It shouldn't, but it still surprises me that there are people who are against raising the minimum wage in America to 15 dollar per hour. There are still people who, using arguments based in the capitalist ideology, are defending the existence of the working poor and whine about how small businesses won't be able to compete with Amazon and Wallmart anymore.
source: YouTube
As if small businesses have ever been able to compete with Wallmart or Amazon, but let's just put that aside for now. Below this article I link a video that has all the usual arguments against raising the minimum wage to something resembling a living wage. For example: raising the minimum wage to 15 dollar per hour over the next 5 years will cost 1.4 million jobs. Well, I don't know about that. For sure, some jobs will be lost, but what kind of jobs will that be? How many of those jobs are held by individuals who now have to work two or more jobs, and will be able to survive with just one job after the minimum wage is raised? I think that's kind of important background information to include here. And I'm kind of surprised at myself that I'm even going through the trouble of saying this, as there are NO arguments against working people being able to earn a living wage. Oh, and Wallmart announced yesterday that they will raise their minimum wages to 15 dollar an hour: Walmart just boosted pay to $15. It's not what you think
Then the creator of this sad video compares minimum wage earners with himself, by saying that he only earned 3 or 4 dollar an hour when he worked a minimum wage job when he was a teenager. Such sad and typical right wing victim mentality! As if this is a fair comparison! Your job as a teenager who didn't even have to take care of yourself against a single parent who has to pay the rent, food and education for their children on their minimum wage job. This sad person is obviously a small business owner himself, because he goes out of his way to explain that if he had to pay his employees 15 dollar an hour, he'd have to charge his customers more, which would cripple his ability to compete with the likes of Wallmart that can afford to pay those higher wages without increasing the prices of the products they sell. Boohoo hoo. I'm sorry dude: you've never been able to compete with Wallmart. Your problem isn't your employees who have to be able to live on the wages yoy pay them, but with the system that allows Wallmart to undercut not only your prices but everyone's prices. Your problem is with your government that subsidizes the Wallmarts, Amazons and Microsofts of this world to the tune of billions, and you should demand from that same government that they now subsidize YOU, so you can pay your employees a living wage. And they can pay for it by making Wallmart pay higher taxes.
Minimum wages through collective bargaining
None of the Nordic countries has a statutory minimum wage.
Denmark and Sweden use collective agreements as their only mechanism for setting minimum wages, while Finland, Iceland and Norway have also started to use extension mechanisms to cover all workers at industry level.
source: International Labour Organization
These mega-corporations are leeches. They pay less than a living wage, making large numbers of their employees dependent on government welfare, food-stamps and so on. They don't pay a living wage and society, yest that's you too, pays for the difference so these underpaid workers don't die. He also mentions by the way that some of the Nordic countries don't have a minimum wage at all because they "trust their employers to do the right thing and pay a living wage". That's so pathetic. The Nordic countries are also capitalist countries you dimwit; of course they don't "trust" their employers to do the right thing! No, these countries are still heavily unionized; they have strong unions that fight for better wages and therefore they don't NEED the government to step in. See the above quote; these countries set their minimum wages through collective bargaining, the way it should be done in capitalist countries... And in case anyone still doubts that this guy has no valid argument at all against raising the minimum wage, as if such a thing exists at all, he calls Australia a socialist country! Australia, socialist! I'm done with this. Watch the video, it's slightly entertaining to see and hear this kind of capitalism fanboy make a complete fool of himself.
The Price of Raising the Minimum Wage for You & The Economy
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