Despite agreeing with the rest, should the kid who graduated high school 2 months ago (1) earn as a grocery cashier to support a family of four, including medical and education, (2) should they not work / not be employable, or (3) is there room for a minimum lower than this definition?
If a high school graduate comes in and offers the same value as the other cashiers making the same amount of money, then, yes, they should get paid the same. If the other cashiers are more valuable, then they should be paid more.
this isn't really as difficult as everyone makes it. "Minimum wage is a company's way of telling you that if it was legal to pay you less, they would."
If a company can't afford to pay cashiers at different rates based on their tenure and skill, then i guess the company will have to deploy self-checkout, and some people don't like that, so they'll take their business elsewhere. If that means that all grocery stores go "self checkout" then i suppose farmer's markets will become a lot bigger.
This is all about grocery cashiers, please do not try to extrapolate my words to anything else, i am speaking to this very narrow thing.
Sure, we can approach from that angle, instead of the just-graduated-high-school angle.
I did not talk about paying cashiers at different rates. I addressed the single minimum rate from the earlier comment, where a household's single income can "support a family of four above the poverty line -- spouse & kids in a house/apartment, food, medical, education, etc [without relying on assistance programs]". According to the back of this envelope, that would be $70,000/yr = $33/hr. In some areas or with other decisions, maybe only $50,000/yr = $24/hr.
A grocery store would be rare indeed that could afford to pay their lowest-skilled, lowest-tenured cashier at $24/hr. Surely society can come up with a better answer than telling so many grocery stores that self-checkout is the only practical way to stay in business.
if you search HN for genewitch, you will find many times have said that exact dollar amount should be minimum wage, so this isn't a gotcha.
for years^, i've been saying this, since 2018 or 2019. $33 an hour. So if you re-read what i actually said, i explain that i don't really care if a supermarket can't afford to pay cashiers at a livable wage. they can suffer from lack of staff, or go full self checkout and robots, or go out of business. I don't care, like, at all. "But genewitch, what about the families of the shareholders and CEO and board?" uh huh, luckily they can go get a job and make a livable wage somewhere else.
^i've only been posting on HN since 2020, but my point stands
You having said so previously has no impact on this belief:
> A grocery store would be rare indeed that could afford to pay their lowest-skilled, lowest-tenured cashier at $24/hr. Surely society can come up with a better answer than telling so many grocery stores that self-checkout is the only practical way to stay in business.
I'll take you at your word that you don't care to come up with a better answer, and that means I'll gain nothing further from discussing this with you. I'll bow out. Take care!
I would say yes, it is reasonable to have an exception for lower wages for teenage part-time entry-level workers, and maybe some partially-disabled workers.
Of course there would need to be provisions that it not be abused and just used for all positions. E.g., it cannot be used for workers 21 years old or older, etc. And the rules against abuse need to be solid, as we can guarantee that whatever rules are made, employers will work hard to abuse and game the system to their advantage and at the employee's cost.
"Doctor, I need you to declare me disabled or else I'll lose my job when I turn 21. I need this job, and I don't know if I can find another one at the 21yo minimum wage."
I really want to like what you're saying, but I see too many problems. I don't have answers.
>>Of course there would need to be provisions that it not be abused ... And the rules against abuse need to be solid, ...
Exactly that sort of scenario is why I included those phrases.
ANY large system will have imperfections, inadvertent waste, and openings for abuse. Of course these should be minimized, but that shouldn't stop us from making a system. Better a few people benefit undeservedly than many who deserve and need the benefits go hungry.
The need for a system doesn't imply that your proposal is better than the status quo.
> Better a few people benefit undeservedly than many who deserve and need the benefits go hungry.
Agreed. Now consider that regulations exclude people, not include them, overall, by far. (I say this with a job that sees that daily, and where a frequent criticism is that implementing those regulations is government waste.)
What I'm taking away from this is, contrasting with an option I generally dislike, that option actually looks much better than I have previously thought, and it looks definitely better than raising the minimum wage. That is raising the corporate tax rate, which is at historic lows from what I understand, and increasing public benefits. You mentioned Walmart's profits being subsidized by benefit programs, but that valid and important complaint seems to be taken care of this way. This also starts to sound a lot like UBI, which I may have never really understood and have never supported. Maybe I should support it.
That could be a good solution to increase the corp tax rate and provide more benefits and more broadly. The problem is corporations, especially large corps, have historically bought favors from congress, with the result that the tax burden falls on the middle class.
UBI is an astoundingly good concept, especially when people get automated out of their jobs — tax every producing entity at a level required to distribute funds and services (e.g., healthcare) to everyone just above poverty level.
The cool thing is that with UBI, there is basically no need for a minimum wage. First, potential workers are already being supported above poverty, and second, corporations will need to offer a wage and working conditions that together are worth it for workers to bother getting up and going to work. UBI would essentially give everybody "F.U. money", i.e., the option to get up and walk out anytime without endangering their family's ability to live. Studies testing UBI also repeatedly show people consistently spend the money well and do not squander it. The principle once advocated by some conservatives that the people themselves know best how to spend their money is really true (not absolutely, but at a very high level).
