Humans are greedy fuckers
Now that I have your attention, I will explain why humans are greedy fuckers using one of the hot topics going around right now: a $15 minimum wage.
When we think about a $15 minimum wage, there are generally two schools of thought:
1. The minimum wage needs to stay where it is. These jobs are meant to be used by people who are in high school so they can get some work experience, learn work ethic, and earn some spending money so they don’t have to ask their parents. They are not meant to be careers. Because of this, there is no reason to raise the minimum wage. Kids don’t need to be making a lot of money and a higher minimum wage will only cause problems in the form of increased prices. If someone wants a higher pay, they need to acquire the skills to get it.
2. The minimum wage should be increased. Not only high schoolers work these jobs. Adults do too and need to be able to support their families. I don’t mind spending a little more to make sure someone can afford food to eat and a place to sleep.
Now here is where the greed comes in. The United States has a mixed economy (it is a mix of a capitalistic economy and a socialistic economy). The capitalistic part means the government cannot tell companies how much to charge for their goods and services (except for when it comes to price gouging but that’s a different conversation). Companies will, obviously, charge an amount that allows them to make a profit. Those companies who have stakeholders want to make those stakeholders happy. The stakeholders are happy when the company they invested in grows. Growth is most often measured in a larger profit from year to year. This is the reason prices have continued to rise despite the minimum wage staying the same. This is also the reason why prices will increase after a minimum wage increase. A higher minimum wage will create higher expenses, which will cause higher prices in order to cover those expenses. And no one is allowed to tell companies they can’t do this.
Rather than taking a smaller profit (because lets face it, even if the companies raise what they are paying their employees, the expenses will be no where near what their profit is. They will not be taking a loss, only a smaller profit) the companies will raise their prices in order to make up what they are losing. Because they want to make their stakeholders happy.
Even if the government could do something about it (it is more likely they wouldn’t do anything because they are probably the stakeholders in question and want to make their money), we can’t trust them to in the first place (even assuming they are not stakeholders). This is because the government has proven time and again that they can’t be trusted to pass legislation that will actually benefit the people. Whenever they try to pass legislation that actually sounds good, sounds like something that would actually help people, they have to add in some non-related crap in order to make their backers happy. Ever wonder why something that should be fairly simple (maybe even as simple as yes or no) has to have a document over 1000 pages long? It’s because they have the first page as what the legislation is supposed to be about, then the rest is a free for all for things everyone else wants that is completely unrelated to the first page.
And this is only taking about corporations. Small businesses are a different story because they could actually go out of business without raising their prices to match their expenses. They dont normally have people financially supporting them if they have a bad year or go through hardship. They would need their community to actually support them by buying from them rather than larger corporations. But with them having to raise their prices makes their products cost more, which many in the community can’t afford. It’s a catch 22.
So even though it would be amazing for a minimum wage job to be only for students, it can’t be disputed that there are issues because of people’s greed. Adults without marketable skills need the jobs to provide for their families (and all of their money is being used for that). So, they don’t have enough money left over to gain any new skills so they can get a better job that pays more. They are stuck in a rut. If the minimum wage was raised and they were able to save more, then they could gain the skills needed for a better paying job. But that would only work if corporations agreed not to raise their prices for a period of time that would allow the workers to do so.
Should the minimum wage be raised? If we raise it, the same people will be in poverty, but the poverty line will be raised. If we don’t raise the minimum wage, more people will eventually be in poverty at the current poverty line. There is no right answer. And that is because:
People are greedy fuckers.