/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>3765032
>Guess they were too high paying. Are you a socialist?

Is every employer that has a single employee earning more money than the federal or local government mandates that they should socialist? Was your dad's employer a socialist for paying him enough that you can live the carefree lifestyle you do now? Voluntary unions aren't socialism, either.

>Cost of living in most places is twice as high as the minimum wage

Well under 4% of workers make the federal minimum wage or below (3.3% total, 2% full time, 7% part-time) and the plurality of them are service workers making gratuity, bartenders, servers etc. Estimates of these earnings range between $7 an hour on the very lowest end and $13 an hour on the high end (tax free in most cases), in other words many "minimum wage and below" workers are very likely making "twice as high as the minimum wage" to begin with, even ones only making a few dollars an hour.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2015/home.htm

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/how-much-do-waiters-really-earn-in-tips/385515/

(Whatever your opinion about tipping itself, even with minimum wage serving staff the net profit margins in an average restaurant chain are 3-5% and 60% of them bite the dust within 3 years as it is, voluntary gratuity is a good compromise for a volatile, low net-profit industry.)

There is a stronger correlation geographically between an increased cost of living and minimum wage than there is between the average wage and minimum wage.