How does it benefit the low end worker, by keeping minimum wage so low one can't possibly live off it?

It’s better than zero income at all or full blown welfare, but otherwise no, nothing but a low paid wage slave.

I don’t see it as better than welfare, because at least on welfare the person doesn’t have to go out in the early morning on the bus and labor all day. I think if you’re going to work for minimum wage, you are better off on welfare.

@jca I tend to agree but decided to play it safe. haha

Keeping a low minimum wage – or abolishing it completely – would help first-time and young job seekers to obtain their initial gainful (legal) employment to begin a career of increasing productivity and value to employers, and thereby improving their wages. But we should keep in mind that in the USA, we’re talking about around 3,000,000 people, total. These aren’t my numbers; they’re from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And while 3 million people is a lot of folks, to be sure, it’s less than 1% of the entire US population.

According to the BLS numbers, roughly half of those earning minimum wage or less are under 25 years of age, although those workers as a group represent about a fifth of the working American population.

Race does not appear to be a factor in minimum wage employment. Approximately 4% of white and black and 3% of all Hispanic workers earn minimum wage. The figures for men and women differ slightly, with around 3% of all men earning minimum wage, and about 5% of all women in that category.

There is a lot of additional information at the linked site, for anyone who’s not afraid to be confronted and perhaps even somewhat confused by facts. I understand that it may be much more comforting – and certainly entertaining – to some to cavil and complain about “The Man” keeping them down, so I’m sorry, in that case, to introduce facts into the discussion.

While there may be a case to be made for some people who would like to be employed and independent (outside of sheltered workshops, which are also a thing that exists and works for some), basing a national economic policy of dubious value on all of industry for the sake of (primarily) a million-and-a-half teenagers and recent school-age graduates (and dropouts) does not seem like a wise move to me. Which means we can probably expect more political pressure to enact this any day now.

Easy; the less low-end workers are paid, the more philanthropy their employers can engage in, like job creation… to provide goods/services that few can afford… which leads to job loss… so employers can stay one step ahead of the game by just keeping the money for themselves.

@CWOTUS And half are adults trying to do things like pay off student loans, live indoors, and eat at least ten meals a week. So long as people cling to the myth that most low-wagers are high-school kids on their first job though, I wonder how you can cite any statistics if you can overlook something so obvious. And yes, I’ve looked at those stats many times over the years.

The so called living wage isn’t the only factor to consider. Though many out there would have you believe such.

If it is made illegal for an employer to pay what it can afford to pay for a particular job then it means no job.

The work you would be paid for would instead be placed on the shoulders of an already placed employee, or perhaps a touchscreen kiosk.

Would you rather have no job because an employer cannot afford to pay a “living” one?

@SecondHandStoke I would have hoped that the human race has progressed to be more valuable. I would vote no job. If minimum wage law ensure that only worthy work is done. Or else you can have a high school grad counting pennies for a living.

^ Then I have a big Fuck You in my back pocket should I for some reason lose everything and be forced to start at the beginning career wise.

I don’t need your sort of help.

And who decides for us what is “worthy” work?

Hey, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work. It’s progressive you know…

My whole point, @jerv, is that we should not dictate national policies to handle outliers. Yes, “over half of minimum wage earners are adults”, okay. And that represents 0.5% of our population. So, fine. Let’s do something to manage those exceptions rather than muck up a relatively free market in labor that has still made us the richest nation in history.

But by all means rant on about evil capitalist overlords who just want to suck the blood out of their workers. It plays well in the popular press … and here.

@SecondHandStoke The person who spends money decides what is worthy.

@CWOTUS – I think you’re ignoring the fact that you’d numbers don’t count anyone making $0.01 higher than minimum wage, on up.

If a real living wage is, say, $17/hr, you have a lot more than 0.05% of American workers not being paid what they are worth.

Minimum wage= Living wage what ever I do know that no one should have to seek Government help at the end of their pay week just to put food on the table.
The right scream for smaller government, then for fucks sake stop making the low end depend on the government so much.
And the theory that these low end workers will move on to higher paid jobs is great, then how come we keep seeing older and older people in these low end positions.
As for the Government regulating the wage come on we all know if Corporations could get away with paying nothing they most definitely would they have proved that in the past with poor wages and super unsafe working conditions.
Saying leave it to the free market we know the free market only looks after those at the top while crushing everyone else.

Not everyone is capable of being a college educated professional or even a trade worker. Some people will only be able to perform unskilled labor. Those people shouldn’t have to live a lesser life. They deserve to eat everyday, have a safe place to live and security that an illness won’t put them out on the streets to live.

EXACTLY^ @tinyfaery I know there will always be different pay scales of skill, schooling, experience but the people on the bottom should be able to afford a crappy apartment, utilities and food on the table at the end of their pay period and not need help from the Government to do so.

Well…all I know as a “mature” women now who was wiped out in this recession in 2013 after the trickle down effect trickled me up a creek without a paddle, I will NOT work for min. wage. I was making $10.00 an hour 20 years ago in an entry level customer service/accts. receivable position for a well known import Co. I then moved on to getting my Int. design cert. and made $500,00 for a consultation for staging or design work and at the staging end, which was a huge part of the biz. during the housing bubbles blowfest.
I made a 1% commission on the sale of ever home I staged plus furniture rental fees if the home did not sell within 3 months. I could earn enough to live for 3 months in one month. Now I am “marketing” myself as a pet/house sitter and am making really good cash again for several hours of my time.

I will NOT work for a min wage gig ever again, never! Total bullshit when I can make $20.00 an hour min. for feeding dogs and horses and relaxing on premiere ranch estate properties. Fuck Uncle Sam…Coloma I am. haha

Good for you @Coloma but a lot of low end workers can’t and have no choice but to work for minimum wage.

To start with the worst arguments first…

Unfortunately, @tinyfaery, people who can’t make themselves valuable in some way will lead a lower quality of life. That’s pretty much a law of nature. While we are all equal under the law – at least theoretically – we do not all have equal value to employers. That’s why (at least so far) it is perfectly fine to discriminate in hiring in favor of ability and demonstrated competence. Saying otherwise is simple nonsense. It should be understood – though I won’t be surprised if it isn’t – that I do not advocate that people who are incompetent or unwilling to work or learn or otherwise add value to production should be left to die in the streets. However, I do not advocate mandating national policy around those workers. And i use the term with reservation. To answer both you and @SQUEEKY2 on this point, “Why? Why should people who don’t produce enough to earn the wage that they’re ‘supposed’ to earn be paid more than they are?”

@SQUEEKY2, I’ve said this before on many threads in this forum about economics, but ‘the world is catching up with us” and while that happens – and make no mistake: it’s a good thing that the world is catching up – wages in North America and Europe (and to a lesser extent in Japan and other already modernized industrial societies) are being depressed by that globalization of production. For example, if you know the textile industry, its center of mass moved from Great Britain in the 19th century to the USA in the early 20th century, because US workers could be trained to run the machines just as well as Brits, but cost a lot less, at least for a while. Then the industry moved from the Northern states in the USA to the South, and from there it has moved offshore. So most of our textiles and clothing are being made in other parts of the world now, and the industry keeps moving to new, lower-cost areas of production. That doesn’t happen just because some greedy factory manager finds out that he can get Elbonians to work for “closer to nothing” (although, yes, that certainly happens), but it happens primarily because as industry moves into a mostly unindustrialized area people become more experienced and more valuable overall, as a rule, and more industry moves into the area, driving wages upward. It’s why the auto industry has made such dramatic shifts overseas, as well as electronics and all kinds of other manufacturing. After wages, some of the other factors driving overseas production are regulations – not that American and European factory owners want to kill their workers! – transportation and political stability, to name a few important factors. (Not to forget “closeness to markets”, which are also shifting to Asia as the dominant population centers of consumers as their wages rise – and that’s good for all of us.) Eventually, anyway. For now, as we watch “the jobs” move overseas, of course that’s difficult for low-skill, low-education workers.

@Seek you have a good point, if the idea is “trying to figure how we can plan the labor market for the country”, and “what should we set as the national wage for various occupations”. No one can adequately plan that. No one. To the extent that we attempt to do so we will (we have) upset the labor market and unbalance it. When markets are allowed to seek their own level of clearing, that is, the point at which labor supply meets labor demand and people agree to do “x” amount of work for “y” level of compensation – without federal and state mandates regarding size of the employer, and people aren’t chained to their oars, after all, then what is the complaint? That they don’t earn enough? That can be remedied, but it can only be realistically and sustainably remedied by the individuals themselves.

@SQUEEKY2 In these times creativiy is where it;s at.. One must be an entrepreneur. Find a niche, set your own wage and work your own schedule scene.

It’s really easy to argue that people don’t have a right to a living wage when you’re living in a warm house and eating well.

It’s also really easy to argue that some money is better than no money when your bills are paid.

Some people are born on third base, some are intentionally walked and some are batting with a salmon.

I have been told when demand for labour in those positions go up , so will the wages, what a crock of shit.
Here in B.C demand for food workers went up so instead of increasing the wage the companies sought out foreign workers to fill those spots and paid them less.
It has happened in the mining field, the trucking industry, and the hospitality sector so much for free markets,the little guy gets shit on again.
So that myth doesn’t fly any more.
AS for companies going off shore sure some do it for lower labour costs but there are other reasons to such hardly any pollution laws, safety laws, and lower taxes, are we supposed to do that here as well again corporations win and the low end worker gets shit on.

Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I don’t see people as commodities, nor am I a capitalist who puts a price on the worthiness of a life. Hey hey. Ho ho. Elitism has got to go.

So with all these answers ,I get NO benefit at all to the minimum wager worker at keeping it low, but maybe doing so he/she can keep their job and the company won’t bail and head over seas where low end worker are happily exploited?

I don’t think our minimum should be a “living wage” but I do think we need to raise the minimum we have now. I agree that if a wage is so low it’s on par with welfare, why bother working? However, young people who still live at home, and people just starting in the workforce and living with roommates can do ok on a not very high wage in an average cost of living town. I can’t see raising the minimum to more than $12. I’d even be ok with $10. The minimum we have now is way too low.

I can’t think of any benefit for the worker being paid a ridiculously low wage.

The minimum wage should keep pace with inflation, in my view. It hasn’t, not even close. Minimum wage today is worth a lot less than it was when I was a minimum wage employee in the 80s.

I can’t see any benefit in having a wage set low enough that people who are trying to survive are forced to compete with people trying to buy a cute prom dress.

When you all demonstrate – through actions, more than pious words and passionate speech – that you’ve made a personal commitment to equality with everyone living under bridges and in mud huts around the world (or less, because a lot have even less than that), and renounce your own privilege and “elitism” in favor of total equality in misery and mud, then I’ll believe that you’re at least honest about what you say.

But I suppose that every one of you who has a job won’t be in favor of giving it up to someone who can’t even do it as well – but expects as much as you get from it – won’t be willing to settle for less “because others have less” and you feel like a privileged elite compared to 90% of the rest of the world, and don’t have an “actual” commitment to bettering the world through your own sacrifice. Much easier to say “what everyone else should do” … because you don’t have to do it.

How many of you who claim to want to improve the lives of the working poor have ever made a payroll, I wonder? It’s a rhetorical question; I already know the answer.

Who is talking about equality???
Just think the working poor shouldn’t need government help after putting in a full work week, is that wrong??
I know as I have said in other posts that there will always be different pay scales, experience,schooling, who ya know and blow type thing, the low end worker in my opinion has been exploited for years is it wrong to bring their wage up to a point that they won’t have to depend on government help to put food on the table?
And doing so might even help get the wish the right have been screaming for smaller government.
Or are we doomed to just keep exploiting the working poor till the end of time?
Capitalism at it’s finest crush everyone below you on your way to the top.

The only benefit I can see is the employer can hire more people at lower wage than he otherwise would. The thinking is that a low wage job is better than no job at all.

I would rather see more subsidized housing and expanded SNAP (food stamps) programs than higher wages.

But @YARNLADY isn’t that making the low end worker just depend on the government that much more??

@CWOTUS Considering the gap between the the Federal Minimum wage and the cost of living anyplace I have ever been, I’d say it’s applicable to far more that 0.5% of the population. Remember anyone who doesn’t earn a living wage incurs expanses for all taxpayers. And since so many large businesses get subsidized by taxpayers insted of paying their own operating expenses, that puts a hell of a strain on the small businesses that actually create most of the jobs.

One thing I think you miss is that I view small business owners as being in the same boat as most middle-class Americans; rich enough to be taxed, but too poor to evade taxes. You also don’t seem to get that I would actually prefer if government stayed out of the business of governing business, but that is only possible when business does not actively work against he best interests of society. Now, not all do that; in fact most don’t. But enough do, and their peers are not policing their own, so your desire to keep government out of the affairs of business is, at best, a delusional ideal that history has proven does not work. At least I am willing to admit that it’s unrealistic; I acknowledge that humanity is not nearly so benevolent as you seem to presume.

But I sense that you’ll still play the martyr and go on about how evil the government is unless it’s subservient to corporate interests, so I’ll save my breathe. And since you can’t tell the difference between equality and justice, I have doubts that you could ever change your mind even if you wanted to.

@SQUEEKY2 My thinking is that the burden is spread out among all the taxpayers and not just placed entirely on the business owner. With rising wages, all other prices also go up and it is a never ending cycle.

Prices go up anyway. Wages in my husband’s industry have fallen by over half in the last eight years, and yet hamburger meat is $7/lb when it used to be $3.50.

@CWOTUS If the country was voting to flatten wages, and there was some easy way to enforce it, I would vote for it. It would probably mean my husband would make less money in his field (although, right now he is out of work and might become one of the people who needs the salary hike). I asked a Fluther question about this many many years ago. Something like if you make over a certain amount would you give up an X percentage of your salary so people who make less than X amount could make much more. Many jellies didn’t get it, and talked about racing the wealthy more, and redistributing income. It is a redistribution, but not more taxes. I was not talking about the government handling the money to redistribute it.

Here’s the thing, while we don’t have something like that in place will I offer to give up 10% of my husband’s usual income so 3 people making $9 an hour in his company can make a little more? Nope. It won’t have enough impact. It won’t impact society and the economy enough. It has to be done en mass like when unions effectively helped to create a large middle class in America, separating us from other countries. We were proud of our middle class.

It’s the same as bitching about the country’s deficit and not willingly paying extra taxes, and being against minority quotas, but using it while it is still our policy.

Let’s say I’ve reached my State mandated salary cap.

Where then is my motivation to continue to excel?

Are we talking about salary caps? I guess in a way we are. If you get promoted you get a higher salary. The military does it. The military has salary bands according to rank. Even in the private sector there are salary widths if it’s a good company and cares about paying fairly.

How did we get from minimum wage, to salary caps??

@SQUEEKY2 I guess when I mentioned flattening salaries.

In my opinion companies are more guilty of using government hand outs than the low end workers are, they are depending on the government to make up the difference they should be paying their low end employees.
Then what gets me these same people then scream they want smaller government really?
Then start paying your workers a wage they can live from.

As if people only do things for money.

I think “flattening salaries” has enough connotations of Communism (at least as that word is commonly viewed by the ignorant) to evoke a visceral reaction. However, calling it “merit-based income” would be sneered at as critics would claim that we already have that; that the Walton family earned every cent they got fair and square and thus no changes are necessary.

The trouble is that, to them, the ultimate pinnacle of human endeavor is no longer anything but the ability to enhance shareholder value. Nothing else is worth being compensated fairly for. Hard work? Only if you’re starting your own small company and cannot yet afford to delegate. “Greater good” things like job creation or curing cancer? Leave that to charities unless the financial ROI is decent enough. Being a dutiful taxpayer? Only if you’re too dumb to find a way to pass your tax burden onto others. Sustainability? Only if you don’t have a Golden Parachute.

So it all boils down to what you think is truly worthy of compensation. Modern America considers passing costs to the little guy by whatever means necessary to be worth more than anything else, regardless of the costs to our society or the future. And to make it worse, too many people of that view still think that this is the 1950s where a kid could get a paper route, a fry cook could afford tuition for a better life, and housing costs were considerably lower (as a percentage of monthly income) than they are now. Try getting an apartment in (or even near) any major city on a job at under $8/hr; many places you can’t pull that off even at $15/hr. Try paying college tuition on top of that, you know, to better your life. Then tell me that 2016 is just like 1956.

Nice answer there @jerv I hear if these low end workers want a better wage than go to school , and earn it type thing (WITH WHAT!!) on a job that can’t even put food on the table.
These are just stepping stone type jobs for youth, sure maybe twenty years ago not today.
Or there are only 3 million people on minimum wage and it’s so small we shouldn’t even notice this, IF it is so damn small then why is it so hard to bring their wage up to where they don’t need government help to put food on the table?
Next I hear if we bring these low end workers wages up then the cost of everything will go up.
REALLY then that proves my point that the working man is paying all the countries bills ,RIGHT??

@SQUEEKY2 There is also the fact that many people ignore those making $7.50–8/hr for the sake of saying “Almost nobody earns minimum wage!” without actually lying.