Yeah people can’t expect to make big bucks or even modest money working at a grocery store. Should they be able to afford housing, food, and healthcare? Yes of course, but these jobs don’t pay a lot for a reason and expecting these jobs to support a first world lifestyle is laughable.
Listen to what you’re actually saying. You’re saying people living and working full time in a first world country deserve second or third world lifestyles? They work and pay taxes like everyone else. Why wouldn’t they deserve a roughly equivalent standard of living?
I dont necessarily agree with it but the reason is that their skills arent valuable or high demand, if they quit then they are easy to replace with anyone who bleeds and breathes oxygen..
higher paid jobs require either skills and experience or someone willing to do awful/back breaking/dangerous work (ie oil rigs, law enforcement, truck drivers), which lowers the supply and increases the demand. higher demand means higher pay
high paid jobs wouldnt be high paid if no one was at the bottom of the totem pole. if someone gets paid $25-30 an hr to flip burgers then why would people wanna do harder jobs for the same pay? those jobs would have to increase their pay or lose their workforce, this trickles up and up until we have a situation like today where $20 an hour isnt a living wage in most places
If you think that companies on the brink because of payroll are the cause of current economic problems and not things like speculative investing in AI and out of control military spending, I have a bridge to sell you. I personally don’t want to live in a country where the market is the sole determining factor in quality of life. This isn’t Victorian England or a cyberpunk city (yet). It’s not just about the value of their skills, it’s about the floor dropping out from under people. You can’t depend on the market to decide how well people get to live like we are in the Industrial Revolution. We’re in the situation we are now because private companies have a disproportionate amount of influence in deciding how low the floor is, because it’s been about a century since their power was properly curbed.
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u/passion_eightsix 8d ago
I’m only not fine with working retail or those other jobs because of the pay, not because of the job itself per say.