Raising the minimum wage won't help

[Brian37]

I worked in fast food before I graduated High School - and started for $1.35 an hour. That' s who is SUPPOSED to be working there - kids - learning job skills and earning some cash. The job skills needed to do the job are nearly nil. A warm body that moves on occasion. You can't expect to make a living doing something that takes 16 hours to learn.

The problem isn't that these jobs don't pay enough - the problem is that the people who are doing them should not be trying to make a living doing these jobs. They should have picked up job skills and moved on to something better paying than minimum wage.

Why shouldn’t someone be able to live off of full time work that only took them “16 hours” to learn? How is that relevant? If they show up on time every day and do the job that is required of them for 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, why don’t they deserve to be able to live from the time they’ve given their employer? How does job skill have anything to do with worthiness of the basic essentials of human life?

That side of the economic argument loves to falsely call liberals "elitists". Truth is the opposite. If one thinks a dishwasher or garbage collector are less worthy of dignity or survival because they didn't move up, they are a holes. 

I worked as a dishwasher at a breakfast place for over 7 years. That was longer than even most of the cooks at that same joint. When I hear OLB's stupid arguments, I know damned well he wouldn't last a month at the position I held. People who argue like that, forget that there is a huge difference between "easy to learn" and "easy to do".  OLB if he had attempted my position on an Easter Sunday when the traffic made "running with the bulls" look like walking a dachshund, he'd cry to his mommy.

Every job takes skill, especially in high traffic. That does not mean everyone should earn the same. He keeps missing that point. It is about stability so that when that worker shows up, they can have the financial survival and equally importantly the mental and physical health to care enough about the job to want to be there. If you give workers stability they are far more likely to care about the job they do when they are there. But if all you do is pay them crappy wages, and treat them like tools and not humans, you are going to have a higher turnover rate.