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this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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How should it be possible to leave poverty behind with minimum wage? It's the minimum. Only people without work can have less.
It's unfortunate but those who make the least are inevitable the ones who are poor. Not calling it poor is misleading.
“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
THAT was the actual reason the minimum wage was established in the first place. And businesses have been fighting against it ever since - through a combination of lobbying (bribing) politicians and propaganda designed to convince people that those who earn the minimum wage “deserve” to suffer.
Instead of replying to each comment, one big reply here.
Minimum wage works for jobs where people are underpaid because they outcompete each other and drive prices down. It's essentially a forced union for unskilled workers which is fair because they don't have the mental capacity to organize themselves.
But listening closely to Roosevelt, 'any right to continue' means that those businesses that don't supress the wages cease to exist. This ends poverty because those people become unemployed and thus don't count as low income anymore.
As long as there are illegal immigrants who earn less than legal residents, the minimum wage is not really the minimum wage. To be fair, illegal immigrants go to California, New York and Florida while states without own mimimum income laws are mostly southern states.
The real probelm is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
If there were enough jobs, there would be no competition to go below the poverty line.
Additionally, the main problem must be the housing market. Create cheap housing and huge parts of the income don't go to rent. It's almost funny that the cheap workers who work in construction cannot build cheap housing for themselves, thanks to zoning laws.
Overall, why should minimum wage work if it would be ridiculous to do that for comfortable wages? If there were a law prohibiting any job that doesn't pay enough to own a house with pool, we wouldn't expect that everybody would own such a house. We would expect that the majority of people would be unemployed. Why should that be different for lowpaying jobs?
Fuck off
Yeah I stopped reading there. So condescending.
That's part of the argument. If it is condescending to you then no minimum wage is needed because minimum wage workers could form a union.
May Day is the perfect day to educate one's self about the history of union suppression. If you think you see a pattern, you're right, but the reasons for the pattern have nothing to do with the workers' abilities and everything to do with powerful people using everything in their arsenal to prevent collective action.
MLK was killed because he was trying to overcome the suppression. It is the workers' abilities because leaders could have picked up where he was stopped. There are no leaders, which to me means, there are no abilities.
Yeah, "mental capacity" is the main hurdle for minimum wage workers to unionize... Fuck off.
What else?
Unless you're offering me a tutoring position, I'm gonna leave it to you to figure this one out... You've got the internet at your fingertips. I believe in you.
You could name the main hurdle without becoming a tutor.
Of course there are reasons like no time from working two jobs or union busting behavior as seen from Starbucks or Amazon.
But that leaves enough workers who could run the union.
The main problem is convincing all minimum wage workers to join the union. Somebody has to come up with the necessary communication strategy. Whoever can do that most likely doesn't work a minimum wage job.
Can't tell if centrist or republican.
What's wrong with that analysis?
Nothing, if you're either a centrist or a republican.
And if I am not?
If not you should reexamine which political label you have chosen for yourself and see if it actually matches your contempt for all who earn wages.
It's an analysis, not a solution. Where is the contempt? You can tell me where I am wrong but I haven't said anything about how anybody should be treated.
You don't have the mental capacity to see it.
That's why I ask, I would like to see it.
Scroll back up and read what you wrote, then.
You must mean this:
Condescending, like the other thread says, I can see that. How can there be contempt for something that people cannot change. That would be stupid.
You see poor people and your first thought is how stupid they must be.
Thank you.
I wrote mental capacity because stress, irregular schedules, two jobs and all the other stuff drain energy and trap even clever people. Intelligence is only part of the problem.
My point is that they are not stupid but helpless. Usually I argue that there shouldn't be minimum wage and that people have to organize to earn more, but I can see that it makes sense for that group.
Still, as we can see, relying on others is not sustainable. Minimum wage workers have to find a way to rise their wages on their own.
Shocker, that.
It's the wrong side to tackle the problem.
Wages can be risen with an increased demand for workers. How? That is the relevant question that leads to the right answers. Minimum wage is a distraction.
I know. Workers having enough to live on instead of corporations and billionaires hoarding it all is a problem, huh?
Please don't ignore my second paragraph.
Your second paragraph is an admission that you have no better ideas but want to abandon minimum wage anyway. That's basically an admission that you don't want people to be able to earn a living.
Seems like you don't know this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
I think I point out the obstacle to people making a living. There is no easy answer. Rising minumum wage sounds easy but as I wrote, it is a distraction.
"Let the corporations exploit people" is a pretty easy answer. It requires no effort and you don't have to waste time supporting the interests of those unwashed mental deficients you don't want to earn a living.
Please read the article. It's one of the most important things to know.
I have read the article, and I don't see where it supports your disregard for the wages of people you consider beneath you.
I don't have that disregard. My point is that the supply of jobs has to be increased instead of setting a lower bound on wages.
Focussing on minimum wages makes workers ignore how they are controlled and how they can increase their wages without having to rely on benevolence. To me, that's disregardful.
And you have admitted that you have no solution in that direction. But you still want to abandon the only mitigation we have.
Frankly, I think you just want to abandon the minimum wage and I don't trust anything else you're saying on the matter. Put the measures you want in place first. Until then, fuck anyone who wants to forego raising the minimum wage to a livable wage. I get that exploiting workers is very popular among republicans, centrists, and anyone else who sees workers as resources to be exploited rather than people.
Jobs can always be created by lowering interest rates. It's just not in the hand of the workers to change, neither is minimum wage.
You don't have to trust anything I said. I am telling you about market mechanisms that you can verify on your own.
You are right that I want to abandon minimum wage, or rather the need for minimum wage. I want the demand for work to rise to the point that workers earn livable wages that are secured by the demand for their work.
You can try to rise minimum wages however much you want. My point is that your time is better spent on rising demand for workers. Marx is telling you how that works. You definitely don't have to trust me on that.
And do absolutely nothing else.
Congratulations that both parties agree with you that no one should be paid at all.
Congratulations that you acknowledge that rising minimum wage is a dead end.
I recognize that neither party wants to raise it.
Much to the delight of people like you who don't like worker protections.
The minimum wage was not established to decide who is poor and who is not, but rather to eliminate poverty as a concept.
Poor is not defined as those who have the least in the economic terms being discussed in this article. That's why there is a poverty line to define what is meant by poor. The poverty line used by the government needs to be updated however.
If people had more than enough to get by then we wouldn't considered them poor even if no one had less money than them. Having the least amount of money isn't the issue. The issue is can a person acquire the goods and services they need to live. If not that's a problem and we've been describing that problem as being poor.
You can call me whatever the fuck you want if I can afford food housing healthcare retirement and a bit extra on top.