This is a spurious analysis, Walmart is large enough and invested in keeping the system the way it is (low un-liveable minimum-wage) to support its business. As a huge corporation it has considerable effect in that regard.
[1]http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/27/wal-mart-is-making-it-easier-...
Why does a grocery bagger need to have a livable wage? Seems like a great first job for someone in high school or a nice part-time job to help generate a little extra income.
- hire no grocery baggers
- only hire grocery baggers if they're willing to pay $20 an hour or more
...it doesn't necessarily follow that someone will end up with a living wage from this kind of regulation.
There is also the unintended consequence that (no longer employable) young people are less qualified for future work because they've never learned how to work hard, manage their bosses, etc.
Have you ever had to support yourself or others while earning minimum wage? Or did your upper-middle-class family fund your college education so you could make a comfortable living as a software engineer? I'm seriously wondering because your tone is full of self-entitled, condescending ignorance.
Yes. The home I grew up in was lower middle class at best, though it's irrelevant to my arguments and generally none of your business.
But since it's now a subject of interest, what is relevant was that earning minimum wage as a teenager helped my blue collar family since I paid for my own clothes, transportation, gas, food, school incidentals, and many other expenses.
I wouldn't have found a job paying $15 an hour. I would have been unemployed (though we don't count poor teenagers as unemployed usually). And my family's budget would have been negatively impacted.
I don't think it's irrelevant because certain foundations predispose one to certain lines of arguments. Particularly
>> If adults with kids aren't qualified for something more involved or demanding than grocery bagging
Not all adults have had an equal opportunity to obtain a skill-set that would qualify them for a better job and once you are stuck barely scraping by with a livable-wage it's very difficult to alter that situation. Culture and upbringing play a large part; children are easily impressionable, those growing up in troubled families or neighborhoods are less likely to do well in school and less likely to gain a skill-set that they would need to provide more value in the future.
> what is relevant was that earning minimum wage as a teenager helped my blue collar family since I paid for my own clothes, transportation, gas, food, school incidentals, and many other expenses.
I think it's great you were able to do that, but that doesn't mean that this minimum-wage would be sufficient for someone without a family to support them, or trying to acquire a skill-set later in their twenties.
Regardless, bringing personal history into it is bad reasoning and unnecessarily divisive at best. And at times it brings out the worst in people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
When a single mother is trying to support her family on a minimum wage, yes, that's bad.
But there's nothing wrong with a teenager making minimum wage in his first job.