Thread by @AlexandraErin

People whose response to calls for raising the minimum wage is "But minimum wage jobs aren't meant to be life-long careers!"

Even if you were right, what's that got to do with it? You've still got to live while you have one.

People who don't make a living wage must be supported in some other way, whether it is a partner, parent, or the government. If they're not being supported externally, they are working themselves to death.

And depending on a lot of factors, you can potentially work yourself to death over a period of years and then find yourself in a living wage job, but with worse health and a shortened lifespan.

But why? What's the social good of us doing it this way?

The question we should be asking is what does having an unlivable living wage DO for us as a society, and is that necessary and defensible?

The idea that it's there to motivate people to want better jobs falls apart when poked at.

First, we need people doing those minimum wage jobs or whole sectors of our economy and aspects of our life fall apart. The pandemic has revealed just how essential many of them are.

Second, constant employee turnover is not great for those businesses.

Third, people generally want "better" jobs because they're better (or at least, are so for that person), not purely because they pay more. If someone grew up dreaming of working in fast food, more power to them, but someone who didn't will still pursue their dream career.

And I don't know who needs to hear this but if jobs that are harder to get are suddenly having to compete with jobs that are easier to get paying better wages, the harder to get jobs are apt to start paying more, too.

"Minimum wage jobs aren't supposed to be life-long careers" is such cruel nonsense.

How's that supposed to work? It's okay for me to make Not Enough Money To Live On now because in the future I might make More Than Enough?

I can't borrow from the future, Paul.

I mean, you can... to the extent that you can wreck your own health with sleep and food deprivation, run up credit card debt (if you can get credit cards), etc.

But then same people will turn around and talk about your "choices".

To me, it seems very simple: if society requires that someone perform a job, society benefits from ensuring that person is supported. Not doing so is very clearly unsustainable, and if it's happening in a widespread way, something is clearly and strongly distorting the market.