Yes, I am. I’m not talking from some Ivory Tower. I’ve worked at those jobs, lots of them. And not just in my youth either, I’ve had to work at some of those places as interim jobs between jobs in my industry. And don’t be ridiculous. I’m not saying that we should create more misery within those jobs. I’m saying that the fact they they are already inherently yucky is not such a bad thing. It is the same thing with anything we do in life (any creatures really). Discomfort in a situation causes a change in order to make the situation more pleasant and comfortable.
There is a reason those jobs are low-paying. They require low skills. Incentive to obtain high marketable skills is not some evil thing foist upon people out of cruelty. For a normal human (and I’m not talking people who are mentally challenged and can’t do anything more, that’s a whole 'nother ballgame and I’m FULLY for helping and subsidizing anyone with that life issue), this is doable and desireable.
Imma just going to point out that this is what happens when no one’s enforcing a minimum wage. (TL;DW version: 22 CENTS per hour. Yep. Right here in Amurka.)
Minimum wage has not kept up with the increases in productivity. It has not even kept up with inflation. Even if minimum is $12 an hour (and frankly I’d rather see $15, given that a wage that kept up with productivity would be at $20 now), there’s still plenty of incentive to gun for the jobs that pay $20 an hour, or $30 an hour, or $70 an hour. Call me crazy, but I like having some money actually left over after bills are paid so I can go have some fun every once in a while. I like having enough money to pay for housing in a neighborhood that doesn’t have shootings on the corner every week. I like having enough to actually build a savings account in case of unforeseen disaster. I imagine there are other people, even poor people, who feel the same way. :rolleyes:
I’ll also point out that a LOT of those minimum wage workers these days DO have that education, and even DID have those jobs you think they “should” have. But someone decided to trash the world economy. So “should” we hang them out to dry because of circumstances beyond their control?
There is a bare minimum standard below which we, as a society, should morally not allow people to fall. That is the POINT of a society: together we are stronger and can accomplish more than any of us can alone, all the way from the first tribes to modern nations. We can either deal with reality as it IS (with a lot of well-educated adults with families doing the minimum wage jobs, as well as those stuck in the cycle of poverty who do not have the money, time outside of work, or resources to get out), or as we wish it were (only kids do these jobs after school… although how they’d staff the store during school hours…?).
I’ll also just say: all work has value. If no one was working the counter at McDonalds, the entire conglomerate would go bankrupt and shut down… so I’d say it has quite a LOT of value. We shouldn’t devalue someone’s labor because it doesn’t meet some arbitrary standard of what a “good” job is. Being on your feet for 8 hours a day is physically demanding. Dealing with cranky and downright mean customers with a smile on your face is emotionally demanding. It’s not nothing, and shouldn’t be paid like it is.
Some people CHOOSE to work in places like that. Many years ago, I worked at Pizza Hut, and one of the pizza makers had a master’s degree. She had school-aged children, and wanted to work part-time but that just wasn’t available in her field; I can’t remember now what it was. Anyway, she worked a couple evenings at Pizza Hut, so she could have her own money and some time out of the house, and actually liked the job.
And many people (let’s face it, about half the population) simply does not have the intellect for higher education.
Minimum wage workers, let’s say, live in in crappy little apartments where the rent is $350/month.
Let’s say a decent apartment runs $750.
All of a sudden, minimum wage earners are earning $8/hr more. They can afford a nice place. Problem is, there aren’t enough nicer places for all these new people. So, what happens? The nice places raise their prices because they can, due to higher demand. This forces the low wage-earners back to the crappy places…but do you think they’ll still cost $350? Hell no…they cost $550 now, because the nice places have been run up to $1000. You end up with a few people in nicer situations, but in all the same people are in the same housing…but paying more.
You think that just because you throw them some money, all of a sudden they move to the 'burbs and the shitholes clear out?
The point is, you can’t just magically give everyone at the bottom of the earning curve a 100% raise without throwing off the balance of 1,000 other things. When the system comes back in to balance, guess where those people will be? In the very same housing, in the very same neighborhood, working the very same jobs, because everything has responded to demand. As much as pie-in-the-sky dreamers want to ignore it, Econ101 supply and demand is pretty dependable.
This +1. If Micky D could easily do all these things to offset a large increase in their labor costs and thereby preserve their profits, why don’t they do them now and increase their profits?
First of all, where in the US, except possibly Hawaii and NYC, does a Big Mac cost $3.99? Secondly who goes into MickeyD’s and just orders a Big Mac? Nobody. You order a Big Mac, a trough of Coke, and fries, as god intended it. Well, except god intended the fries to be made with lard, but that’s a whole different topic.
In any event, the cost of the Big Mac meal just increased from $4 to $5, or 25%. If EVERYONE followed suit, and simply increased the price of commodities by 25%, then that $7.25/hour increase would evaporate in no time. Because it’s not just what you MAKE, but what that money will BUY that is important.
PS - Skilled labor does and should pay more than non-skilled labor. I also agree that our societal expectation should not be that unskilled laborers SHOULD be able to raise a family on that salary. If you want to raise a family, then learn a skill or go to college.
You’re welcome! And what we SHOULD do, is at the same time we increase wages we should FREEZE prices! Then, see, everbody could afford stuff and there’d be plenty to go around!
No, that wouldn’t work, but your savage evisceration of the effects of capitalism on the poor stands. How about a nice social safety net instead? Universal health care, federal programs to encourage construction of low cost public housing, food subsidies, transportation, and free cable! Anything more than that, you have to work for.
Like these outfits advertising that their products are “fair Trade”-why not “Fair Labor”-see what would happen? McDonald’s cold then satisfy their labor and their markets at the same time!
Well, not to hijack this thread too much, but it’s a common misconception that the local business in places like Williston are understaffed because all their employees quit and got well-paying oil field jobs. Pretty much all the real oil field jobs these days are at least semi-skilled and most people being hired have at least some sort of applicable experience. The reason why McDonald’s is understaffed isn’t because all their employees quit to go work the rigs, it’s that all those oil field workers suddenly hit town and their business doubled or tripled and they needed to bring more people on to keep up, but at the same time so does every other restaurant in town.
Incidentally too, pretty much all the oil field jobs provide housing (although maybe not for a whole family)-- the people who are living in RV’s or in cramped shared apartments are people who are chasing those $15/hr unskilled jobs working construction, fast food or retail that would be minimum wage most other places. They might have erroneously thought all they had to do was show up to get a $50k/year oil field job, but someone with no relevant skills or experience isn’t going to get one.
In terms of the local businesses still not being able to hire people at a $15/hr, I suspect that their profit margin simply isn’t big enough that they can afford to pay any more than that even with all the extra volume they’re doing. That problem might be especially acute for a franchise, which probably isn’t allowed to unilaterally raise their prices.
“In 2011, 73.9 million American workers age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.1 percent of all wage and salary workers.1 Among those paid by the hour, 1.7 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.”
“Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly-paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, about 23 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and over.”
“Among hourly-paid workers age 16 and over, about 11 percent of those who had less than a high school diploma earned the Federal minimum wage or less, compared with about 5 percent of those who had a high school diploma (with no college) and about 2 percent of college graduates.”
? ND is an oil boom area, lowly oil field jobs pay way more than $15/hr, and they have a shortage of workers.