Do you think there is a place for sub-minimum wage jobs?

Is this a scenario you feel you are qualified to answer for? Have you, as somebody with meaningful living expenses, ever been in a scenario like this? If not, I'm certain you do not have an accurate picture of what that would be like and what you would consider your options to be.

This is the most salient point in my opinion when discussing minimum wages. Employers have to decide which potential employee can produce enough to make up for the wages that they pay. The higher the minimum wage goes, there are less opportunities to get a career started due to not being hired. Experience is highly valued in almost every field. If you cannot get a low paying job just to build some experience in your resume, you delay or never get the next high paying job. Minimum wage ends up crippling the very people it was meant to help.

Have you applied or know someone who applied for a minimum wage job recently?

The last time I did, the person interviewing me went on a rant/monologue about how she couldn't find anyone who would actually show up and not, like, play on their phone all day. Essentially all I had to do in the interview was agree on a start date.

Then a couple days later, she changes her mind, evidently because I was overqualified (aka wore a tie, probably too old). Which turned out to be ok, because someone else called me back about a ~$15/hr job.

This was a little before the pandemic in a non-economically booming area, not a major global city.

I can't remember when I've seen a full time minimum wage position offered. Stocking shelves at Target paid more than minimum. Answering the phone for an ISP, which was my first job, paid slightly more than minimum.

I may be forgetting something, but I think if any jobs I've had or applied to paid exactly minimum they were probably very short assignments through temp agencies. Where obviously their client is paying a lot more.

Are you sure? If you didn't have a job (because there weren't enough business good enough to pay minimum wage) but had your basic needs paid for (through basic income) wouldn't you want anything more for yourself? Wouldn't you seek connections and new skills? Probably some people wouldn't, but you?

Are you sure that you owe where you are today only to someone buying lots of your time for a price below reasonable minimum wage?

Maybe this is true when you consider not just the job itself, but acquiring the job. How many minimum wage jobs offer minimum entry requirements? How many offer secondary benefits that are worth a lot, but only to a very small percent of the population (such as internships offering access to important people).

Of courses, none of this means fair. Some people are unfairly born with advantages or disadvantages, many of which have no solution that I've ever seen.

I think the notion is that people should have a job that pays a livable wage, meaning you should be able to pay for rent, utilities and food.

Sure, the market in a lot of unskilled jobs mean employers can basically blackmail you into accepting an unlivable wage because otherwise you'll just starve to death or live on the street. I still think it's ok for people to speak up against it. The only thing that keeps most such low-paying jobs staffed is the threat of homelessness.

A fun, vibrant work culture, 401k matching or even "free" health insurance are kind of ridiculous luxuries when you're struggling to feed yourself.

In the end I think a business that relies on unlivable wages to operate is a business that ought not to exist (or at least not to exist in its current form).

I'm fascinated that people can see this far, but can't see that if you stop people's best way out of this¹, they're in an even more desperate position.

¹ The sub minimum wage job that they'd take if allowed

You’ve obviously not grasped the point - these people are not paid “less than minimum wage” - they are paid nothing, zero, because well-intentioned but economically clueless people have decided that it’s not morally proper for low-skilled people to make whatever their labor is worth.

> Minimum wage laws put a floor on just how much you can abuse your staff

No, it puts a floor on who is employable, hurting the least capable people the most.

> you take your considerable privilege for granted

Chastising me doesn’t work - try again with a reasonable economic/utilitarian argument. Thus far you haven’t said anything to suggest you’re approaching this from any kind of reasonable framework.

> Because who in their right mind thinks "minimum wage people are having it great, they're the ones treated the best by their employers".

I agree with you, that's why I didn't want to try and go for actual current min wage jobs. They always feel hectic and lack the structure that the higher paid jobs have that I love. I know min wage isn't ideal for many, if any but for my personal lifestyle, it would be more enough right now.

[citation needed]

A lot of low-wage work is skilled physical labor. I for one would need months to years of physical training before I would be strong enough to perform many of those jobs, and then it would take me months to years of practice before I could do them efficiently and effectively.

If you were to give a day laborer the same amount of time to learn to code, they might be a pretty competent developer.

But what kind of raises? Starting at minimum wage and grinding out a 25c/hr raise each year for a decade is still going to leave you in poverty. No one starts at $8/hr and is making $35/hr for the same position 6 months later.

For the same reason a minimum wage exists.

>But no one is entitled to anything.

Workers are entitled to a minimum wage should they seek/accept a job.

In my experience there's not much dignity in the US working for minimum wage.

Your point of view is that people who are willing to work for less are being exploited, but you fail entirely to see how real legally legitimate paid work would actually help underprivileged populations obtain success, as opposed to their current $0/hr wage.

> now you're having minimum wage workers compete with no income workers

You've said it yourself, dropping minimum wage would allow underprivileged workers the ability to compete for jobs. Maybe minimum-wage workers are scared that they'll lose their job to someone who's actually desperate for work.

Supporting yourself (by basically selling your labor) instead of relying on the government is worth something (non-tangible value, obviously) to a lot of people (though I suspect there are few of those people on HN). It makes you feel good (less bad) about your situation and frankly having your existence be dependent on some entity you have nearly zero control over sucks and is stressful.

Obviously on some level it comes down to personal preference but clearly a large subset of the population feels that minimum wage or nearly minimum wage jobs are a good enough deal relative to government benefits that they do them.

The people who I'd personally want to hire are the one's who are gaming the system by getting benefits and working under the table or having a side gig because they clearly know how to optimize for a given set of constraints. Unfortunately those are the ones that aren't in the job market.

I'm sorry but I don't believe that. I do understand that line of thought if you are in a very complicated personal/financial situation but you're stating that the only driver is money, which is clearly wrong...

Unless the job needs to be done, which is generally the case among minimum wage workers. That was my point. You need cleaning staff, and retail workers, and what not. You still hire them even if they cost more. People don't have intrinsic prices. It's not like an old person costs exactly $4.32 an hour and therefore is unable to find work if the minimum wage is $7.25.

True, but I think the far more common scenario is this: I have cleaning work that generates value of $25/hr. Since the labor is unskilled and there is ample supply I can pay my workers the minimum wage and still find plenty of applicants. If there was no minimum wage I could pay them $5/hr and would still have plenty of applicants who would be even more impoverished.