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You pay them $15/hour and they will still be on food stamps and medicaid.
The government will just up the percent above FPL that qualifies as "poor" and needing government subsidies.
What do you think ends up happening when your full-time low-wage service worker can't make ends meet and turns for help getting food on the table? McDonald's and others are enjoying profitability thanks to effective government subsidies.
Maybe the model of paying people peanuts worked back in the 80s when it was part-time work and upward mobility was a realistic possibility; today, after automation and offshoring to cheaper countries, that upward mobility doesn't exist, and people are stuck with these jobs full-time trying to make them provide what the better jobs would in the past. And the math does not add up. Not everyone can be a software consultant; you need some sort of a path for the lower-level / blue collar types to also survive.
The cost determined by supply and demand. But as a society, we should also be able to apply the presumption that full-time workers should be able to meet their basic needs for survival. If you rig the game to give them only half of what they need to survive, they will need to turn to the government to get the other half. That is certainly not the full cost.
The guy working at gas station filling the delivery trucks gets a raise, he guy sweeping the floors at the slaughterhouse gets a raise, the person at the bank gets a raise, the person making the cups gets a raise.... Everyone above them gets raise....
Yes, that's labor. Well done. The labor is 100% of the cost of the meal?
Been there and done that when I was 16. I've increased the value of my labor so I don't have to work in a sweaty kitchen for peanuts.
My point is, if everyone increased the value of their labor, are there really going to be jobs for all these people. Someone will still have to work at McD's...and I don't think there is enough HS students around to work the day shift.
Didn't you mean to say "Let the tax payer subsidize their wages then."
Sorry folks but a Minimum Wage is not, nor was it intended to be, a Living Wage. If a person wants that they need to improve their skills and get a job that pays a living wage.
The jobs that pay a living wage went china so many people are stuck where they are no matter what skills they require. And no, we don't need another 2 million of EMTs by noon tomorrow.
What I'm getting at is, are these peoples not deserving of vacations, children, savings, not having to scrape by. I mean they are putting in 40 hours of labor as well.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” - Adam Smith
Deserve has nothing to do with it. Do I deserve a bread roll from Panera bread? Do not talk to Panera bread about what I deserve. They bake their bread for $$ and I will pay them.
People like to think there was some magical way to figure out what people "deserve" and give it to them. Well guess what - it hasn't been done (past). The closest we can get is to reward them . . is to reward them not because of their need, but because of our self interest.
(1) The average fast food worker is 29-- Not 16. So the reality is that adults do have these jobs. Regardless of the fact that they should improve their skillset they aren't or can't.
(2) Anyone who is anti-welfare should be pro-living wage. Welfare to a large extent subsidizes companies who pay substandard wages. Essentially our tax dollars are paying 1/3rd of the salary in the guise of welfare benefits. Frankly I'd rather have the Walmart shareholders get less of a dividend and pay a bit more at the store than support people on welfare.
(3) If the poor have more money-- that's good for the economy. The poor and lower middle class typically spend every penny they earn. It all goes back in to the local economy. People who make more save-- which is great for them, but takes money out of the economy. A dollar put in an IRA is a dollar not put in to "guns and butter".
McDonald's worker makes $7.50, they pay $7.50 for McDonald's meal.
McDonald's worker makes $75.00, they pay $75.00 for McDonald's meal.
McDonald's worker makes $750,000,000, they pay $750,000,000 for McDonald's meal.
It's not just the minimum workers that gets a raise, if I'm making $12.50 and the minimum goes to $12.50 I deserve and expect a substantial raise. The person above is going to expect the same.... The cost of everything goes up and the minimum wage worker is back to square one.
This is the worst display of economic "logic" I've ever seen. McDonald's salaries make up a small fraction of the cost of a meal.
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