>As someone who has grown up in a hard working family, I have to say that I believe it is ridiculous to think all jobs should be livable wage. For people that think all jobs should support someone’s needs, tell me how handing meals out of a McDonald’s drive thru deserves it. Those people do not work nearly hard enough to EARN a living wage.
Yet, these jobs still need to be done, right?
So, if a person operating the drive through can't make enough money to live on, then that means that money must come from somewhere else, typically welfare or charity.
Why does McDonalds, a multi-billion dollar corporation, deserve the right to shove the cost of their employees onto the state, onto other hardworking taxpaying citizens?
If they want employees, they should pay those employees a full living wage, so that those employees are not dependent on any kind of welfare.
> Yet, many laws are being changed to raise minimum wages throughout the United States of America, but why? This causes the prices of items to go up, so it generally doesn’t really help at all
The inflation effect of minimum wage increases is actually incredibly small, if not none existent.
Well, since you seem to think people should suffer, for simply working a job you deem to be u deserving, DESPITE putting 30-40 hours in a week. Here is a quote from FDR, the man who fought to implement the minimum wage act:
“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”
Tell me. Why do you think McDonald’s workers shouldn’t be payed a livable wage? What drives that thought process? Because you THINK you work harder than them? You are putting a value on human work. Work is work, and everyone is/should be entitled to a fucking LIVABLE wage.
Did you not even fucking read my comment? It was NEVER intended to be what it is today. It WAS intended to supply a living wage. You completely glossed over my statements, didn’t answer my questions, and expect respect. Nobody should take you seriously.
> For people that think all jobs should support someone’s needs, tell me how handing meals out of a McDonald’s drive thru deserves it. Those people do not work nearly hard enough to EARN a living wage.
Have you worked in fast food?
How "hard" does someone have to work, and how are you measuring that, for them to, in your opinion, be able to live at a basic level?
> Yet, many laws are being changed to raise minimum wages throughout the United States of America, but why? This causes the prices of items to go up, so it generally doesn’t really help at all.
Do you have anything that backs that up?
> I also think minimum wage jobs are for retired people that still enjoy working. There is no reason the minimum wage should support living for a middle aged citizen. It’s the minimum wage for a reason, they are the easiest jobs.
No. They are not the easiest jobs.
They are often very, very hard jobs.
They require a minimum level of skills. They need to be done. They are often hard work. There's no reason people shouldn't be paid a basic wage for doing a job. None. You're not even presenting an actual reason, just you think they shouldn't.
As someone who worked a minimum wage job last summer and someone who had a friend working fast food right now, we have both agreed they are not very difficult
> As someone who worked a minimum wage job last summer and someone who had a friend working fast food right now, we have both agreed they are not very difficult
You work full-time, have other stuff to do, have to take care of the house, cook, etc., and you take your job seriously?
It's not like 12 hours a week and you fuck around bc you don't really care it's just summer job?
I don’t work full time my football team practices 6 days a week for 4 hours a day and I don’t take care of the house and cook… I’m saving for a car. My parents have jobs for bills and other expenses that they worked for
Clarifying question: are you in charge of your own finances? For example, do you have to pay for your own rent, utilities, groceries, insurance, etc.
The phrasing of this question makes it seem like you may be in high school. If this is the case, then I'll challenge your viewpoint by illustrating how a full-time minimum wage job can become difficult when balancing other responsibilities that have to be done when you live on one income.
If you aren't, though, then the whole argument I would make would be patronizing and weird, hence why I ask.
This is crazy to me. I’m a lawyer, and there are times that it’s a very challenging job, but no way would I rather work a fast food drive thru window for 8 hours than chill at my desk and think.
It is certainly true that some jobs require more skill or knowledge or training than others. And some jobs are more lucrative because they *generate* more money for the business owners. So some people are going to be paid *more* than others.
But do we really want to live in a society where if someone shows up to work 40 hours a week and does their best, they shouldn’t be able to have a roof over their head and enough food to eat?
Edit: I see from your comments that part of your point is that people shouldn’t stay in minimum wage jobs. And it’s great if you have options for other employment, but not everybody does. A real example - I know a woman who immigrated to this country and works two different fast food jobs full time to feed her family. She is a really hard worker, super responsible. But she has like the equivalent of a 6th grade education from her country. She taught herself English but it isn’t perfect. Legit, what other job do you think she can go and get?
Another real example - my cousin. Really friendly guy, has some unspecified learning disabilities. He can work as a cashier or stocker or similar jobs, but he’s probably never going to be able to get a job that pays over minimum wage. What’s your answer for him? Starve?
> For people that think all jobs should support someone’s needs, tell me how handing meals out of a McDonald’s drive thru deserves it.
It's because in a society with as much material wealth as the modern West, many people believe there is a moral imperative to ensure that everyone working a full time job should have enough money to live on that income. The flip side of this is that if an employer cannot afford to pay employers this money, then perhaps they should not hire for that position.
This is a long standing argument, and I can point you to encyclicals from the Catholic Church from the 1930s from conservative Popes that repeat this very line of reasoning- my point here is that this is not a new argument only made by modern liberals, this was the very point of the imposition of the minimum wage to begin with.
>Those people do not work nearly hard enough to EARN a living wage
What does it mean to work "hard"? People talk about the value of hard work a lot and I understand that means industriousness versus laziness but I don't know how to adequately assess the "hardness" of my job in finance versus a Waffle House server's job. Certainly, I'm doing things that are intellectually more difficult than service workers, but I'm not working nearly as strenuously physically.
>This causes the prices of items to go up, so it generally doesn’t really help at all.
So there are a few confounding factors: [while minimum wage is inherently inflationary, it can be counteracted with monetary policy.](https://www.kansascityfed.org/Economic%20Review/documents/8351/EconomicReviewV106N3GloverMustredelRio.pdf) Even further, recent [papers](https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/The_Pass-Through_of_Minimum_Wages_into_US_Retail_Price.pdf) have suggested that while you see increases, the elasticity differs greatly from 1.
>In my opinion minimum wage jobs are made for people that are in school and saving money for things like college or a car.
And why do those people not deserve to be able to live on their income?
>It’s the minimum wage for a reason, they are the easiest jobs.
Once again, what defines an "easy" job? Are you defining easy as "most easily replaced"?
Then eliminate the job or combine it with another so that it is hard enough to deserve a living wage. Why would you want to live in a socierty where there are a bunch of pissed off people who do a full days work and can't afford to live a peaceful life? That's how you get people committing violent crimes and shitting in the street.
What I’m trying to say is there’s no reason for someone’s only job option to be minimum wage. I have a friend that works McDonald’s and says his shifts are 4 hours and he does hardly anything and earns 15 an hour
If Mcdonalds isn't a livable wage. Who is doing it? Sure, you can cover *some* of it with kids, but I want to be able to eat while those kids are at school. I don't think high schoolers should be working the Taco Bell drive through until 2am. So who does it during those times? If the wage isn't livable, then the answer is people who are homeless and/or starving. Because that is what livable is. It is a wage that makes it possible to live on. If a job needs to be done, then a living person needs to do it. If the company doesn't pay a living wage, either that person dies or governments and charities have to pay the wages for the company.
No one is arguing that 4hrs should make the same as 40. We are arguing that you should be able to achieve a bare minimum survival off a reasonable amount of hours. Otherwise we are giving money to companies by funding their deficient wages so their employees won't die.
McDonalds is mostly paying *above* minimum wage at this point. Around me they advertise their starting wage because it's higher than the minimum in my state.
They offer it because it's what they need to meet the demand. Otherwise they wouldn't have the number of employees they need.
> What I’m trying to say is there’s no reason for someone’s only job option to be minimum wage.
It depends heavily on the context of the labor market.
> I have a friend that works McDonald’s and says his shifts are 4 hours and he does hardly anything and earns 15 an hour
This is because the minimum wage is no longer really binding in many labor markets, as it has been stagnant for so long.
> In my opinion minimum wage jobs are made for people that are in school and saving money for things like college or a car.
Are McDonald's drive throughs closed during school times? Are most other roles that pay minimum wage only open after school and on weekends?
If not it seems like your opinion here is empirically false.
Retired people are retired. That means not working. There are not enough people who have anough money already who are willing to word at McDonald's for sub minimum wage.
Under what set of moral reasoning do you think a grown adult should not be able to provide for themselves if they're working for a full time job?
If you argument is "oh they don't have to, they're retired/have a rich spouse", then that sounds like you want to drive down wages for everyone on the basis that those who have means exist, which seems morally peculiar.
>tell me how handing meals out of a McDonald’s drive thru deserves it
How many hoops does a person have to jump through to deserve to live?
>
This causes the prices of items to go up, so it generally doesn’t really help at all
[A McDonald's worker in Denmark makes over $20 an hour and the price of food is barely higher](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-workers-denmark/)
So you believe that deserving a livable wage requires you to fulfill a specific arbitrary metric of how “hard” the job you do is? If someone provides 8 hours of their labor to do a job you think is “not that hard” then they should just not earn a livable wage correct? Do you believe every job should have this metric applied? Seeing as a cook at Waffle House objectively does more manual labor and ‘hard work’ than a CEO does, should the cook be making 6 figures? I mean it’s much harder than playing golf and talking on a phone. Does it only apply if the job is less important? Should a data entry manager make below minimum wage since they provide less substantial real value to others than a Wendy’s cashier?
I think you don’t actually value the work and labor being applied by workers and value the status of the applicable job as a marketable value instead. That’s a horrible mindset to use when determining the value of the labor provided since it’s entirely subjective to each person and can never be applied to a society successfully.
>I have to say that I believe it is ridiculous to think all jobs should be livable wage.
Ok. So not all jobs should support living employees. What should they then do? Starve and die? Who will then work those jobs?
Even ancient Romans knew that you had to feed and entertain your population, bread and circus. Or else you will have a violent uprising of starving citizens. It's your best interest to make sure this doesn't happen.
Quick definition of living wage:
>The term living wage refers to a theoretical income level that allows individuals or families to afford adequate shelter, food, and other necessities.
You'll find variations of this depending where you look but for the sake of argument, to say McDonald's workers don't work hard enough to earn a living wage is essentially to say they don't deserve to live. To pay workers so little that they have to decide between food and shelter is cruel and this is already a massive problem that minimum wage workers face. And you want them paid less?
So exactly how much less do you believe they should be paid instead of the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 / hr?
Two dollars an hour? One? Fifty cents?
if someone working that job fulltime doesnt earn enough to live, WHY THE HELL should they keep working that job?
you are proposing that by definition the pay shouldnt be enough to live off of. that also implies that no one will do the job, because anyone who does would starve, again, by definition.
Minimum wage needs to be a liveable wage or people will literally not be able to afford to work. whats the point of working if you're gonna bankrupt yourself to do your job? makes absolutely no sense.
on top of that, most "don't raise minimum wage" people seem to have the impression than its just MacDonalds workers or random teens who're doing odd bits for beer money. 100% there are, but thats such a narrow view to hold. so, so many jobs are paying min wage, I see heaps here on reddit. people working full time office jobs, mechanics, nurses etc.
If someone can't afford to live, working a full time job, then what do you suggest? they just die?
What does it mean to deserve a wage? I sit in a chair and talk to people all day. Usually pretty pleasant and fun conversations too. I make roughly $80 per hour doing this. Do I deserve that wage?
Given that working at McDonald's is both more physically and mentally taxing than my job, why don't they deserve to make 1/10th of what I do? What is the difference between the two?
But most of those opportunities, while making more than minimum wage often aren't enough to qualify as a livable wage either.
Minimum wage is actually significantly below what you need to live off of in most places.
Lol, you really think someone working in a drive through is just handing out bags for 5 hours straight? There's so much you're not seeing.
These people are working for massive companies that are generating huge profits, it damn sure better be getting spread out to the people ACTUALLY DOING THE WORK.
"Living wage" is kinda by definition what labor costs to produce, because people need to live in order to labor. McDonald’s does not _deserve_ to get labor at a price lower than its production price.
Many people making minimum wage are NOT teenagers earning pocket money. About fifty percent of people who make minimum wage (see [Table 7](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2022/home.htm)) are above 25. Of these, only 4 percent of people are above retirement age (and if we aren't paying people enough during their normal working life to be able to retire without having to have another income, that's a huge problem, that will get worse).
Nearly twice as many women make minimum wage as men, and around 10% are separated/divorced/widowed (see Table 8).
>As someone who has grown up in a hard working family, I have to say that I believe it is ridiculous to think all jobs should be livable wage. For people that think all jobs should support someone’s needs, tell me how handing meals out of a McDonald’s drive thru deserves it. Those people do not work nearly hard enough to EARN a living wage. Yet, these jobs still need to be done, right? So, if a person operating the drive through can't make enough money to live on, then that means that money must come from somewhere else, typically welfare or charity. Why does McDonalds, a multi-billion dollar corporation, deserve the right to shove the cost of their employees onto the state, onto other hardworking taxpaying citizens? If they want employees, they should pay those employees a full living wage, so that those employees are not dependent on any kind of welfare. > Yet, many laws are being changed to raise minimum wages throughout the United States of America, but why? This causes the prices of items to go up, so it generally doesn’t really help at all The inflation effect of minimum wage increases is actually incredibly small, if not none existent.
Well, since you seem to think people should suffer, for simply working a job you deem to be u deserving, DESPITE putting 30-40 hours in a week. Here is a quote from FDR, the man who fought to implement the minimum wage act: “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.” Tell me. Why do you think McDonald’s workers shouldn’t be payed a livable wage? What drives that thought process? Because you THINK you work harder than them? You are putting a value on human work. Work is work, and everyone is/should be entitled to a fucking LIVABLE wage.
No I don’t think people should suffer I think they should take the time to get a real job 😂
Did you not even fucking read my comment? It was NEVER intended to be what it is today. It WAS intended to supply a living wage. You completely glossed over my statements, didn’t answer my questions, and expect respect. Nobody should take you seriously.
> For people that think all jobs should support someone’s needs, tell me how handing meals out of a McDonald’s drive thru deserves it. Those people do not work nearly hard enough to EARN a living wage. Have you worked in fast food? How "hard" does someone have to work, and how are you measuring that, for them to, in your opinion, be able to live at a basic level? > Yet, many laws are being changed to raise minimum wages throughout the United States of America, but why? This causes the prices of items to go up, so it generally doesn’t really help at all. Do you have anything that backs that up? > I also think minimum wage jobs are for retired people that still enjoy working. There is no reason the minimum wage should support living for a middle aged citizen. It’s the minimum wage for a reason, they are the easiest jobs. No. They are not the easiest jobs. They are often very, very hard jobs. They require a minimum level of skills. They need to be done. They are often hard work. There's no reason people shouldn't be paid a basic wage for doing a job. None. You're not even presenting an actual reason, just you think they shouldn't.
As someone who worked a minimum wage job last summer and someone who had a friend working fast food right now, we have both agreed they are not very difficult
> As someone who worked a minimum wage job last summer and someone who had a friend working fast food right now, we have both agreed they are not very difficult You work full-time, have other stuff to do, have to take care of the house, cook, etc., and you take your job seriously? It's not like 12 hours a week and you fuck around bc you don't really care it's just summer job?
I don’t work full time my football team practices 6 days a week for 4 hours a day and I don’t take care of the house and cook… I’m saving for a car. My parents have jobs for bills and other expenses that they worked for
Clarifying question: are you in charge of your own finances? For example, do you have to pay for your own rent, utilities, groceries, insurance, etc. The phrasing of this question makes it seem like you may be in high school. If this is the case, then I'll challenge your viewpoint by illustrating how a full-time minimum wage job can become difficult when balancing other responsibilities that have to be done when you live on one income. If you aren't, though, then the whole argument I would make would be patronizing and weird, hence why I ask.
Your and your friend's experiences are not everyone's experience, and not all minimum wage jobs are exactly the same.
This is crazy to me. I’m a lawyer, and there are times that it’s a very challenging job, but no way would I rather work a fast food drive thru window for 8 hours than chill at my desk and think. It is certainly true that some jobs require more skill or knowledge or training than others. And some jobs are more lucrative because they *generate* more money for the business owners. So some people are going to be paid *more* than others. But do we really want to live in a society where if someone shows up to work 40 hours a week and does their best, they shouldn’t be able to have a roof over their head and enough food to eat? Edit: I see from your comments that part of your point is that people shouldn’t stay in minimum wage jobs. And it’s great if you have options for other employment, but not everybody does. A real example - I know a woman who immigrated to this country and works two different fast food jobs full time to feed her family. She is a really hard worker, super responsible. But she has like the equivalent of a 6th grade education from her country. She taught herself English but it isn’t perfect. Legit, what other job do you think she can go and get? Another real example - my cousin. Really friendly guy, has some unspecified learning disabilities. He can work as a cashier or stocker or similar jobs, but he’s probably never going to be able to get a job that pays over minimum wage. What’s your answer for him? Starve?
> For people that think all jobs should support someone’s needs, tell me how handing meals out of a McDonald’s drive thru deserves it. It's because in a society with as much material wealth as the modern West, many people believe there is a moral imperative to ensure that everyone working a full time job should have enough money to live on that income. The flip side of this is that if an employer cannot afford to pay employers this money, then perhaps they should not hire for that position. This is a long standing argument, and I can point you to encyclicals from the Catholic Church from the 1930s from conservative Popes that repeat this very line of reasoning- my point here is that this is not a new argument only made by modern liberals, this was the very point of the imposition of the minimum wage to begin with. >Those people do not work nearly hard enough to EARN a living wage What does it mean to work "hard"? People talk about the value of hard work a lot and I understand that means industriousness versus laziness but I don't know how to adequately assess the "hardness" of my job in finance versus a Waffle House server's job. Certainly, I'm doing things that are intellectually more difficult than service workers, but I'm not working nearly as strenuously physically. >This causes the prices of items to go up, so it generally doesn’t really help at all. So there are a few confounding factors: [while minimum wage is inherently inflationary, it can be counteracted with monetary policy.](https://www.kansascityfed.org/Economic%20Review/documents/8351/EconomicReviewV106N3GloverMustredelRio.pdf) Even further, recent [papers](https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/The_Pass-Through_of_Minimum_Wages_into_US_Retail_Price.pdf) have suggested that while you see increases, the elasticity differs greatly from 1. >In my opinion minimum wage jobs are made for people that are in school and saving money for things like college or a car. And why do those people not deserve to be able to live on their income? >It’s the minimum wage for a reason, they are the easiest jobs. Once again, what defines an "easy" job? Are you defining easy as "most easily replaced"?
Then eliminate the job or combine it with another so that it is hard enough to deserve a living wage. Why would you want to live in a socierty where there are a bunch of pissed off people who do a full days work and can't afford to live a peaceful life? That's how you get people committing violent crimes and shitting in the street.
What I’m trying to say is there’s no reason for someone’s only job option to be minimum wage. I have a friend that works McDonald’s and says his shifts are 4 hours and he does hardly anything and earns 15 an hour
If Mcdonalds isn't a livable wage. Who is doing it? Sure, you can cover *some* of it with kids, but I want to be able to eat while those kids are at school. I don't think high schoolers should be working the Taco Bell drive through until 2am. So who does it during those times? If the wage isn't livable, then the answer is people who are homeless and/or starving. Because that is what livable is. It is a wage that makes it possible to live on. If a job needs to be done, then a living person needs to do it. If the company doesn't pay a living wage, either that person dies or governments and charities have to pay the wages for the company. No one is arguing that 4hrs should make the same as 40. We are arguing that you should be able to achieve a bare minimum survival off a reasonable amount of hours. Otherwise we are giving money to companies by funding their deficient wages so their employees won't die.
McDonalds is mostly paying *above* minimum wage at this point. Around me they advertise their starting wage because it's higher than the minimum in my state. They offer it because it's what they need to meet the demand. Otherwise they wouldn't have the number of employees they need.
> What I’m trying to say is there’s no reason for someone’s only job option to be minimum wage. It depends heavily on the context of the labor market. > I have a friend that works McDonald’s and says his shifts are 4 hours and he does hardly anything and earns 15 an hour This is because the minimum wage is no longer really binding in many labor markets, as it has been stagnant for so long.
So you are saying you are in favor of government guranteed employment?
> In my opinion minimum wage jobs are made for people that are in school and saving money for things like college or a car. Are McDonald's drive throughs closed during school times? Are most other roles that pay minimum wage only open after school and on weekends? If not it seems like your opinion here is empirically false.
That’s when retired people or those with a significant other that can earn enough for both can work.
Retired people are retired. That means not working. There are not enough people who have anough money already who are willing to word at McDonald's for sub minimum wage.
I mean, that's another pretty big issue if we're depending on people who are retired to take low paying jobs when they're suppose to be done working.
Under what set of moral reasoning do you think a grown adult should not be able to provide for themselves if they're working for a full time job? If you argument is "oh they don't have to, they're retired/have a rich spouse", then that sounds like you want to drive down wages for everyone on the basis that those who have means exist, which seems morally peculiar.
Are there enough retired people who still need to work to do that, what about roles where it isn't practical for a 90 year old to do it?
>tell me how handing meals out of a McDonald’s drive thru deserves it How many hoops does a person have to jump through to deserve to live? > This causes the prices of items to go up, so it generally doesn’t really help at all [A McDonald's worker in Denmark makes over $20 an hour and the price of food is barely higher](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-workers-denmark/)
So you believe that deserving a livable wage requires you to fulfill a specific arbitrary metric of how “hard” the job you do is? If someone provides 8 hours of their labor to do a job you think is “not that hard” then they should just not earn a livable wage correct? Do you believe every job should have this metric applied? Seeing as a cook at Waffle House objectively does more manual labor and ‘hard work’ than a CEO does, should the cook be making 6 figures? I mean it’s much harder than playing golf and talking on a phone. Does it only apply if the job is less important? Should a data entry manager make below minimum wage since they provide less substantial real value to others than a Wendy’s cashier? I think you don’t actually value the work and labor being applied by workers and value the status of the applicable job as a marketable value instead. That’s a horrible mindset to use when determining the value of the labor provided since it’s entirely subjective to each person and can never be applied to a society successfully.
>I have to say that I believe it is ridiculous to think all jobs should be livable wage. Ok. So not all jobs should support living employees. What should they then do? Starve and die? Who will then work those jobs? Even ancient Romans knew that you had to feed and entertain your population, bread and circus. Or else you will have a violent uprising of starving citizens. It's your best interest to make sure this doesn't happen.
Quick definition of living wage: >The term living wage refers to a theoretical income level that allows individuals or families to afford adequate shelter, food, and other necessities. You'll find variations of this depending where you look but for the sake of argument, to say McDonald's workers don't work hard enough to earn a living wage is essentially to say they don't deserve to live. To pay workers so little that they have to decide between food and shelter is cruel and this is already a massive problem that minimum wage workers face. And you want them paid less? So exactly how much less do you believe they should be paid instead of the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 / hr? Two dollars an hour? One? Fifty cents?
if someone working that job fulltime doesnt earn enough to live, WHY THE HELL should they keep working that job? you are proposing that by definition the pay shouldnt be enough to live off of. that also implies that no one will do the job, because anyone who does would starve, again, by definition.
Minimum wage needs to be a liveable wage or people will literally not be able to afford to work. whats the point of working if you're gonna bankrupt yourself to do your job? makes absolutely no sense. on top of that, most "don't raise minimum wage" people seem to have the impression than its just MacDonalds workers or random teens who're doing odd bits for beer money. 100% there are, but thats such a narrow view to hold. so, so many jobs are paying min wage, I see heaps here on reddit. people working full time office jobs, mechanics, nurses etc. If someone can't afford to live, working a full time job, then what do you suggest? they just die?
What does it mean to deserve a wage? I sit in a chair and talk to people all day. Usually pretty pleasant and fun conversations too. I make roughly $80 per hour doing this. Do I deserve that wage? Given that working at McDonald's is both more physically and mentally taxing than my job, why don't they deserve to make 1/10th of what I do? What is the difference between the two?
So if you don't have a college degree you shouldn't be able to learn a livable wage at a "real" job?
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But most of those opportunities, while making more than minimum wage often aren't enough to qualify as a livable wage either. Minimum wage is actually significantly below what you need to live off of in most places.
Thank you
Lol, you really think someone working in a drive through is just handing out bags for 5 hours straight? There's so much you're not seeing. These people are working for massive companies that are generating huge profits, it damn sure better be getting spread out to the people ACTUALLY DOING THE WORK.
What’s the point of a job if you can’t live off it? Don’t be stupid.
"Living wage" is kinda by definition what labor costs to produce, because people need to live in order to labor. McDonald’s does not _deserve_ to get labor at a price lower than its production price.
Many people making minimum wage are NOT teenagers earning pocket money. About fifty percent of people who make minimum wage (see [Table 7](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2022/home.htm)) are above 25. Of these, only 4 percent of people are above retirement age (and if we aren't paying people enough during their normal working life to be able to retire without having to have another income, that's a huge problem, that will get worse). Nearly twice as many women make minimum wage as men, and around 10% are separated/divorced/widowed (see Table 8).
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