Pelican Parts Order

[schnellman]

There is one federal minimum wage and forty-eight state minimum wage laws. Some are very complex.

Minimum wage is not and should never be a living wage. Do you want the zit-faced sixteen year-old at McDonald's to make enough money to support a family of four? If you do, you want to pay $20 for your Big Mac.

And yes, I am an economics professor.

[scottvd]

Originally Posted by schnellman

There is one federal minimum wage and forty-eight state minimum wage laws. Some are very complex.

Minimum wage is not and should never be a living wage. Do you want the zit-faced sixteen year-old at McDonald's to make enough money to support a family of four? If you do, you want to pay $20 for your Big Mac.

And yes, I am an economics professor.

+1 to all this. Why are we as a nation so fixated on removing the natural consequences to people's poor decision making? I just can't follow that logic. The more the government gets involved in private business the messier it gets.

It's so unpopular to be successful in this country. It's also unpopular to earn your own way, check out these entitlement folks with not one but two hands out wide open:
We Are the 99 Percent

[Jamesp]

Talk about locking someone into a dead end job, sapping away any impetus for self improvement, and making it impossible for them to achieve more by making them dependent on maintaining zero skills. Minimum wage jobs were not designed to be careers. They fill a niche for unskilled labor and pay accordingly. I'm reading a history of English servants in the last century, and it is clear why Britain did not have slavery. The fact is they essentially did, but they bound the servants to themselves by paying them a few pounds per year and providing them living quarters and food. The servants were stuck there as they had become dependent on the masters. And not one of these people, master or servant, drove a Boxster which points out the inherent flaws in that system, and this conversation.

[Perfectlap]

Originally Posted by schnellman

There is one federal minimum wage and forty-eight state minimum wage laws. Some are very complex.

Minimum wage is not and should never be a living wage. Do you want the zit-faced sixteen year-old at McDonald's to make enough money to support a family of four? If you do, you want to pay $20 for your Big Mac.

And yes, I am an economics professor.

Except that minimum wage jobs are not monopolized by zit-faced 16 year olds. In fact about half are adult women, ~30% are adult men. So only 25% working the minimum wage are the proverbial zit-faced 16 year old. Which means that 80% of these adult workers actually have to make a living...on the minimum wage. Again, if you're going to have a minimum wage, which we do in America, then its intent is to provide a living wage. If you want to abolish the minimum wage altogether, and there are reasonable arguments for this, then abolish the minimum wage. But you have to be here or there... it serves no purpose to have a minimum wage that only put tax payers on the hook for additional forms of assistance. Similarly, If you want to get rid of the minimum wage and all forms of food stamps, healthcare assistance, etc. then that state is perfectly free to do so via the legislature, but that will simply lead to what we have now, a mountain of states (mostly conservative) that are net beneficiaries of federal spending -- these states pay less in federal taxes than they get back in federal assistance, largely because most in that state do not earn enough to even pay federal taxes. Which to me is ironic as it doesn't stop their representatives from continuing to ask for appropriations they did not pay for in the first place.

Originally Posted by scottvd

These jobs should be for youth working their way through school, not parents of children needing to support dependents.

In fact some states like Florida (and I know this for a fact) will send adults currently receiving state assistance to minimum wage employers like Wal-Mart to fill out applications. These applicants are given first priority in hiring over applicants who receive no govt assistance at all (irony), presumably for tax-savings purposes. Which must be infuriating to those who do not rely on the govt at all but would like a chance to re-enter the workforce.
Now if these minimum wage jobs, offered by major corporations, were intended only for teens then why is a state, run by a governor who protested a six cent raise in the minimum wage (when it went up to $7.31), sending all of these adult workers in need of full time employment to Wal-Mart? Obviously the state does not have a list of "jobs for zit faced unemployed" and another list for "out of work adult". In the eyes of that state's govt. an adult job is an adult job.
And there's no debate that this has become a service economy, having a low-skills, low-education job is hardly anything out of the ordinary in America today and will be much more common going forward. I'm not sure why people like to present these jobs as only for those at the margin and those who made bad choices in high school. The reality today is that those whose who can only get these sorts of jobs cover the whole demographic and education spectrum. Every race, some college, no college, woman or man, young and old. We've all seen them.

[scottvd]

Originally Posted by Perfectlap

The reality today is that those whose who can only get these sorts of jobs cover the whole demographic and education spectrum. Every race, college grad no college, woman or man, young and old.

Provided an individual is has the mindset that they're out there looking for what they can "get" then you'll be playing by someone else's rules. If you're an employee then you are working for someone else playing by their rules, that's why they're paying you. Don't like it, move on.

Expand your options and stop only looking for what "you can get" and think of what you can create! It is so much easier in the US than around the world to create something from nothing. Create a new swimming pool service, carpet cleaner, drain fixer, computer solver, dog walker, photographer, childcare, window cleaner - you name it. Pretty much anyone with a desire and motivation to CREATE their own work instead of having someone else hand it to them can find it. These people who are "unemployed" for months on in "looking for work" are a joke. If you have a good work ethic and are serious you'll either be hired or creating your own work in weeks, not months or years.

Corporations are not the problem, and low skilled people are not the victims. There are always exceptions, but I believe my statements characterized the vast majority.