I don’t want to get into this, and yet I do. I appreciate that the wages/inflation seems like an intractable problem. And yet, @small_h is only saying what many believe - that someone working full time should make enough $ for a roof over their head and food in their belly. We’d like to think that a min wage job is a stepping stone, but it isn’t. For a lot of people. It’s what they have. It’s not just fast food that pays the min. It’s all manner of jobs outside of food where the educational or experiential requirements are less than other jobs. As long as there is a min wage, there will be jobs that pay it.
As was indicated in an earlier comment, employers will often choose to pay the minimum they can. WE CAN decide as a society that we don’t want this to be the case. We CAN push for societal change - this can be regulatory and it could be non-regulatory - that a living wage is a must. And that instead of inflating everything up the scale so the increase makes no difference, we can push that CEO pay diminishes, or some other way, in order to fund this choice that we’ve made as a society.
Have you ever known a CEO to provide 800x the value to their company compared to a regular employee? I haven’t. The market clearly isn’t working in this respect. We are paying obscene amounts of money to these folks. Obscene. No one complains that this salary increases the price of a burger. Not to mention, maybe I’m too far up the pay scale, but when WA went to a minimum of $15/hr, I don’t recall getting a raise because “everyone would want more money.” Anyway, also leaving this pic here for your consideration. I haven’t dug into it, but different places have different priorities and, ergo, different outcomes.
