Wages

Here's the real deal with raising the minimum wage.

Let's say somebody is considering opening a burger joint in a town that doesn't have one. Rent for the facility is figured in, and a reasonable profit, and the cost of the ingredients, and power, and advertising and everything is worked out.

Right now, it seems to be popular opinion that minimum wage should be $15 an hour. Let's work with that. I don't know if that's really enough to really live on, but let's say it is. Don't be one of those old farts who says things like, “when I had a minimum wage job it only paid $3.50 an hour, and I got by.” I did, too, but candy bars were about a dime, and they are now a buck-and-a-quarter. On that scale your olden-days $3.50 minimum wage would be worth over $40 in today money, so stop it.

So our businessman figures out that to pay his workers a $15 minimum wage, the burgers would end up costing more than anybody would be willing to pay.

Simple, if people are unwilling to pay enough at a restaurant for burgers so that the workers can have decent lives, then they can make cook burgers themselves at home.

But they want to go out for burgers.

This is economics 101. If people will pay enough for something, the market will provide it, and if not, then the market will not. All that a healthy minimum wage does is prevent people's consumption being subsidized by the underpaid workers who provide the products.

Let's say that the minimum wage is raised to a decent-living level, and that it boosts the prices in restaurants and stores. It could well mean less business due to the higher costs, but that's just too bad.

How much money could you live on? I don't mean living high-on-the-hog; but rather a decent place to live, food, and a bit of fun. Dare I even suggest that store clerks should be able to have a car, or that burger shop workers should?

A full time (37.5 hour a week in BC) at $15 comes to $2437 a month, or $29250 a year. The poverty line in Vancouver is $24460 per year. The radical plan of a $15 minimum wage merely boosts our lowest-paid workers to less than $5000 a year above poverty. Why should they be poor? They should be living above the poverty line.

The math is even less generous when the job is less than full-time. Many employers to this so that they can save money on benefits. Let's make it a 20 hour a week job. They will still be almost $9000 a year below the poverty line, even at $15 an hour. It is literally true that people currently working a 20-hour-per-week job are better off unemployed and on welfare.

So I say raise that minimum wage, and while we're at it, make it applicable to all workers. The current exception for waiters is ridiculous. Did you know that tipping is a largely a custom only in North America, and has been so only since the 1930s? Most of the world doesn't do it at all.

So pay people decently, and if you can't, then stop expecting them to work for nothing.