It's ironic that I left facebook because I didn't want to hear what everyone thought about everything and now I'm going to say what I think about these things, but right now, you can back out if you don't want to know what I think.
One of the last things that lead to my deciding to stay away from facebook was the minimum wage debate. What bothered me specifically was seeing my friends rant about how stupid/silly/crazy the people are who want the minimum wage raised to $15/hour. Here are some of the things I read and my responses.
1. These jobs are fine for teenagers and people just starting out, but then you need to move on, get training, go to school.... AKA if you don't like the pay, find a new job.
Teenagers are at school during the day, so for 40 hours a week, they aren't even part of the equation. All the people who are making breakfast and handing out morning coffees and sodas are beyond high school. And even if a fast food/minimum wage job "isn't meant to be a career," or whatever, the people working there need to be able to live however simply for the time they are working there. We use their labor! Unless we are willing for them to be paid enough to live on, we are exploiting them, nothing less. We will always need people to do these jobs. If everyone went on to college or other training and moved up, there would be no one left to make crappy fast food.
2. I only make blah blah blah, so it's "not fair" for people working fast food to make that much. OR people in blah blah blah job only make such and such...
Stop measuring your worth or the worth of other people by how much more you or they make than others. If we you aren't happy with where you are, lobby for yourself, not against other people. Seriously, my worth is not measured by how many people are below me on the pay scale.
3. More money is ok, but not $15/hour...
You have to start somewhere in negotiations, and we all know that you start higher than where you expect to end up. Also, this is Arkansas, where $15 an hour sounds like more than it does in other places.
4. If we pay more for minimum wage, all the prices will go up and then it will be the same as it was.
This one is conjecture, and I bet there has always been plenty of it over the years as the work force worked for rights and protections. I wonder what happened when little kids couldn't go to work in the factories anymore?
5. Socialism!
None of my actual friends have said this, but that's part of the problem with facebook--the inability to keep friends of friends from engaging with me. If I did not add you as a friend, I don't want to know what you think.
Really, it's not so much the fact that I have friends who think these things. It's the lack of compassion that I hear ringing through the words I've read.
People working for minimum wage as it is now are always one mishap or problem away from disaster. I am so so damn fortunate. If I get sick, I take a sick day. Broken down car? I have savings, or !!! I could go buy a new one with my bomb ass credit score. God. How can so many people just shrug and tell hypothetical people to suck it up and go to college if they don't like it?
I realize that raising minumum wage isn't a cure for everything, or that much of anything, or that maybe it could even make more problems that it fixes. But the people making it right now are real people who are trying to get by.
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