Do People Actually Deserve a Living Wage?

Yesterday, I had a former student pose the following question in a comment on Facebook.

Where does the notion come from that people

 who work 40 hours "deserve" a "living wage"?

He went on to share that his first job was at the Meijer’s grocery and department store chain while he attended school. He worked 40 hours per week and made about $8.50 per hour which is over the minimum wage.  He expressed that this was okay because he knew the job required minimal skills.  He indicated that he worked hard for the money but he knew that he needed to work to improve himself so that he could make “more money or a ‘living wage’”.  He clearly knew that even $8.50 per hour was not a living wage.  He went on to state the opinion:

It is not the governments job to make sure life is "fair" 

for complacent people that don’t want to take the initiative 

to work hard in life to earn more money or a ‘living wage.

Because I hear this so frequently from some Republican friends of mine, and because I disagree so entirely, I felt compelled to respond.  Below is my response.  I have made a couple of minor changes for readability or to make my point more understandable.  I was a bit impassioned when I wrote it.

I am always astounded when people feel that others who work hard do not "deserve" to earn a wage they can live on. A "living wage" is the minimum amount a person needs to be paid in order to NOT need public assistance. It is the minimum amount needed by a person to be able to afford to pay for housing, for utilities, and eat from their own efforts, typically while driving an old beater car or using public transportation. It doesn’t mean getting rich. It is simply the price of giving people respect and allowing them to respect themselves.

How did you come to the idea that working people might not be “deserving” of a living wage? You yourself said you worked hard for the money you made at Meijer's. Others doing the same job, but with lesser prospects than you, may be working very hard as well.

Everyone has different levels of skills and talents. Not everyone is cut out to go to college. Consider your high school class. Was everyone in your class intelligent enough (laughing, because I remember your class) to cut it at college…even if really applying themselves? Or, were there some who just weren’t very “book smart”, or who had learning disabilities, maybe some that had more muscle than brains, etc.? Do those people not deserve to make enough money to live on if they work hard 40 hours per week?

And, playing devil’s advocate, say you were right. Suppose everyone was smart enough and worked hard enough to get a college education. Who would then do all the menial jobs which still must be done? Who would work at the restaurants, who would be the hairdressers, who would clerk at all the stores at the mall, who would work at Walmart and Meijer, and cashier at gas stations, and the dry cleaners, etc.. Consider that the following jobs (some skilled) in most states start pay at, or pay just a few cents higher than, minimum wage: emergency medical technicians, pharmacy technicians, nursing assistants, pre-school teachers, teaching assistants, and substitute teachers, cooks, lifeguards, nannies, auto mechanics and the list goes on and on. There are not enough part-time students to do all of these jobs nor are they qualified to do some of these jobs (nor would we want them to). People doing minimum wage jobs will never become rich, even if the rate is raised. They may never have much in their savings accounts, if they even have one. But, in my humble opinion, they should be able to afford to live and eat and respect themselves for earning their own living.

Answering the last part of your question, why should the government be involved and set a minimum wage? Because corporations and the very rich over the history of this country have proven that they will pay slave wages and have unsafe working conditions if they can get away with it. That’s why unions were formed and a big part of the reason why the government established the minimum wage (and workplace protections) in the first place. Someone gets hurt on the job, just fire them and hire someone who is not hurt. I don’t want us to ever go back to that mentality. Want some fascinating reading? Read about the industrial revolution in our country and others. It is both fascinating and appalling.

NOTE: It is often the same people who think others do not “deserve” a living wage who also grudge the working poor housing and nutrition assistance, too, when they cannot afford to live on their minimum wage salaries. I did not take you for someone with so little empathy for your fellow man.

Perhaps my response may seem harsh, but there aren’t enough good paying jobs in this country to go around as it is.  NAFTA and CAFTA and other trade agreements have made it more lucrative for companies to move our solid middle class jobs overseas where they can still get away with paying slave wages and having unsafe working conditions with little penalty.  And there are fewer and fewer good jobs as time goes by and as corporations continue to move jobs to other countries to save a few dollars for their shareholders.  I believe corporations owe something to the very people who helped make them successful and am astounded that the greed of some clouds their vision of what it means to be humane? Increasingly, the new jobs in America are service jobs which pay minimally. Today, there are too many people who have difficulty finding a good paying job even with a college degree.  Condemning all those who are willing to work hard for 40 hours or more per week to living on pay that keeps them in poverty is not only inhumane, it’s un-Christian, and it should be un-American.  We can do better than this.