FENRIR: Chapters 2 and 3

 Let's see what happens with Stephanie's little mystery!

( ... back at work... )

And won't THAT be fun!

Yes, ALL Jobs, or What Price Lives?

This one's fairly short, so I'm not hiding it behind a cut.


One of the standard arguments about minimum wage is "it's just for teenagers and people trying to make a little money on the side" versus "all jobs should provide a living wage". 

There is argument about whether FDR and his people intended the minimum wage to be a true living wage. It's absolutely certain that he DID say that no company should exist that didn't pay the "wages of a decent living", but he said that in context of a DIFFERENT set of laws, not the minimum wage. The sentiment was certainly there, but the practical question of his actual intent remains. 

And depending on WHICH minimum wage you take, when, and project it to today, you can get radically different answers for what it OUGHT to be now. The original minimum wage in 1938 was 25 cents an hour, which maps to about $5.60 an hour today. One year later it was 0.30 and that is the equivalent of $7.60 today. In 1956 it was a dollar an hour -- or 11.60 in today's dollars. In 1974 it was up to $2 -- which is $12.80. And so on. 

So I'd rather just ignore that particular issue entirely, and focus on what SHOULD be done -- on what's the RIGHT thing to do.

My position: any job that's required for a business to operate -- janitor, waitstaff, back office, whatever -- should pay enough for the person to have a decent living on if they work reasonable hours. 40 hours a week is as far as "reasonable" goes; we should be working far less than that per week by now, given increases in output per worker hour. 

If you can't pay that much, you're demanding that people sacrifice themselves, in one way or another, for the sake of your business -- in grinding extra hours, in holding multiple jobs, or in requiring external help from the government (food stamps, supplemental income assistance, etc) which amounts to demanding the government subsidize your business' payroll. That's not being a savvy business, it's just being exploitative. 

I believe human beings, in this modern era, ALL deserve reasonably comfortable lives BY VIRTUE OF BEING HUMAN BEINGS. The value of my children, or yours, or anyone else's, is NOT dependent on what jobs they get later in life. It's in them being decent people. That includes people who can't work at all, or can only do certain kinds of work, or only a few hours a week -- and that includes them having remaining time, effort, and mental resources to do things they WANT to do. 

People should not be dragging themselves out of bed to go to a job and then grab a meal and then go to another job in order to keep themselves in a shitty apartment so they can drag themselves out of bed tomorrow and do it again. 

Human beings should all have the opportunity to LIVE -- in reasonable comfort BY THE STANDARDS OF MODERN SOCIETY (to avert anyone waving their hands trying to distract you by saying how we're all rich compared to medieval kings), with enough leisure time to keep them mentally, as well as physically, healthy. 

And no company  should exist that requires people to do that in order for the company to survive.