probably because it's still more than they can earn in Mexico or wherever). We have a 6.2% unemployment rate here and yet we've had more temporaries than ever who are taking those 'low wage' jobs that our own uneducated or poorly educated workers might have applied for and. gotten in years gone by.
It was meant as a joke. Like nuke Chicago and New York. Ask those mugged whats funny about it.
Well most workers might theoretically benefit if they kept their jobs, but they might not not because the price of products they produced would rise and might be replaced by less expensive imports from other states or countries. In any case those workers would encounter higher prices for products and services they purchased in their own subsistence, thus offsetting much of the gain in their own wages.
The same goes on here with the farm workers. Many of them are from Mexico. I believe the answer to your question is that corporations are in business to make as much profit as possible. They're not really interested in the quality of life of their employees, at least not enough to pay a living wage.
Great points Rich!
Thank you for the coherent reply.
Yep, to businesses, workers are a commodity which are to be acquired for the least amount possible — just like materials or anything else on which their profits depend. Left unchecked, the laws of supply and demand will determine wages. In times of low unemployment, that's a good thing for workers because they'll be paid more.
Exactly. There should be a minimum wage that supports a minimum quality of life to include food, shelter, and medical care. This would likely go far in reducing crime, and drug addiction. Clearly, prison isn't solving the problem.
The thing that makes this virtually impossible in real life is the cost of living from one area to another and the individuals management of that income, needs vs wants.
Where there's a will...
Just a theory on my part, but I suspect that the soaring cost of a college education can be, at least in part, attributed to the ready availability of college loans. In light of those loans colleges have felt free to raise wages and therefore tuition. When I went to college it was practically free in comparison to today’s charges.
That's exactly right.
Very well put, Jeni.
