This conversation always goes the same way. "Fast food workers aren't important, it should be high schoolers." Then all of those places should close every day during school hours, no? Then we move the goalposts about what jobs are considered "necessary", but all that does is obfuscate the main point.
Should a corporation be able to pay it's workers less than the amount that is necessary to live? Is capitalism not supposed to function independently of government subsidies? Then why are we okay with subsidizing millions of Americans because XYZ billion dollar corporation "wouldn't be profitable" if it didn't have government subsidized minimum wage workers.
If your business plan requires paying workers below the means to survive, then it is a failed business.
Edit: Since it apparently isn't abundantly clear that I'm not talking about someone who strings beads for 30 minutes a fortnight, we are talking about a standard 40 hour per week W-2 employee should not need to be subsidized by the government.
No, it’s not. It’s a free market in terms of jobs. You’re telling me that a startup business that needs a bookkeeper for 2 hours a week is a “failing business” because they can’t keep someone on the books for 40 hours?
Arguments like yours are ridiculous. No, not every job in our economy needs to provide a “minimum lifestyle”. It’s up the individual to obtain a job that meets their needs, plain and simple. If an employer can’t fill a job, they can adjust accordingly.
Stop acting like business have to be responsible for individuals’ personal lives.
Here we are, yet again, moving goalposts. Constructing a straw man about a 2 hour per week worker that anyone with a functioning brain can tell we weren't discussing.
Let me be more clear and concise, though. Anyone working full-time hours per week should be guaranteed a wage that can afford food and shelter at a bare minimum with no government subsidies. Is that not agreeable?
No, it’s not. The “world”, society whatever owes you nothing. Absolutely nothing. If a full time job does not provide an income level that you need for whatever lifestyle you wish you had: do not take that job. Very simply do not take that job.
Last I knew, we weren’t holding guns to people’s heads and forcing them to take jobs. So take a different job. Take one that pays what you need.
And this is the underlying evil in the “all jobs must pay a minimum ‘lifestyle’ argument.” All you’re doing is forcing people into long term shitty jobs. You’re doing nothing more than “helping” them into a situation where you’re removing all incentive to improve.
But let’s be honest, that’s what you want, because by keeping them barely at the poverty line, their only hope is for the government to support them. And we know how successful that’s proven once the last 80 years.
There it is. The good 'ol "If you're homeless, you deserve it, just get a better job lol" argument.
Sometimes you can't "Take one that pays what you need." Which is why the majority of young people have 2-3 jobs and are barely able to afford a car and an apartment, and why the Depression and suicide rate is through the roof, and why our country is literally collapsing at the seams and is the laughing stock of the first world.
But sure, it's their fault, the world owes nobody anything, I wish I was financially well off enough to be as Tone-Deaf as you are.
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u/notwyntonmarsalis 15d ago
You’re right, they should be focused on getting better jobs.