The minimum wage was argued to be high enough to support an average employee’s needs. The idea that if you work full-time, you should be able to live. Food, shelter, etc… The weird “just this sector deserves to earn at minimum a liveable wage” never sat right with me. It (the minimum wage) should apply to every working person.
I disagree. You should be able to live even with part time. We need UBI, not minimum wage. Minimum wage without UBI creates conditions for fastest displacement of the workers by machinery/technology/AI/outsourcing. UBI without minimum wage would create the opposite conditions.
We align pretty closely on this opinion, and I get downvoted for it too.
I would love to see every citizen’s needs met, whether via UBI or something else and the minimum wage abolished. Then companies can pay their employees whatever they want, and the worker can make a choice whether or not to take it, because their health and shelter isn’t on the line if they don’t.
Nationalization of basic needs.
Want to own a single family house? No problem, if you don’t have the money there’s still apartments available and the cost is X% of your income, not a set price.
Same for food, you might not eat fun things like fried calamari on the government’s program but you’ll get packages of food every week for Y% of your income, if you want to be fancy there’s private groceries for that.
Need clothing? Here’s a bunch of plain clothes provided by the government, the price is based on your wage so buy as needed.
In the end you can cover all your basic needs no matter your income and you’re left with the same % of your wage no matter how much you make a year. You’re on welfare? You end up with Z% of it still in your pockets after we made sure you’ve got everything you need to live. You’re a surgeon that loves the idea and wants to encourage it and doesn’t care about fancy food or clothing? You’re left with Z% of your salary in your pockets as well.
Don’t feed the beast. Find a better source.
Won’t the market pretty well extend the minimum wage? Not to disagree with the premise, but in Germany, for example, the union represents about 1/3 of workers, and whatever the union is able to negotiate basically becomes standard for all workers. Why? Because people will gravitate to those jobs with a protected floor.
If in 6 months wages in other sectors don’t follow, then the workers will drain toward fast food and the other industries will have to be competitive.
But yes, I don’t see why the law is discriminating here. Just raise the whole minimum wage.
The law discriminated because it was harder to pass a broad wage bill, and they are indeed expecting wages to follow fast food. This bill will do almost as much good, eventually, and was much more feasible to get made into law.
That said, there’s no reason to not fight for a broader bill, now. Everyone deserves this as law, not just market consequences, even if those market consequences should result in a similar thing.
