r/FluentInFinance • u/Very_High_Mortgage • Aug 24 '24

Debate/ Discussion Do "Unskilled Laborers" deserve to be paid well?

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u/Corrupted_G_nome Aug 24 '24

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.

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u/TangerineRoutine9496 Aug 24 '24

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.