I mean, have you seen how much pay has gone up in low-skilled jobs? There are signs at all the local businesses in my area offering $15+ an hour for cashiers and fry cooks and whatnot. The same kind of jobs I worked 7-8 years ago for $8 an hour. They are taking advantage of supply and demand to force jobs to pay them a closer-to-fair wage, instead of selling their time for less than it's worth and perpetuating the problem indefinitely.
To be fair, I do agree that on an individual level there are tons of people screwing themselves over and messing up their lives, being a burdon on their parents or whoever ends up supporting them financially, etc. I don't think most of these people are refusing to work out of activism or anything. But from a sociological perspective it's a natural response to a problem(a problem that goes much deeper than low wages imo, but I won't get into that) that acts as a corrective measure to one of the main symptoms of that problem.
In other words: there will always be a bell curve of in terms of competence and work ethic, and from a relative perspective the curve will maintain it's shape throughout time periods/generations among large enough populations. The people on the low end of that curve deserve the same amount of criticism(how much, if any, they deserve, is up for debate) regardless of whether the curve itself shifts towards one side or the other - as movements of the curve in it's entirety can be attributed to social/environment factors. I do think we've seen the curve move towards it's lower end recently, and I have plenty of headcannon about why that may have happened, but I can't see any reason to blame all individuals within an entire generation, and I can't see the point in condemning the low end of the curve for a certain generation over that same portion of the curve from other generations.
>I mean, have you seen how much pay has gone up in low-skilled jobs? There are signs at all the local businesses in my area offering $15+ an hour for cashiers and fry cooks and whatnot. The same kind of jobs I worked 7-8 years ago for $8 an hour. They are taking advantage of supply and demand to force jobs to pay them a closer-to-fair wage, instead of selling their time for less than it's worth and perpetuating the problem indefinitely.
Those jobs also result in products being more costly, so that the current low end wages are actually lower nominal value.
I find people using terms like "fair wage" end up making wishes and policies that end up hurting the poor, not helping them, by not understanding economics.
Fair is what a person can command from competing for jobs, and jobs competing for workers. Anything else ends up unsustainable, which usually ends up hurting the least able workers.
Mandating wages leads to lower employment - so sure you can help some by pricing others out of work.
>To be fair, I do agree that on an individual level there are tons of people screwing themselves over and messing up their lives, being a burdon on their parents or whoever ends up supporting them financially, etc.
Agreed - but who it will hurt the most is future workers, including them, as the economy is not as good and then there are less resources for everyone, including them. Of course they will continue to blame a "system" when they got what they earned.
>I do think we've seen the curve move towards it's lower end recently
Total remuneration, even at the low end, is higher than nearly all of history. And post-tax transfer it's much higher.
For example, the lowest 20% of households saw their post-tax income go from $18,900 in 1979 to $32,800 in 2018 [1], and that's not even including that households on average have shrunk in size. Per worker the returns are even higher.
A good analogy: if you tell kids that blue eyed kids are the devil, they will act like it, pass laws, and believe it. If you tell people immigrants are killing them or taking jobs, people start to believe it, and enact laws that hurt all. Similarly, if you tell enough people how bad the economy is, regardless of solid evidence, they will act like it, and in the case of an economy, they bring the doom to pass.
>I can't see any reason to blame all individuals within an entire generation
I wouldn't blame them all. But if enough act a way to make their economic outcomes worse, then all of them will suffer over time. And they'll take others along for the ride.
"Fair is what a person can command from competing for jobs, and jobs competing for workers. Anything else ends up unsustainable, which usually ends up hurting the least able workers."
Unsustainable, huh? I'm from the Netherlands where we've had minimum wage since 1969. The job market hasn't exactly broken down in those 53 years. Actually, we have the lowest unemployment in recorded history. Also, minimum wage just got upped by more than 10%.
You know why? Because otherwise people working full-time can't even afford the basics. Even if you have zero empathy in you, how exactly does it benefit society to have productive members of society suffer, become homeless, resort to crime, go hungry and freeze?
You’d be surprised. Sometimes quality of life is better spent not working when you can lean on family and friends Or your own small retirement fund.
Not saying someone’s life choices are right or wrong one way or the other in this case. I’m very grateful for my position but would be lying if I didn’t say I day dreamt occasionally about quitting work and living like a backpacker.
>Sometimes quality of life is better spent not working when you can lean on family and friends Or your own small retirement fund.
And then when enough do, and the result becomes a lifetime of un/under-employment, then they want the retirements or lives of those before or around them, who do you think will pick up the slack?
Sure, quit and be a backpacker. Doing it a while is fun, probably even healthy, but a lifetime of it will not end well for many people. And generally if enough people do it, then society as a whole will have to pay for it.
That seems like society's problem more than their own problem. Society failed to incentivize them to live a lifestyle that is best for society, and society will pay for it. If it gets bad enough these people won't roll over and die in a ditch, starving people become violent and will take by force what they aren't getting by what they deem is a fair exchange.
Humans aren't the ones changing, society is. And its failures are its own.
That will turn out well for them.