Yeah, I started out breaking up your comment, then decided to just quote and answer the whole thing. Didn’t quite do a proper cleanup in between.
Maybe no one else should care, if the two parties began on equal footing with equal power. But in a capitalist system, wages are a matter of literal life and death for the employee, and it’s hard to say that he or she has as many equal options for employment as the employer has for employees.
Are you trapped in minimum wage for the rest of your life, or do you have aspirations to one day do something that pays more?
I mean do you love what you do? If you are a flying fishing guide, or professional beer taster earning minimum wage than I would say that your minimum wage and Kyocera phone is an nviable tradeoff for a sweet job.
If your job is menial, and you don like it, why don’t you go for something that pays better?
I would say that someone probably shouldn’t be taking care of old and disabled people, if they don’t like it. Bad enough to have no family to be part of, and be unable to care for yourself. How much worse if your caretaker was sullen and perfunctory?
Well, apart from the fact that after several years caring for this lady, I would worry about leaving her with a stranger, I would say that for lower-income people, trading up jobwise is largely a matter of environment. A person working in, say, engineering or IT has a work environment that ensures they have a social circle made up largely of others in their field and of a similar socio-economic class. They go out more, they go to social events, seminars etc., all of which are fertile meeting grounds for others who may provide opportunities. They have college friends, and often a spouse’s social circle to boot. Thus a lateral or upward shift in employment is far more accessible.
Frankly, I have been trying to come up with plausible ideas for opportunities to meet and interact with professional and educated people, and not even for job reasons. Honestly, I just miss having good intelligent conversations. But you have to understand that these kind of networks tend to be insular and also suspicious of lower income people.
Guess what? If minimum wage worked we wouldn’t be having this constant discussion begging for more. We wouldn’t have the rust belt. We wouldn’t have Detroit looking as bad as Syria. The thing is you folks on the left are dishonest when it comes to looking at the data objectively.
I guess if you want an economy of illegal immigrants doing manual labor, robots doing whatever else, and Wal-Mart hiring greeters out of pity just so the ignorant will vote Democrat keep pushing for a higher, unjustifiable wage floor.
Both are, fool. Why in the hell is China the #2 economy? In large part it’s due to what? Manufacturing going overseas. Are you blind? Go to Wal-Mart and check out where things are manufactured.
And aside from working for below minimum wage for family, I’ve never made minimum wage for more then 2 or 3 weeks. Even as a teenager working at Taco Bell I made more than minimum wage. Hmm… I suppose supply and demand does work with labor.
You seem like a well educated, well spoken, intelligent person. Honest question: Do you have a career path mapped out to match you capabilities?d You live in one of the most dynamic, vibrant economies the world has ever seen (i.e., the SF Bay Area). Are there no opportunities open to you? Think of all the people you know who might help you get a start in a career that can get you out of the MW cycle. Is there no one who can mentor you and put you on a solid economic path? Stop thinking MW and set your sights higher.
My son was a CNA at a nursing home. He went to management and arranged to be able to enroll in a local two year program to obtain his LPN. This made him more viable at his job, and made his resume much better.
Brujaja:
I have personally known two separate people who started as caregivers for the elderly and who from scratch started companies with nothing but their own experience. One started an agency for independent contractors in the elder care field, the other created a hone health care company that supplied salaried employees ranging from housekeeping duties to custodial care to skilled nursing care.
I know both of them because they both retired young and play golf with me. Elder care is a pretty awesome field to be involved in right now.
Not the OP, who is the person I was directing that at.
I WAS a poor person, for many years, decades actually. I lived with the people who had money to buy beer, lottery tickets and cigs but not diapers & food for the babies because hell, the government will pay for that. I watched as the more they were given, the more they expected. I’m sure that there are plenty of people who actually deserve a hand up, but there are also far more who went ahead and had children before they could hope to afford them, or dropped out of school because they felt like it or whatever their story is.
I don’t recall anyone saying they deserve to die. What I am saying is that they do not deserve to expect other people to pay their way.
You sound like you lived in my trailer park.
I did live in a trailer, but no trailer park!
You think $15 an hour would help? $15 an hour X 40 hours is $600 a week, $1200 a paycheck, $2400 a month. And that’s before any deductions. How is $15 an hour going to help one pay for a $2K a month apartment? $20/hour wouldn’t pay for that.
Pay your dues and work up to something else. We [adults] all did it.
If you have a flatmate it’s 1200 a month in rent, though…
And if you turn it into a flophouse with 20 people it’s only $100 a month.
I’ve owned a couple of houses over the years. None of my mortgages were $2000.
Hell, I make $42/hour and 2K would be a bite. Even adding in my pension from my previous career shelling out two grand just for housing would be a wallop in the wallet.
Admittedly living in the mid-west is far, far cheaper than living in Frisco, but the OP needs to make a life assessment and some changes/advancements. Jacking up the minimum wage is not going to help his situation in the least. Whining about it even less so.
Please, don’t call it “Frisco”. Raise the MW to $50/hr if you must, but do not call it “Frisco”!!
You missed the part where I discussed the balance. Let me put it another way. Too much favor for employees results in job loss, that’s a fact. Too much favor for companies result results in the same economical impact, again this is why we have regulations and a minimum wage. Distributing ‘rich’ folks money is not how America’s economy is designed nor could it work anyway which is why it is the way it is. What you are talking about is every bit as greedy of an idea and it involves no risk to them, unlike investors. Distribute the high risk, high rewards system to a high risk, lower rewards system and they’ll just go elsewhere for opportunities.
Where do you think the min wage comes from? A random number generator?
Just got back from a Burger King that I will never use again, and decided that the minimum wage is too high for these people.
Having been there a couple of times I have some other terms for it that you’d like even less. 
That’s unrealistic though. My point is you can share accomodation with another person (maybe two, if you’re desperate) and get your costs down from “extortionate” to just “eyewatering” and still get by on the higher minimum wage, based on the numbers suggested.