6 ms·

You will be paid at the highest rate you can command based on the value of your skills in the labor force. If you have no relevant skills, you don't make much m

You will be paid at the highest rate you can command based on the value of your skills in the labor force. If you have no relevant skills, you don't make much money until you do have relevant skills. You earn shit money and then build your skills and then you will no longer earn shit money. It's pretty simple and it is what happens to most minimum wage workers and workers in any sector of the economy.

ethbr0 5y ago
How do you build your skills, if you're spending 40+ hours a week working to make ends meet and trying to care for a family? You're arguing from an ideal situation, without taking into account that reality's average is very much less than ideal.
- trcarney 5y ago
  You are building your skills while you are working. If you can find time outside of work, you are just accelerating things.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > You are building your skills while you are working What skills would they be? Surely the only skill you build while flipping burgers is that of flipping burgers. Is it applicable to any other job?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    You sound like someone who has never worked a minimum wage job. None of the skills you learn in these low end jobs is ever going to help you do anything but work similar low end jobs. I put myself through three associates degrees cleaning cars for a rental company. You know what that taught me? How to clean a car interior in 5-15 minutes. That's not exactly the most marketable of skills. Fortunately that wasn't particularly laborious, so I still had the energy to do school too. Many people are not as lucky, and these days often have to work 2 or more jobs to get by. Worse, the kind of schooling I took advantage of is increasingly turning from vocation-oriented education to cheap-university-transfer education.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      > You sound like someone who has never worked a minimum wage job Nah. He sounds like someone with class and privilege who's worked a minimum wage job. See, a minimum wage job for someone who is a privileged youth-- is a good way to learn the last little bit of organization, focus, "eye on the ball", working with a supervisor, attention to detail skills-- that will serve them the rest of their life. It's a great skill building opportunity. For someone who's been stuck in it 3 years--- well, it's exhausted all of its value in those respects by this point. People who are scared of the minimum wage going up are often worried that it's going to squeeze out kids from getting these first work experiences. And it's a valid concern. But the people who spend their lives stuck in those jobs are invisible to them. I personally favor shortening the work week because I think it will increase the compensation associated with low skill labor; provide additional incentives for employers to ramp people into higher skill positions; and leave room for kids in low skill jobs.
anonAndOn 5y ago
Great for those with support, safety nets, options & abilities. The young, the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped, the convicted... they're supposed eat cat food and go sleep under an overpass until they get motivated/healthy/unconvicted/a car/____?
- mlyle 5y ago
  > the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped We have disability safety nets (that could be better). And FLSA and state regs all allow paying these groups under minimum wage (and this is a good thing). My wife's brother is severely mentally handicapped. He lives in a nice, well-run group home (I'm aware this is not universal). He also has the option of going to "dayhab" where there's educational content and the option of working making crafts for a couple of dollars per hour of spending money. I am not sure his labor output is worth the $2-3/hour he gets paid: a lot of this is probably charity, but it makes a difference to him to be able to earn something and work towards goals, and not just spend his entire day watching TV instead. You don't fix these things with a minimum wage and you possibly make them worse. They've got different solutions. > The young, ... the convicted These are harder problems. * How do we provide a good on-ramp to productive work and independent life for at-risk youth? * How do we allow those who have broken the norms of society in the past to rejoin in an orderly way, with hope and better prospects from compliance than reoffending? Note that I think we should have a minimum wage. I just think it's also a band-aid at best, and often causes a fair degree of problems as well. It's better than nothing, but one would be better off addressing the problems it's targeted at in any other available way.
  - anonAndOn 5y ago
    The old - One's employment options often severely diminish as they approach retirement. With health insurance (and those costly prescriptions) tied to employment, how little do you think some are willing to work for? Would you work for free if your life depended on it?
    - mlyle 5y ago

ethbr0 5y ago

How do you build your skills, if you're spending 40+ hours a week working to make ends meet and trying to care for a family? You're arguing from an ideal situation, without taking into account that reality's average is very much less than ideal.

trcarney 5y ago
You are building your skills while you are working. If you can find time outside of work, you are just accelerating things.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > You are building your skills while you are working What skills would they be? Surely the only skill you build while flipping burgers is that of flipping burgers. Is it applicable to any other job?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  You sound like someone who has never worked a minimum wage job. None of the skills you learn in these low end jobs is ever going to help you do anything but work similar low end jobs. I put myself through three associates degrees cleaning cars for a rental company. You know what that taught me? How to clean a car interior in 5-15 minutes. That's not exactly the most marketable of skills. Fortunately that wasn't particularly laborious, so I still had the energy to do school too. Many people are not as lucky, and these days often have to work 2 or more jobs to get by. Worse, the kind of schooling I took advantage of is increasingly turning from vocation-oriented education to cheap-university-transfer education.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    > You sound like someone who has never worked a minimum wage job Nah. He sounds like someone with class and privilege who's worked a minimum wage job. See, a minimum wage job for someone who is a privileged youth-- is a good way to learn the last little bit of organization, focus, "eye on the ball", working with a supervisor, attention to detail skills-- that will serve them the rest of their life. It's a great skill building opportunity. For someone who's been stuck in it 3 years--- well, it's exhausted all of its value in those respects by this point. People who are scared of the minimum wage going up are often worried that it's going to squeeze out kids from getting these first work experiences. And it's a valid concern. But the people who spend their lives stuck in those jobs are invisible to them. I personally favor shortening the work week because I think it will increase the compensation associated with low skill labor; provide additional incentives for employers to ramp people into higher skill positions; and leave room for kids in low skill jobs.

anonAndOn 5y ago

Great for those with support, safety nets, options & abilities. The young, the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped, the convicted... they're supposed eat cat food and go sleep under an overpass until they get motivated/healthy/unconvicted/a car/____?

mlyle 5y ago
> the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped We have disability safety nets (that could be better). And FLSA and state regs all allow paying these groups under minimum wage (and this is a good thing). My wife's brother is severely mentally handicapped. He lives in a nice, well-run group home (I'm aware this is not universal). He also has the option of going to "dayhab" where there's educational content and the option of working making crafts for a couple of dollars per hour of spending money. I am not sure his labor output is worth the $2-3/hour he gets paid: a lot of this is probably charity, but it makes a difference to him to be able to earn something and work towards goals, and not just spend his entire day watching TV instead. You don't fix these things with a minimum wage and you possibly make them worse. They've got different solutions. > The young, ... the convicted These are harder problems. * How do we provide a good on-ramp to productive work and independent life for at-risk youth? * How do we allow those who have broken the norms of society in the past to rejoin in an orderly way, with hope and better prospects from compliance than reoffending? Note that I think we should have a minimum wage. I just think it's also a band-aid at best, and often causes a fair degree of problems as well. It's better than nothing, but one would be better off addressing the problems it's targeted at in any other available way.
- anonAndOn 5y ago
  The old - One's employment options often severely diminish as they approach retirement. With health insurance (and those costly prescriptions) tied to employment, how little do you think some are willing to work for? Would you work for free if your life depended on it?
  - mlyle 5y ago