I was part of a conversation the other day where the minimum wage came up. The minimum wage here in Alberta is $15/hr and was raised to that from around $12/hr a few years ago.
Opinions about the minimum wage are always interesting to me so I sat back and listened. The main points brought up were:
- $15/hr is not a wage that someone can live off of —> Should actually be higher
- There are some issues with raising the minimum wage, but if it wasn’t there a lot of people would be taken advantage of.
I’ve written about the minimum wage before and how it actually hurts the people it is supposedly helping: https://ryanaferguson.com/2016/07/minimum-burger-price-laws/
And if you pause to think a bit deeper about what the minimum wage is, it because very clear that the arguments for it aren’t solved by making it illegal to work for less than $15/hr.
“The best way to go from a $10 per hour employee to a $20 per hour employee is to work and gain experience and skills on the job. A law that prohibits people from getting $10 per hour jobs, not only robs people of opportunities in the present but robs people of their futures. It creates a group of low-skill workers who can never gain the experience they need to improve their skills.
It means immigrants learning English can’t build a social network at work. It means high school kids can’t learn on the job in the summer. It means that poor communities stay poor communities because the only opportunities to work are in rich communities.
The only compassionate and progressive stance on the minimum wage is to get rid of the minimum wage.”
On a deeper level than that though, the idea that jobs should all provide a living wage betrays a very pessimistic view about work and life.
We live in a connected world where you can work from anyone with people from all over the world. We can monetize creative projects, sell art, build new technologies, and do a million other things and be compensated for it.
We live in a world where work can provide purpose and meaning to your life. Where you pay the bills but also find fulfillment in creating value for others.
When we start our careers we don’t have the skills to earn much or to find much fulfillment. But we learn, we make connections, we get more ambitious and our careers become a canvas that we use to create a prosperous and meaningful life.
We have to start somewhere though, in fast food, working for an artist you admire or doing data entry at a startup. When you are just starting your competitive advantage is a willingness and ability to work for less. That is destroyed by the minimum wage.
The logic behind “every job should pay a living wage” is the logic of a serf, stuck without options, and without hope of working in a way that provides something more than physical sustenance. We can and should expect so much more.
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