Manhattan Buckeye;1493252 wrote:Well if you are in Charlottesville, VA, please visit. It isn't just private enterprise, a lot of entry public jobs pay minimum wage, or perhaps a bit above that. Entry positions aren't meant to be a living wage. If it was there would be no room for summer jobs. I was one of those ODOT people (yeah, if anyone lived in the SE you probably saw me flagging on the highways) for less than $6.00/hour. But at least it was a job, it was something productive and was a win/win for both groups. It gave us college students work experience, and it gave the State cheap labor. We were no worse than the regulars. And it wasn't if we took a full time job away because there wasn't a budget for it.
But if we increase the minimum wage to the extent these nitwits want to do, it will destroy entry level positions. As if they need destroyed beyond the current situation. ODOT used to hire a dozen or so summer interns in my county, now it is down to a handful at most.
I'm not advocating an increase in a minimum wage. The legislated minimum wage or collectively bargained for minimum wage is not the real minimum wage because if you can't get a job your wage is zero.
However, will you at least agree that there are low marginal product workers who will spend their entire working lives in low wage employment...maybe even making minimum wage. Stop acting like your experience of working a lame low wage summer job while you go to an elite undergrad and an elite law school is anywhere close to universal...it is an exception and very far away from the general rule. As you readily acknowledge in other posts, diligent and educated workers with graduate degrees are working low marginal product jobs at wages that are not much higher than the legislated minimum wage.
Even if we lived in some possible United States wherein every worker was as skilled, determined and motivated as the Manhattan Buckeye's of the world...the world still needs ditch diggers and there is going to have to be people employed in these low marginal product jobs. In many cases, it will not just be entry-level workers but people who work their entire lives in low marginal product jobs, even if they are hard working and determined.
For many people, minimum wage, low marginal product jobs are work experience that is used as a catalyst to obtain higher marginal product work. For many workers, it will be the type of employment that they will be in for life.
Everyone always says "Obtain skills and get a better job", Well if you apply that maxim universally, you're still going to have a demand for workers in low wage employment and these increases in skills do not materially change their bargaining power as they're not relevant to the low marginal product work in question. Exhibit A is a person with a Lawyer working as a bartender, etc.