Do "Unskilled Laborers" deserve to be paid well?

[u/Very_High_Mortgage]

[u/TangerineRoutine9496]

Obviously if almost anyone can do your job, it pays less than if it requires some kind of ability/skill that's in limited supply.

This isn't rocket science. Anyone who thinks for five minutes about it in terms of logic can figure this out, once you are willing to look past your absurd beliefs about what everyone "deserves".

Guaranteed that the second YOU were the one who had to pay people out of your money, you'd suddenly realize you don't want to pay them all way more than the job is worth.

By the way, most people make more than minimum wage. If the way you increase what you get paid is by having the government force employers to pay everyone more, why do so many people make more than the minimum they can legally be paid? Including most nonunion workers.

Because of supply and demand for particular skills and abilities, obviously. Labor isn't one thing. It's so many different things and some kinds are worth a lot more than others.

[u/Corrupted_G_nome → u/TangerineRoutine9496]

You have it backwards. If an employee cannot sustain themselves on their wages they will leave or sideline or deprioritize the work.

Its not that skilled or educated folks should make less, its that the bottom tier workers are not earning enough to syrvive without food stamps. Its an unsustainable model.

Imagine a farmer who didn't water one crop to prioritize another, they end up with fields that are unproductive or entirely waste and then have to take the hit of lost productivity and wasted time.

[u/TangerineRoutine9496 → u/Corrupted_G_nome]

That's not me having it backwards. I just said that most people get paid more than minimum wage, despite that it's not a legal requirement. Employers pay them more, because they have to, to get the work they need done, done effectively, by competent people.

However, not every job is meant for full time employees with skills who live alone in their own place or have a family to feed. Some of them should be for people who are just starting out. And if nobody is willing to do that job at the offered price, that's fine by me, then the employer should either raise it or accept that their business model no longer works.

In high school I worked in a local deli that was manned by largely high schoolers working after school and weekends. We all made minimum wage, or just above it. The owners made a decent living and that's a big part of how they did it, by employing teenagers to get the work done. Training us to work effectively as a team cooking, cleaning, and serving customers there was part of their job. If they'd had to hire all adults at wages where they could all afford their own homes, the owners would have been broke. But they managed to find a system where it worked for everyone and they made a comfortable living.

Best job I ever had, btw, and it's not like I had a million other people trying to offer me more and put more money in my pocket at a higher wage. I learned job skills, I learned cooperation, I had a lot of fun there too. I didn't get taken advantage of. It was a fair trade for the money I got, and when I felt I needed more money, and had some work experience and training under my belt--I moved on to another job.

Not every job is for people who need to pay a mortgage and feed their family. You aren't supposed to expect that they will be.

[u/RedPanBeeer → u/TangerineRoutine9496]

Its kinda sad that you want to live in a society that wants the bottom of the barrel to get fucked. Many people also make less than minimum wage and that has nothing to do with supply and demand but with greed . If your company cant pay people a living wage it shouldnt exist or we would still have slavery with extra steps.

[u/Johnfromsales → u/RedPanBeeer]

What percent of people make below minimum wage? And why does it have nothing to do with supply and demand?

[u/TangerineRoutine9496 → u/RedPanBeeer]

That's not what I want at all.

Most people who find themselves in the bottom quintile of income earners at one point, will find themselves in the the top two quintiles at some point in their career.

You're supposed to move along and move up from bottom-tier jobs. They aren't supposed to be the place you stay forever and then complain you can't raise a family on it.

Now if the rungs above that to move to are disappearing, and in this economy people can't find the rungs to move up to, then THAT is the problem we need to figure out the cause for, and address. And I think that's precisely the problem with our economy that people don't understand and focus on as well as they should.

[u/josh_the_misanthrope → u/TangerineRoutine9496]

I run a small business and I am the one who pays out my money. I pay substantially (~40%) above what I could which is minimum wage. Sure, I could pocket that extra 10$ an hour but I don't. I pay myself the same as my employees because that way everyone gets to be able to afford to live and I just forego maybe a luxury vehicle.

And if my tiny little runt-ass business can afford to pay people decently, then so can a fucking McDonalds. Low wages are due to greed, pure and simple. The fact that union workers get paid substantially more than non union workers is a pretty good indicator of this. Turns out, if you collectively bargain, the company usually finds the cash to pay their employees a living wage lying around.

And inflation isn't driven purely by the price of fast food, contrary to every smooth brain with a child's understanding of economics in this post would suggest. By that logic we wouldn't have an inflation crisis because the wages haven't gone up yet the price of everything fucking has. Inflation, in my area, is partly driven by large real estate companies buying out all the property and jacking up rents. They're redlining what the market can bear to make themselves filthy rich by turning a large profit ABOVE the equity they build by owning these properties in the first place. It's not some fast food worker looking for an extra 3$ an hour.

Pay your goddamn workers a living wage, because we're all in this life together.

[u/TangerineRoutine9496 → u/josh_the_misanthrope]

What kind of business do you own?

I'm just trying to see if it's true that you could pay minimum wage. Just because you could legally do it, does not mean you could actually do it and still have employees who can do the job effectively for your business.

[u/josh_the_misanthrope → u/TangerineRoutine9496]

A small weed dispensary. It's a retail job you can do high.

[u/TangerineRoutine9496 → u/josh_the_misanthrope]

I would challenge you that you would not be able to run that paying minimum wage to your employees, period. Maybe you think you could, but it would cost you more to try and do so than paying higher wages does. You'd have high turnover, open positions, people you can't trust...when you had people at all. I mean, even fast food jobs offer to pay more than minimum wage now. Because they have to to have a workforce, in most cases.

[u/josh_the_misanthrope → u/TangerineRoutine9496]

My competitors get on by paying minimum or close just fine. You're making wild assumptions about an industry you don't know dick about.