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Been thinking about the minimum wage nonsense this morning as someone who has worked since I was 14, many minimum wage jobs, now teaches college and is in the top 20% of income earners for my very wealthy state, and also worked in non-profits for near 20 years. Some thoughts
(1) We absolutely need a higher minimum wage, probably higher than $15, and the arguments against a higher minimum wage tell on the greed and inequity in our society and when you support them, you tell on yourself.
(2) Of course it is harder for small businesses, especially very small business to adapt to these kinds of changes, and as someone who has had to make payroll I think our government needs to subsidize these efforts the way we subsidize giant corporations
(3) Even for very small businesses, if you can't afford to pay people something they can live on, your business model is extractive. Your budget needs to include paying people and ensuring they can take sick time, personal time, and manage healthcare crises
(4) Age should not in any way be an excuse to pay people less for the same work and responsibility. I had a boss once tell a funder that the reason she made $60k more than me a year (I made 23k) was because she had 16 years more experience. In a totally different field.
(5) Service work is hard work. And yes, we don't have to take pharmacy or grocery or barista work home the way I do teaching or the way I definitely did the stress of running a small non-profit AND I rang groceries in my sleep for years. The toll retail took on my body is so real
(6) Profit is weird. I mean this. Having had to balance a budget and make payroll for 12 years in a non-profit, it has become so clear to me that profit is extractive. Having to reserve (more and more) capital every year to pay people for nothing is a bizarre thing we do.
(7) To be clear, I am not saying it's not reasonable to expect some sort of return on an investment. But again, if you can't gather that return without deepening your employees dire straits, you made a bad investment.
(8) We do a terrible job in our society looking at the whole actual cost of things because we fail to understand interconnectedness. The CEO that saves on payroll by encouraging employees to sign up for federal benefits didn't save anything, just passed the cost on.
(9) And paying out shareholders by skirting critical environmental protections is a cost we all have to pay. As is the lack of healthcare, and all of the other markers of our incredibly unwell society.
(10) If you believe that there's any job that someone could do that could reasonably deserve 300X more pay than any other job, you've internalized a deep sickness about the value of human life. And most of us have because we were raised in it. We can do better though, and must.
