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>There are lots of others who need, but aren't worth, survival wages That's got to be such a small (and unfortunate) pool of people that I'd happily send some

>There are lots of others who need, but aren't worth, survival wages That's got to be such a small (and unfortunate) pool of people that I'd happily send some taxpayer money to meet the article's living wage number. We can probably pay for it by not buying another single jet next year or something. And honestly I'm not trustworthy of corporations' judgments of low end labor worth anyway. For one thing, you can work at extremely busy stores and get paid the same as workers at the very dead stores in the next county over because they use blanket values for these positions.

lotharbot 12y ago
> "I'd happily send some taxpayer money" We already do that. Remember how some people were criticizing Wal-Mart because some of its workers were also receiving government benefits? When you set the "minimum" to be 100% of a living wage, then people have to make the jump from pure-government-funded to pure-self-funded without any intermediate stepping stones. They have to show up and be ready to produce at a level that completely supports themselves on day one. Whereas a minimum that's set at 50% (or 25% or 75%) of living wage means someone can show up and be semi-productive and earn some of their own way, and then either step up to 100%, or stay at the level they're at as long as they need to based on their own abilities.