This is also important to realize. Everyone can't have the better jobs (and if everyone *could* have the better jobs, the demand would push wages down anyway until the point is moot). The key is to make sure that the floor, at least, is comfortable to live on. Perfect equality doesn't need to enter the equation at all, just as long as the guys on level 1 are happy with their lot in life, who cares how the guys on level 99 are living?

Do you understand math? How many manager positions are there?

"Do no just expect things to be given to you". How condecending and falacious. The reality is that, the people that do the most work are the ones that get payed less.

This brings in the conflicting visions of "value" from the "Labor Theory" to the "productivity theory". The first states that labor should be valued according to how intensive or difficult it is, and has been favored by socialists of many stripes. The productivity theory has prevailed in the market system, in that you should be paid for what value you bring through what you are able to produce, whether that involves conducting complex, invasive surgery, or saying "i am famous, and by letting you take my photo, i will add PR value to your organization."

Neither theory is predicated upon the idea that we have certain economic needs to survive, and that these needs must be filled through some mechanism. A lot of what this thread has ignored is the idea that Minimum Wage hikes are only one tool among many to be used to alleviate poverty and want.

I know that someone needs to stock the groceries, flip the burgers, mop the floors, etc. But don't pay those jobs so much that it lowers the incentive to do jobs in more fulfilling fields. Those jobs shouldn't be given a wage that's in the middle class. They should pay exactly what they're meant to do: keep a person out of poverty.

And an engineer is definitely "more important" than the construction worker (not to seem condescending to construction workers, but I don't have a better term). Construction is manual labor and following illustrated instructions. Anybody with muscle and machinery know-how can do that. The engineer is the one who designs the buildings (engineers do more than buildings though, for the record. Software engineers, industrial engineers, electrical engineers, etc. All very different jobs). The engineer has to be mathematically correct to the tiniest minutia and know the physics behind how the steel girders are to be placed in relation to the building's foundation to make sure everything is right. Otherwise a literal gust of wind could knock the whole building down, expansion or contraction of the metal (due to hot or cold temps) compromise the intergrity of the building, and much more. You wanna tell me playing adult lego is more "important" than that? And even so, the average salary of a construction worker is $35,000. So your point is moot, because they already make more than $15/hr, and in the right cities, make almost $28/hr. And to become electrician is to learn a trade. That takes training (as opposed to stocking shelves). And the first year salary of an electrician is $42,000 (again, over $15/hr). Electrical engineers start out at $57,000 (at least, I would assume that the lowest 10% would be starting salaries). But you need to understand that there's a difference between designing and execution. If the electrical engineer messes up designs, and your electrician friend fixes them, the fact that there is a pay discrepancy between the two is because of the career fields (designing plans vs following plans), not the competancy of the engineer. If your cousin is always fixing designs, he must be surrounded by shitty engineers (a good engineer wouldn't need his designs repeatedly fixed), and if your cousin is so good at fixing designs, he should try and electrical engineering job himself. Or can he only "fix" slight mistakes, as opposed to designing a whole circuit himself? Oh, and btw, when construction workers have to adapt the plans, they consult the project manager (who should be an engineer, himself, since you're required to have expierence in that field to hold that position. That goes for any project manager for any company in any field of work). Guess who the project manager is contracted by and has direct access to? That's right, either the engineer who designed the plans himself or the engineering company.

 And when a nurse can perform any kind of surgery with pinpoint accuracy otherwise things go horribly wrong at best, and at worst, the patient dies, then get back to me about putting in more work. "More work" doesn't necessarily equal "more hours" (see my above post referring to "hard work" not meaning "putting in 40+ hours a week" but instead "obtaining skills to make yourself more attractive to employers of better paying jobs"). And even if we were to use that argument, at least nurses get days off. Doctors are on call 24/7, so they could work beyond their standard work day. If I'm not mistaken, though, a nurse does what a nurse does after being told by the doctor what to do. When to check up on the patient, what medicines to administer and when, etc. The nurse doesn't determine that, just executes it. Again, design vs execution. It's why engineering majors get paid more than engineering technology majors. Why people who design planes get paid more than people who fly them. Why the entrepeneur who came up with a business model gets paid more than the low level worker who actually does the "work" that makes the business operate.

Otherwise, by your logic: Don Thompson may be the head of the company, makes the decision in what financial moves to make and what to invest in, product-wise, to becoming more appealing to the consumers, but it's the fry cooks who make my fry's and burgers. I've never seen Don Thompson walk into a McDonald's and cook my food everyday. Fry cooks put in more work and more hours than Don Thompson, why are they compensated less? People would be hungry just as easily without fry cooks.

The 1 percent have everyone fighting over scraps and created a huge class of have nots.
Going to college doesn't mean you're skilled...having a college degree doesn't mean you are skilled or measure your intelligence or worth...all it does is give one a chance to enter a restricted/high entry job.
Everyone is getting screwed...it's getting closer and closer to the police state that 1 percent want to really screw you over

You're not understanding.  I never said construction workers are paid terribly (They're not), the point I'm trying to make is that there's a place for everything. If you think only engineers should be paid highly then there shouldn't be any buildings cause they still have to be made.  You say you understand everything has to be done, but only the poor should be doing it just shows how much of a horrible human being you're sounding right now.  The other thing you're not understanding is that there's only so few engineering position, IT positions, management positions, etc.  Do you have any idea how many people with degrees aren't in their fields?  Hell look at Spurge who created this thread.  Three degrees and, until he was promoted, was working night shifts at his Walmart.  This is the biggest thing you're not understanding; there aren't enough jobs that keep people in middle class even if they have education.  People are forced to work grocery or flip burgers because these are the only jobs for the majority of the population.  Hell I have a computer science degree and just completed my education degree, I'm working at a grocery store stocking, triming produce.  Hell when I came back after school the department's sales rose almost 10 grand weekly.  I'm the direct cause of that, do you still think I shouldn't be compensated for it?

One other thing you're missing that others have explained; is that wages have gone down compared to inflation.  Not having a middle class is terrible for the economy, incase you haven't noticed, and most of the jobs that provided that class have gone over seas.  So what would you have people do?  Get a degree to not have a job after they finish university?

Nurses do far more than any doctor does.  There's actually a push here in Canada to let nurses prescribe more medication because they are that good(They recently got more power to do so).  They're as needed as the doctors who cut people up, or diagnose.  Why is there a huge pay discreprency of nurses vs doctors (Family doctors really, I understand you're point with surgeons) when nurses do what doctors can't?  Should doctors get more?  Of course, but there's a difference between paying a family doctor 300k a year vs 40k for a nurse.

Same with your Don Tompson example.  I don't think he should be paid that much more than his employees because, to be frank, he'd be unemployed flipping burgers for another company if it wasn't for his workers.  Same with large corporations: hoarding money isn't helping anyone.  There's something wrong when companies are posting billions of dollars in profits just to turn around and go on mass firing sprees and slash wages.  

My cousin can draw plans, he does them well, he just can't stamp.  He wanted to get his electrical engineer degree, but he can't since he'd have to go back to school full time and that's not an option considering he has a family to support.

Minimum wage hikes don't increase prices, it just never happens in reality anywhere across the world. The people who forward these arguments are (shock horror) big businesses who'd have their immense profits curtailed slightly.

I'm from the UK and that was the argument brought against the minimum wage in the 90s but in the end nothing happened except peoples living standards rose. Same in Austrailia except they have an even higher minimum wage than us, i think it's $18 an hour.

It all comes down to what you think is ethical, If you work full time (so 35 hours a week) you should, I think, be able to live a stress free life, not have to worry about health bills or rent, food, childcare costs etc BECAUSE you work most of your waking hours. (Remember we work to live not live to work).

Let's not forget, it's known abroad that in the USA up until the 1960s a working man (because women didnt work much back then) on the minimum wage could provide for his wife and one child, now days that's a distant dream.

FFS the USA is one of only three countries in the world that don't offer women paid maternity leave, from the outside looking in it's disgusting :( Americans need to stand up for their rights.

hmmm if u make minimum wage u don't make enough to owe taxes.

It only works if there are laws in place to stop inflation. Being that this is the US, all we're going to see is $7.00 gallons of milk at the store. Living wages go up, costs go up. Companies don't want to lose their profits.

time and time again people predict minimum wage increases will harm economy and it never happens. Minimum wage should be increased and indexed to cost of living to avoid the situation now where an increase seems large. Index it and forget it. States as now can then choose to go even higher if the cost of living is higher. Putting more money in pockets of people who spend every dime won't hurt the economy.

disclosure I make over $100 per hour. Tax me and my class higher. We can afford it.