Reading that title might have raised some emotions within you, if they were negative I’m sorry about that. I always try to do my best to not be the cause of someone reaching toward their negative emotions, I prefer these left on the shelf. Turbulent water doesn’t allow for proper reflection, calm waters are best for that.
Anywho, I’m writing to make the case against mandating wages. I realize this can come across as heartless to some, but I promise I have a heart and feelings. It’s because of this heart and feelings that I present my case before you here today. You may not see it immediately, but if you approach and listen to my opinion with an open mind, you might. I only present this because I know what I perceive as truth and I believe this truth to be a very helpful perception. You may not agree, but I ask you to give me a chance and hear my perspective/thoughts– if it resonates with your heart, great! If it doesn’t, well, I always suggest that people only pay mind to what resonates as truth within their heart and discard the rest. I think that’s a sensible thing that most people can align with.
To first make a case against increasing minimum wage, we must first understand the points that are for increasing minimum wage.
Please make note that I am speaking from a USA-er perspective. Though I speak from a United Statesian perspective, much of the core of my message can be applied elsewhere. Discard what does not apply to you.
Reasons for increasing minimum wage (Sourced from Investopedia)
- Higher earnings would improve the overall standard of living for minimum wage workers by providing them with a more appropriate income level to handle the cost of living increases.
- A much larger number of individuals and families will move out of poverty if they earned more money, a related potential benefit is a projected reduction in the need for federal and state government expenditures on financial aid for poor and low-income individuals.
- Meanwhile, an intangible benefit that could translate into tangible benefits for both companies and employees is improved employee morale resulting from higher wages. Business owners frequently note the challenge of providing sufficient encouragement to spur workers to put maximum effort into their job duties, and that this is particularly problematic with low-wage workers who feel that their job efforts aren’t keeping them out of poverty.
- Increasing employee morale could easily translate into more tangible benefits, such as increased employee retention and reduced hiring and training costs. Employees who are more inclined to stay with a company longer could benefit from greater advancement and from an overall reduction in job-related relocation expenses.
- A boost to economic growth is another potential advantage of increasing the minimum wage, as consumer spending typically increases along with wages. A higher minimum wage would put more discretionary dollars in the pockets of millions of workers; money that would then flow to retailers and other businesses.
Now, these benefits are nothing to scoff at and sound pretty nice. I think a lot of people would agree. The reasons listed above are a good starting place but don’t encompass all of the talking points. Those were very business-like talking points, the one you might hear presented within the government halls. Those were not the common talking points that the dilettantes use, they use the ones that pull at your heartstrings: “a mother shouldn’t have to raise her kids out of her car”, “kids shouldn’t be going hungry”, “people can hardly live and they live paycheck to paycheck”, and others.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with these as well. A mother shouldn’t have to raise her kids out of her car, kids shouldn’t be going hungry, and people can hardly live and they live paycheck to paycheck. You are certainly right.
These are the types of reasonings for the case of increasing minimum wage, and they’re all good.
Let’s take a look at the other hand now.
Reasons for abolishing minimum wage (Sourced from my brain)
- The government should not be in charge of what people can and cannot do. They should not tell business owners what they can and cannot do; I would concede that they should in matters of health and safety, but not in how much they pay their workers. America is based on the notion of individual freedom, not control, especially by what is now our “king” (the government). Perhaps the local government passing mandated/minimum wage is a bit more acceptable, being that they know the cost of living there, but the federal government should not be doing any forcing of a universal basic income or any mandated/minimum wage.
- Should any level of government force a mandated/minimum wage it will seriously affect small business owners. Small business owners are your neighbors, they are the locals, the every day people like you and me. They fuel our local economy and bring us services and revenue to our community. Big business owners can take the hit, it would probably be acceptable to have the (preferably local) government write in an increased minimum wage based on certain criteria like making X amount of profit. Many small businesses cannot afford a raised minimum wage, and it actually forces them out of business, giving rise to more big box stores. Related GIF Not only that, but of the stores that do survive, it will hit different industries at different strengths, some will take harder hits than others is that fair? I feel like I would be more in favor of a suggested minimum wage dependent on location and industry.
- What do you think happens when the minimum wage goes up? People adjust. People know that more people have more money than they did before. So what do you do if you’re a business owner and you learn that people have more money than they did before, thus they can afford more, and you’re now losing profits because you had to increase pay as well? You raise your prices. The cost of everything will adjust and go up and nothing will have changed but the dollar is now worth less than it was before because most people have more now. Nothing changes really.
- Well supposedly more people have more now, but, what about those that didn’t have anything before now that prices have gone up for them but they still don’t have a job and/or aren’t hirable? It becomes harder to feed and clothe themselves doesn’t it? Especially when you consider that the shelters and non-profits were already scraping by as it was, but now their costs have come up because the price of goods has gone up and they at the very least still have the same number of people to serve. Not great.
Now to address the points brought up by the dilettante that are mainly to pull at your heartstrings– It is not the responsibility of the government to come save the day when people have made certain choices in their life that keeps them where they are. For example, I saw a tweet/meme recently (I lost it, I really wish I could find it) and it was a mom telling talking about how if minimum wage was there she wouldn’t have had to live out of her car with her two boys. I don’t know the situation specifics here, so please don’t see this as an “attack” against her.
I would like to talk about the concept of a mother living out of a car with her two kids. The specifics are important. How did this situation come to occur? Victim of domestic violence? Drug user? Got pregnant early in life? Does she have no family or friends that would help her? We can’t just use the idea of a mother living out of a car, we have to know how she got there and why she is still in that situation.
The narrative of the powerless to escape the situation is something that doesn’t sit well with me. Why couldn’t that mom, or any person really, lift herself out of poverty? Was there really no possible way for her to do that without raising the minimum wage for all? Can she not utilized different social programs? Why is her value so low that she can only find minimum wage jobs? Did she go to college? Does she have a good work track record? What happened that she has kids that she can’t afford? Was it carelessness, an accident, or a cruel twist of fate?
There are far too many questions that need to be asked and answered before having any sort of conclusion of whether or not this is the system’s fault, her fault, or God’s fault. We cannot point blame before they are all answered, but far too often people flock to support the mother without asking any questions and saying “yeah, if only we had a higher minimum wage for her to be able to take care of her kids!”.
Now, am I saying that we shouldn’t help or pity this mother who found herself in this situation? No, of course not. When someone asks for help, you help them– if a mother and her children have less than ideal living situations and are going hungry, something should be done. What I’m saying is, what if this mother got to this position because of her own careless choices? This is the question you must ask of anyone in any situation– what choices did they make to get there? How they got there may not determine your level of empathy toward the situation, but it definitely determines mine.
What I propose as a solution to the minimum wage problem on a large scale
I don’t just want to type an article saying why we should abolish minimum wage.
What appears to be a large number of individuals have complaints about the money they make and their own capability to escape poverty and the capabilities of others to make their money and exit poverty. I don’t believe these thoughts are unfounded or silly considering the amount of people who are speaking of this. Any concern brought to the table is valid and must be addressed.
As such, I would like to propose a solution to the problem that has been presented as this problem has been an ongoing debate and place of friction between people for some time now. It is time to stop talking about it and start actually addressing it.
I don’t believe the points on the side for an increased minimum wage or my points alone are the answer to what’s going on. I believe it is a combination of the two. Ultimately this would need to be decided and implemented by the people and the specificities would vary from place to place, but as general a solution to the minimum wage problem I would suggest:
Solution #1 – My Dream Solution
- Ultimately I would suggest no regulations whatsoever and let people figure it out for themselves. Yes, you would have some businesses/places paying people less than what they do now, but it would even itself out. I know it may sound “out there”, but let me explain. It’s very simple and easy.
- The people who could do a certain job for a certain amount of money that would find that amount acceptable would work there. If the business isn’t paying enough, then they will suffer by people refusing to work for them and work elsewhere. With no regulations from the government, it would actually be self-regulating in that the businesses/industries that don’t pay their employees what they deserve based on the type of work that they’re preforming would die. People would even change industries if the industry they chose isn’t lucrative enough.
- In a self-regulating financial environment such as this, you would have more pockets of actual wealth, the money would flow where the actual value is. Think about it like this, you can’t pay your workers an acceptable wage based on the value they’re giving you without being a successful business!! In other words, in order to pay the employees well, business owners need to be making money!! Of course one option for capital is swindling others, but swindling can only last for so long, swindling businesses all eventually die. The other option is to have a successful product or service!! A business that provides value so that it in turn receives value, one that people use and recommend to others.
- What this also does, is begin to remove some big box stores unless the big box stores make some huge revamps, let me explain. So, the selling point of the big box stores and brands is their consistency and prices. They buy or make product en masse and provide a lower selling point than other smaller stores who can’t achieve that quantity discount. Not only that, but they make their money because they’re able to calculate exactly how much they can pay workers since minimum wage is established. They have a number of the absolute minimum they’re able to pay workers to achieve the profit that they’d like to make. Raise that number and what happens? They have to charge more for their product, they lose their price advantage. Without their price advantage, most people would rather buy from Uncle Joe’s Hardware than Walmart any day should they both have the same price on their product. Their consistency is good but, and these are just my personal feelings with no actual weight here for a moment, I would feel that the local stores emerging and being able to compete with the big box stores would allow more uniqueness and customization that the big box stores just aren’t capable of.
- It would likely speed up the development of our technology. Think about it again, it costs more to have a person doing a job manually than something working to have it automated. Automation is already increasing due to companies seeing the value in investing in non-human labor, but I would argue that the rate would increase more and it would not be a bad thing. Innovation is never a bad thing. If, to be competitive you need to pay your employees well, you also need to find a way to not have too many employees but the work will still need to get done. This would lead to individual innovation on a small scale. People everywhere locally building things to innovate their business for speed/efficiency to cut costs. This technology being developed and available would also serve to benefit the layperson who is not a business owner for the automation, as it advances in business, will disseminate to the populous… at least, the end there is mostly all personal conjecture.
- Lastly, you must realize that many businesses pay minimum wage simply because THAT IS ALL THEY ARE REQUIRED TO DO? These businesses say, “What is the least I can legally pay my workers? Ok let’s do that!”. Do you understand how detrimental that mindset is? And we allow it by the existence of a minimum wage. Smh. Do you see how? By defining that number that says “this is how much it takes for someone to live reasonably”. If that’s all it takes a person to live reasonably, why should anybody ever pay more than that? Do you know what happens when we take away the existence of a minimum wage mandated by the government? We put the ball into the business’ court. They have to pay their employees regardless if they want work done, except now it’s an open ended question, “How much do we pay them?”. That’s what the business has to figure out, they are forced to come up with a number that’s not insulting otherwise, again, nobody will work there. It’s the same reasoning as before but explained out. You’ve taken away the bottom limit, now the only amount they can’t pay someone is $0, but also, most people aren’t going to work for chump change. Businesses, especially big businesses, LOVE minimum wage, it takes the accountability off of them and puts it onto the government. “It’s not our fault this is the least that we can pay you, go take it up with Uncle Sam!”. See how messed up that sounds? And that’s the state of the USA today, that’s how the rich keep getting richer. Take away the minimum wage and put the accountability back onto the businesses who will have to step up to the plate, or drift to the bottom of the sea.
To sum up solution #1, more freedom, absolute freedom, would allow competitive wages to occur and increase in each industry/locality over time, I believe technology innovation would increase, and it would also prevent businesses from having the option to choose a “minimum” pay for their workers.
Solution #2 – The Second Best and Likely More Passable Solution
I provide this solution because many people aren’t ready to throw away the old and like their regulations, they can’t leave without them. They love the world that they know and they think changing it too quickly would be detrimental. Here’s a baby step plan on where we should go next if we’re not ready to throw caution to the wind.
- Only federal regulations on businesses doing business within multiple states and beyond a certain profit threshold– It would take the experts in finance to determine the acceptable starting profit threshold (I would prefer the experts of a field that’s finance adjacent so that they could be impartial). Perhaps it could be based on a sliding scale, the more you make past a certain point, the more you must pass along to your workers. Not a lot, but enough that is respectable to the employees that are contributing to the amount of capital gains.
- Regulations otherwise should be determined by the local government– it could be at the state level and will probably need to be, but if so, it must be separated based on acceptable regions and/or population levels. The local government has a better idea of what it’s like to live and earn in their area, the more condensed the area, the better they know. Perhaps this is the local government reporting numbers with a suggested minimum wage to the state government who will then decide. The state must also have guidelines for wages based on the amount of profit past a certain threshold and rises as the profit rises.
- Any regulations at any level should also take into account each individual professional industry and provide general guidelines. You wouldn’t expect a fast food worker to be making as much as a doctor now, and you wouldn’t expect that with local guidelines either. Regulations should not be blanketed so as to disproportionately affect different professional industries. Perhaps there could be a regulatory agency/department that evaluates the value an individual is contributing to a company and suggests payouts based on that, it would likely have to have an office for each profession division (medical, entertainment, technology, etc), but it could maybe work. I don’t particularly enjoy the idea of someone else deciding what is right though, I believe that should be strictly between the business owner and the employee.
This solution is a lot less winded but to sum it up the federal government should NOT establish any minimum wage except perhaps on businesses that do business in multiple states and are past a certain size. The locals have the best idea of how much they can get by based on the cost of living and should establish a minimum wage (if any). If minimum wage is established, guidelines should be assigned accordingly to each industry perhaps by a regulating entity.
I’ve provided two solutions concerning minimum wage regulations, really #1 is the best option in my opinion, but some people like to stick to outside regulation and would never allow a complete removal of the minimum wage due to the horror stories that they would allow to sprout in their head.
What I propose as a solution to the minimum wage problem on a small scale
Either way, I don’t really have much hope for either of the above ideas to produce any traction any time soon. The government moves slow and I can’t even imagine how long the path would be to enact either solution on a large scale. As such, I think it would be faster for the time being to provide a suggested solution to the minimum wage problem on a small scale. What kind of small scale is this? It’s you. I can tell you how to solve the minimum wage problem. Maybe you’re currently caught in a minimum wage job that doesn’t pay enough, maybe you know someone who is in that position. Either way, this should be helpful for yourself or anyone else who you may share it with as it is universally true.
So what can you do to solve the minimum wage problem on a small scale?
Help yourself, and then others, to realize that it isn’t the number of the minimum wage that’s keeping them down in this cycle of poverty– it’s their refusal to stand up on their own.
It would be helpful if you’ve read my article You Are Infinitely Valuable before reading any further. I’m basically rehashing that article here but from a different vantage point. Also, it’ll be good for you and anyone else to know how I see you and all humans and where the ideas down the page here sprout from.
I probably should have mentioned this one at the beginning of this article, but When I say “You” here, I don’t necessarily mean “You” would also be helpful if you’re not familiar with how I write/talk.
Read ’em? Ok, great, let’s go then.
Freedom of Choice and Individual Value
When I think of people who say that they need a higher minimum wage to survive, I often wonder how they got where they came to be, like I said above. I am under the impression that, in America at least, any and every single individual has the capabilities to become a millionaire. They don’t have to work minimum wage jobs, they could be making so much more, but they choose to continue making that much.
Everything in life is a choice, we are currently and always the accumulation of our life choices. What choices have we made to get to where we are? This is what we must ask of ourselves.
“Every day of my life I am realizing more and more the fact that man (not fate, chance, environment or circumstance) makes his own success or failure.
It is not, you will say, your fault that you were born in the depths of poverty, and not the worth of another which caused him to be born a prince.
Granted. But it depends upon yourself entirely whether you remain all your life in poverty, and it depends upon the prince entirely whether he becomes a man or merely remains a prince in name.
It is simply a matter of getting acquainted with your real self, and knowing how important is each thought, act, motion and attitude, whether mental or moral.”
~Excerpt from “To Achieve—Be Positive” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Regardless of one’s background, anyone who is caught in the cycle of poverty and making the minimum wage has been brought there by their own life decisions. Maybe as a kid they didn’t have the best influences or capabilities/opportunities to do/learn the right choices to make. Maybe they made all the choices they made thinking it would get them somewhere and it got them somewhere else. But should they be a grown adult, excuses are no more.
Teenagers and children may be excused as they are still leaning, but there comes a point in every human’s life once they reach adulthood that they are choosing not to help themselves. They are choosing to remain in poverty. One may give any number of reasons or point the blame at various places but these are merely distractions and the offloading of personal responsibility.
Barring any justified situations (domestic violence victims for one example), I’m curious, why anyone as an adult would still only making minimum wage? Haven’t they done anything to increase their value? Don’t they have some sort of knowledge, personality, or ability that is worth more than the minimum wage offered by employers?
It does not take a genius for one to know that possession education/wisdom/knowledge/skills are what equals value in a person. Possess any of these things and you will be compensated in turn, the more of them one possesses at a high level, the more value one is eligible for. If anyone wants more of anything, they have to put in more value elsewhere, so goes the law of equivalent exchange. If they want to put in more value elsewhere, they need to put more value into themselves.
Everything that’s worth it has to be worked for. Including more wage. People asking for an increase to minimum wage are basically asking for free money. People empathetic to them would probably say they’re asking to live without stress or something similar, but they have the opportunity and ability to do that without increasing the minimum wage.
Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s not easy, but nothing really worth it ever was, at least in my mind.
I know people aren’t well off, I know I speak from a place of privilege, but I also know that every human’s farts stink, even mine. There is nothing that I can do that anyone else can’t do, I truly believe that, and everyone else should too. There is nothing that anybody can do that you can’t do. (Because I forgot to mention it earlier, you may also want to read There Are No Such Things As Absolutes).
Nobody needs to raise the minimum wage so long as people realize that they have the freedom to escape their situation any time they choose; people are humans and humans share traits, and humans are absolutely amazing and will do incredibly amazing things when they put their mind to it and have the proper desire. We don’t need to be giving the government more power to say what we can and cannot do, especially when we consider that they don’t even really do a great job at what they’re tasked with!!
Perpetuating a mandatory minimum wage and/or raising minimum wage will only serve to enable persons to continue to have their “government savior” mentality and thus take no action in amending their situation themselves. They will not take the steps they need to increase/grow their value on their own and become self-sufficient through their own means and power. This reliance is not helpful to any individual, we must lead/teach people to fish for themselves.
There are infinite ways to make money, and anyone can make whatever they want/need given enough time. They are NOT helpless, nobody is helpless. They are made up of the universe and they have the powers of the universe at their disposal, they may need help realizing this, but it is the case. We don’t need to increase the minimum wage, we don’t even need a minimum wage, we just need to spread the light of this knowledge upon others.
That may seem cold/cruel, but if a bird doesn’t jump out of the nest on its own it must be pushed out of the nest in order for it to learn how to fly. The birds that require the push don’t think they can fly, are scared to, or are just too comfortable within the safety of their nest. Why do they get pushed out though? Because they have a loving mother who understands this is what is actually best for them since she can’t help, her children which she loves, must learn to fly on their own.
Wishing you all the best,
FCP 🙃
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