• tmyakal@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    But no one would actually work for free, so now the company has to actually decide how much it values the work at.

    Look at what happened with retail and fast-food after lockdowns lifted in the US: wages surged for the bottom 10% of earners. These places couldn’t get people to work for minimum wage, so they had to ignore minimum wage and actually value the work accordingly. As a result, income saw some pretty strong growth for those employees.

    What a minimum wage does is set the opening baseline for negotiation. The company can say, “We know this is a shitty job that anyone can do, and the government says that kind of work is worth $7.25.” That creates a hurdle to discourage an employee from negotiating for more.

    Minimum wage needs to be adjusted for inflation to match what it was originally intended for, or it needs to be abolished. Right now, it just gives employers a very low starting point for their bad-faith negotiations.

    • forrgott@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      It confuses me that did not address the issue that a lack of minimum wage would allow employers to pay people less. But clearly, if it’s totally legal to pay people less, the only logical outcome is the opposite? Yeah, no.

      But, whatever. Clearly, the utter lack of anything even resembling logic in your argument doesn’t bother you. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrong, of course. So, yeah, whatever. Go ahead and give us all another nonsense explanation for a clearly flawed premise, since that seems to amuse you or something. I dunno.

      • tmyakal@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Did you even read my comment? Yes, without minimum wage an employer could theoretically pay an employee less. But minimum wage already doesn’t pay enough for people to survive. All it is doing is giving employers a solid number they can point to and say, “Well, the government says this work is only worth $7.25!”

        No one can survive on the current federal minimum wage, but employers are using that as a guideline when offering wages instead of looking at their business needs or local competition. That means the current minimum wage is actively harming employees. So, again:

        Minimum wage needs to be adjusted for inflation to match what it was originally intended for, or it needs to be abolished. Right now, it just gives employers a very low starting point for their bad-faith negotiations.

        • forrgott@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Yes, I did read your post. If companies could legally pay less, many would. Hand waving the issue does not address the fact that it is a major flaw in your argument. I do not accept that abolishing minimum wage would have anything other than a negative effect on employees. Yes, having it set too low is a problem. Removing minimum wage will not solve that problem.

          Your argument has circled back on itself multiple times. So, whatever, I give up. Go on with your bad self, or…whatever…