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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Imagine having to pay some teenager the equivalent of roughly $55k per year just to wash dishes or scrub toilets:

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/workers-labor-advocates-call-for-dc-to-raise-minimum-wage-to-25/4025867/

R.I.P. DC economy. No am I going to pay $100/entree for mediocre food or, $900/night for a garbage hotel simply because businesses have to cover out control labor costs. [/quote]

No teenagers are washing dishes or scrubbing toilets.

And BTW, why shouldn't people who do those jobs earn that much? Those are hard jobs. They certainly have more importance and value than, say, lobbying, consulting, private equity or being a legislative aide.

But, oh, wait, you were TROLLING, weren't you?[/quote]

You know what's hard? Clearing debris out of a field like rolling stones and moving logs. Just because it is hard doesnt mean it is valuable.  It requires zero mental aptitude and zero special skills like carpentry or electrical knowledge. Why should we over reward low skill, low knowledge jobs?  [/quote]

Because they’re far more important than carpentry, electrical or clearing debris from a field.

You like clean bathrooms and plates, amrite? You value those more than a mitre cut doorframe? You certainly use them more frequently.

High knowledge jobs aren’t valuable. Someone who does, say, content marketing or is a lawyer or accountant is not nearly as important to society as people who clean toilets and dishes. [/quote]

What did communists use before candles?

Electricity.[/quote]

It’s communism for people to make enough money to live near their work. Proper capitalism requires a soul-grinding commute to remind workers of their natural inferiority.[/quote]

Renting a room is living where you work. It's communism to believe that a dishwasher's salary should be able to support a family of four without additional government assistance. [/quote]

I think it stems from the narrative that supposedly in the good old boomer days minimum wage workers were able to buy a home on one salary and support a stay home wife with 2-3 kids.  Anyone can personally verify this was the fact?  :lol:  Back in the 90s in HCOL places minimum wage was not enough to even have your own room in a shared housing and eat anything that's not expired garbage grocery stores are getting rid of.  When was this golden age where any full time employment of any kind could afford you an SFH in a good area that's not urban blight or rural wasteland?  :lol: [/quote] This is the quintessential perspective of the young(ish) socialists who want to destroy the system. What’s funny is none of us “boomers” are saying what you think we’re saying. I’m in my fifties and I’ve worked minimum wage jobs, lived in rooms in apartments with strangers (well past my youngish years) lived in neighborhoods I didn’t want to live in. It wasn’t easy or pleasant. But for me it was motivation; for you it just seems like a source of resentment.[/quote]

I had done all this and more, it's not about me, I am not resentful, like you, I was very motivated to not be stuck there.  I am simply asking anyone old enough to verify that minimum wage indeed used to support a family in an SFH (even a small one) in a non dumpy slum neighborhood. I only know what we did in the 90s and early 2000s.  You couldn't survive on your own on minimum wage.

There are 2 conflicting narratives today regarding what minimum wage is meant to be.  One narrative (I listed) is about minimum wage being a living wage that one could support a family on and even own some sort of property.  Another narrative (the one you and I, who are GenX, graduated into) is about minimum wage being a means to an end, allowing mere subsistence level austere living to survive while you are working on "bettering yourself" to move into a higher paying field/career either through education or entrepreneurship, etc.  Or minimum wage being simply a supplement to another income (like in the case of an older child living at home for free, or a stay home spouse being supporting by a higher wage spouse, or a retired pensioner)

This disconnect on what minimum wage purpose is and what it's supposed to represent drives a lot of resentment and feeds social tensions. [/quote]

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