because eventually he's gonna move out.
i don't think you realize how many kids are 17 and live alone. it's a lot.
what you're talking about is a unfixed rate, and that's dangerous, as there's too many ways to manipulate that to screw over employees.
If you can't afford to move out, then you can't move out.
Both my brother and I moved back in with our mom for a time after having left the nest. Why? To get our feet back under us, in his case, to go to the police academy, and in my case, to figure out what my next step as far as a career was going to be. We didn't stay for life, but we did stay until we could find a way to support ourselves.
That wasn't by taking a minimum wage job.
I have a friend who moved back from California, and while he was building up money to get a house, he and his family lived with his parents. There's no shame in that. heck, I have another friend who didn't get his 1st "real" job until he was in his 30s, when he started with the Post Office. He lived at home as well.
Some people have to rush out of the house, whether they can afford it or not. A 17 year old kid should not be living on their own. Unless there is some sort of abuse at home,or a person in the home has a chemical dependency problem, then why do they have to live on their own? In those cases, and actually, in any case where someone just pretty much wants to live on their own, in Ohio, there are tons of programs to pay a person's rent for them. (or a major portion, depending on their income)
I do think that there should be a minimum wage, for unskilled type work. Someone brought up fry cook, and I can tell you that in many restaurants, this is a push button position. You have to be able to recognize a picture of a french fry, or a nugget, and put the basket in place, and hit the appropriate button. On many fryers, the basket drops on its own, and raises up from the shortening on its own. If wages continue, there may soon be a program that does it in place of an employee. McDonalds has a fry hopper, into which they load fries by the bag-full, and it dispenses the fries into baskets that the fry person then drops. Is this really a $10-15/hr job? Of course not.
Some Wendy's have a grill where you put the meat on the grill, and hit the appropriate button for a large or small patty. The "platten" comes down, and cooks the meat top and bottom. When the meat is done cooking, the grill person moves it to the holding grill, and hits a timer button. The sandwich maker will often remove the meat from the holding grill onto the sandwich they are making.
Is that a $10-15/hour job? I don't think so.
What about the guy who cleans up a business after they close .....sweeping and mopping the floors, cleaning the bathrooms, and so on. Is that a $10-15/hr job?
If these jobs are in that wage range, then what do you pay the managers, who have a ton of responsibility? $100K? More? I mean, at $15/hour, 40 hours/week, you are talking about paying an entry level person $31,200/year. A manager has to make much more than that, because they have much more responsibility. What do these increases do to prices? For decades now, prices have been held down by eliminating labor hours from a business. Where once, for example, I would walk into my local Wal-Mart and see 15 registers open, now I am lucky to see half that. Where once i would go into a store and check out right away, now I may wait 10-15 minutes in line. I have a friend who is a shift manager for Taco Bell, and she told me that Taco Bell has eliminated all salaried positions except for the GM of the store. The new hourly rates are not equivalent to what they were making before. Businesses adapt to make sure they can stay in business. If wages increase, then either upper positions have to be cut, eliminating opportunities for people to advance ... or hours are cut, requiring even more productivity out of positions that are already extremely strained in a lot of cases, or businesses close locations that can no longer be profitable given the new minimums. When I managed for McDonald's, I was a manager on the east side of Youngstown, in Campbell. It was a poorer area, and it was a "dollar store". In other words, compared to other stores in the company, this store sold a far higher percentage of dollar menu items. Now those items are known as "value menu" items, but the problem remains. These items are the least profitable, and selling a much higher percentage of such items makes a store's profitability more difficult than in stores in more affluent areas. Given higher insurance rates for store in more urban areas, and a lower capacity for profit due to the menu mix, these are the kinds of stores that will find themselves being closed first if such a wage increase takes place. They simply will not be able to maintain profitability, and an unprofitable store will not remain open for long. So, we'll have people out of jobs, often people who can least afford to lose a job.
I do honestly believe that those who want to see huge increases like this have their hearts in the right place, but the realities of business say that we will hurt a lot of people very badly if such increases are pushed through. We are already at an extraordinarily high level for part time employment. The percentage of part time employment is still higher than when the recession began. That is not a way to help people. What's next? Should we try to figure out a way for a person to support a family of 4 on 20 hours/week? I am being a little flippant here, but only a little. The reality is that there will always be low wage jobs, and whether those jobs pay $5/hour or $50/hour, the rest of the economy will adjust to re-balance itself accordingly. Jobs will be lost, middle management will be cut, hourly positions will be cut as increased productivity is required, and prices will increase. It is inevitable.
the solution is not to try and make entry level positions into permanent, family supporting positions, but rather to help people get the training necessary to get the good paying jobs that we are importing people to fill today. That would make a much bigger impact in the lives of people who are struggling to make ends meet.
