Reply to Minimum Wage = Living Wage?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Absolutely not.  MInimum wage and living wage are two different concepts and should not be conflated.  There have to be jobs out there that are not intended to support a person or family on.  These jobs can go to the second income of a family, a person who does not need to support themselves, such as a teen or a person who is augmenting other income, say a retired person on a pension that is looking for additional income.  Trying to make the minimum wage into a living wage is another sign of an overactive nanny state.  Yes, I understand that there is a shortage of living wage positions, but that does not mean that you need to change the minimum wage so that every small job out there has to be paid a living wage.  Doing this would kill small businesses and would require some businesses to do without certain type of basic support staff.  I'm sorry, but having a person who comes in to assist an office doing small jobs that take up about 5-10 hours per week (sorting mail, answering telephones, running errands) and paying them a living hourly wage is ridiculous.  Paying fast food workers or carry out drivers a living wage is ridiculous.  Companies should not be expected to pay out living wages for basic unskilled jobs such as this.  And trying to lobby for this will ultimately result in fewer jobs and certainly will cut down on the number of part-time flexible jobs.  If you have to pay insurance and living wages for such jobs, then it becomes more likely that you'll hire one person for 40-60 hours per week instead of two or three people for 20 or 30 hours per week because the overhead to maintain 2 or 3 people will be cost prohibitive.  Thus, those people who want or need flexibility due to family issues or trying to work more than one job to augment family income will be burnt first.

There is a place for minimum wage jobs and a place for living wage jobs.  We need more of the latter, but not by making all of the former into the latter.[/quote]

+1, and I'm a Democrat.  The minimum wage needs to be revisited more often to keep up with inflation, but does not need to be made into a living wage (which varies based on regional COL anyway, so a federally mandated living minimum doesn't make sense).[/quote]

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