redbloodedamerica:

The Living Wage Makes It Harder to Make a Living

Seamus: Hey, I
have a project that I don’t have time to complete, but it should only take a few
more hours of work.  Would you mind if I paid you $50 to take care of it?

Person B: Sure, I got nothing better to do. 

Person C: What?  $50?  You can’t live off that!  How can you pay this person anything less than a full-time livable salary when
they’re working for you? 

Seamus: Well, because not every service we might exchange money
for requires a full-time salaried employee.  

For example, I have a client who’s
paying me $2,000 to create a short animation.  I’ve spent the last
month putting it together, but now I’m finding I won’t have the time to complete
the last five hours of work.  There’s two possible scenarios:  I can find someone
who’s willing to work for me and let them earn a bit of money assisting me and
deliver a product to a happy client, or you can shut me down for not paying a
“living wage,” in which case my project won’t be completed.  I’ll
miss out on my hard-earned money, my reputation will be damaged, the person
willing to help me will miss out on $50, and the client won’t get their
product.  Seems pretty unfair that you’d be able to make everyone’s life so much
more difficult. 

Person C:  But that’s just greedy.  You only feel that way because you’re
getting a living wage.  

Person B:  I’m okay with it.  Plus I need some rent money. 

Person C:  Quiet you! 

Seamus:  Actually, virtually none of my clients pay me enough to live off of.  Most of them can only
afford to hire me for a few months out of the year for a fraction of the
average salary.  But fortunately, I’ve been able to accumulate enough clients so
that my combined earnings are enough to support myself.  But if you told each of
my clients that because they weren’t paying me a full-time salary they
shouldn’t be able to hire me, I would never have been able to build my career or
pay any of the private contractors I work with.  That would be unfair to everyone. 

Person C:  Huh, well I guess that makes sense for part-time work, but a lot of businesses
pay low wages to workers who with them full-time! 

Seamus:  Well, according to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, most minimum wage workers are young people working part-time.  Only 1% of full time hourly wage earners make minimum wage or less
compared to 6% of part-time hourly wage earners.  And of all hourly workers
earning minimum wage or less half are under the age of 25, despite the fact that
people 25 and under only make up about 20% of hourly wage earners.  These are
often high school and college students working jobs in the summer and during
the school year, people with other sources of income just looking for extra cash, and a lot of people who’ve not yet developed the skills or experience needed to
command a higher salary.  

But most people don’t remain in low paid positions
their entire lives.  As they get older and gain more education and more
experience they move up an income in well.

Person B:  Look, whether it’s myself, Seamus, or someone
working at a fast-food joint, it’s good that you want people to earn a fair wage; but what’s most important is for us to be able to have a job in the first place.  The way to ensure that is to lower as many of the barriers to getting a job or becoming
an entrepreneur as we possibly can, not to put more in the way.  

Seamus:  Exactly!  Are we
really going to cut the people who are just starting out or people like me with
multiple employers out of the workforce?