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).

If a company doesn't hire that warm body to breakdown cardboard boxes or drag around dust mops, then it is useless. Remember the donut hole welfare talking point in the 90s? That is what this is.

> Every person who puts in 40 hours, no matter what their purpose, is entitled to a living wage.

Says you, about an arrangement that doesn't involve you. You should be careful what you wish for, because you could easily get exactly what you are demanding - and be very unhappy for it. Here is how that could happen: massive coordinated campaign to shift the consensus position for an acceptable standard of living, with a catchy hook - "You'll own nothing, and be happy"; resulting in people eating bugs, sleeping in concrete tube "pods", getting paid a dollar an hour, and dying alone.

People who can't do a job should be replaced with someone who can. If a company still has to hire a warm body to do that job, those employees are automatically not useless. Every person who puts in 40 hours, no matter what their purpose, is entitled to a living wage. That doesn't make all labor equal. Highly skilled workers will always demand more money than what they'd need to live comfortably. With lower skilled jobs companies pay much less for labor, but in either case businesses still have to compensate employees for their time. Our time is very finite and extremely valuable. Honestly, our current 40 hour work week is demanding too much as it is. However useless you think someone's job is, if their company could get by without someone doing that work they probably would, but as long as somebody is doing the job and putting in the hours that employee deserves a living wage.

I wish that as a society we could decide that anyone we're going to call an "essential worker" and draft to the biohazardous front lines should bloody well be paid at least as much as the rest of us who can be gone for a week with little ill effect to society at large.

Not just during an emergency either - they're essential the rest of the time too.

That is so incredibly incorrect.

That is not how the labor market works... At all.

"Worth the pay" is overridden by "absolutely need this money for me or my kids to survive"

Those employed at shitty pay disagree very strongly about this.

People do it all the time. When their basic needs (food, health, shelter) aren't being met, they'll take whatever work they can. It doesn't mean they're getting their true worth out of that work, it just means they're getting screwed by their employers who are taking advantage of their need to pay them less than they would otherwise.

I’m not saying anything about what anyone deserves.

I happen to know a general contractor who is incredibly charitable and willing to hire just about anyone who can swing a hammer. He mentioned that one year, he hired so many people that the per-employee costs and taxes ate all of the company’s profit. He had to live on savings that year. Obviously that isn’t sustainable, even if many independent coffee shops and bookstores try it.

Companies that pay more for labor than the value they get from that labor go out of business the same as companies that sell items at a loss and try to make it up on volume.

That is the crux. I feel like most businesses actually don't produce enough value to justify their own existence and therefore require below cost-of-living wages to keep them afloat.

Yes.

> > strategically & systemically quite harmful > How?

If that's more than rhetorical, I suggest you do some reading.

If it is rhetorical, I'll just assume you think everything would work great if we had a minimum prevailing wage of one penny for a lifetime's worth of labour. You know, because less than that would be slavery.

That's not true. The rest of us would have to pay those costs anyway. It's not like the person wouldn't exist, if they didn't have a job.

I certainly don't agree with that sentiment. There are a lot of people that are working that don't need to support themselves. Between teenagers, college students (who may only need to pay for books, etc), mentally/physically impaired (that are supported by the state but work because it's good to be productive)... there's a place in society for jobs that pay below what you're saying.

This is the fundamental problem, it shouldn't be possible for any family of 4 to have difficult basic physical necessities, job or no job. However, in the current state of things some workers are so exploited that the only available work (if you can find any for your labor) pays at a minimum wage.

> What jobs are teenagers supposed to have?

Acquiring disposable income is really different from having to have steady work at a decent rate of pay in order to afford basics like food and shelter. Also, there are tremendous issues with young people and work and exploitation of labor in that age demographic.

> We need to have entry-level jobs for people who are just getting started in the labor market, whose labor isn't worth that much because they are still working on basic job skills, like showing up to work on time sober.

This is a deliberate slander, you are associating people who receive minimum wage (and are likely poor) with alcoholism. That kind of thing is a long running stereotype that undermines the value of low paid laborers or and workers.

Further, nobody is saying that all workers must have high pay, we would expect that pay levels have differences between types of work and types of workers. However, there should be a basic guarantee that people can access basic physical needs.

I don't see how this is any different than taking any other menial, low paying job because you have to make ends meet. No one really wants to clean public toilets or work at Wendy's.

As a former long-time wage worker, you are wrong.

There was no HR department at the restaurant where a coworker and I had to step in to get another adult employee to stop hitting on (read: sexually harassing) an underaged server after the general manger told us “boys will be boys”. There were no benefits for the sous-chef (my boss) whose Marine wife had excruciating pain from nerve damage in her hand. When one of your coworkers walks outside and starts vomiting and you can’t tell if it’s because he’s drunk or having withdrawals and you’re told that this means your shift isn’t ending and that you’ll have to stay at least another six hours and you can’t come in tomorrow because they don’t want to pay overtime then a day at your job will be like a day for a typical wage worker. A bad healthcare system, poor negotiation skills and severance packages do not make your experience anything like that of a wage slave.

You had me until this.

Without a minimum wage, you create a race to the bottom on wages as you find people who are more and more desperate. Meanwhile, you'll create a huge homeless problem as people who are willing to get paid 50 cents an hour won't be able to afford rent anywhere.

Also, define "your value". It doesn't take a graduate Economy class to know that nearly all jobs that aren't commission are not paid based on the profit they create, but by how easy they are to replace.

What? these inhumane working conditions aren't appealing to any human. Nobody is asking to reduce the demand for their labor, maybe the product should be priced accordingly to facilitate good working conditions and pay instead.

Is this somehow bad? Everything is only "worth" as what people are willing to pay for it, and labor isn't any different.