if minimum improves, everyone improves. skilled labor jobs will have to increase wages or lose their employees to walmart or staples or some other menial job where they can do nothing and get the same pay. the corporations aren't hurting one bit and can easily afford to retain talent. don't let anyone tell you otherwise, they are obviously clueless.

the concerns seem to come from the fear of the high school dropout flipping burgers making as much as someone who furthered their education and works in business or social work, etc. that will never happen, so that fear is irrational.

No no no, they are at the patient's side during any time they need them. Therefore they can do everything a doctor does! Because administering medicine and checking up on patients to make sure they're still ok = years and years of identical training via medical school, residencies, and fellowships

When unemployment is high, it is the unemployed who are bidding for jobs, thus incomes fall.
When unemployment is low, it is the employers who are bidding for employees, thus incomes rise.

Minimum wage is, at best, a temporary sugar rush for a few years until it needs to rise again; or, at worst, a job killer that shuts down businesses, increases prices, and reduces the choice of goods and services available to us.

The real way to increase incomes is to bring down unemployment. Here's Walmart advertising for jobs in Williston, North Dakota (In Williston, the unemployment rate is 0.9%. USA national average is 6.1% according to official statistics):



Employers in Williston do not advertise jobs at, or near, minimum wage, because they'd essentially be laughed out of town.

I'm currently living in the UK (about to emigrate to Hong Kong in a few weeks), I've just finished University. While at University, I had to work part-time at McDonald's - my parent's income is too high for me to receive additional benefits from the Government, and my parents fundamentally believed that my education is my investment, and not theirs (I don't necessarily agree with this, but that's their decision to make).

McDonald's paid me minimum wage. I didn't care much about this. It's what I was worth to them. And here's why: the manager told me that, on any given week, their one store would receive at least 50 unique job applications. It hires about 1 or 2 individuals per month. Everybody knows the job is minimum wage, and yet still 50 people per week want to work for it. Incidentally, there's a second McDonald's in the centre of the city which apparently receives even more job applications.

Incidentally, in line with the whole career thing, my managers at McDonald's loved me, as I always worked hard, had a smile about my face, and genuinely enjoyed my job. Before I left, they were training me up for a promotion. Wage increases in places like McDonald's are actually fairly dramatic, after 2 or 3 promotions in as many years, it's quite easy to be on double minimum wage.

As for my move to HK, I'm a fresh graduate, but I did an internship at a major bank a few years ago, and now they want me back. I wasn't on a huge amount before, but it was livable. I'm going back to close-to-triple the amount I was on before, on the understanding of a steep career path.

Get in early, work for low amounts, work hard, and constantly increase your value. Education doesn't stop when you finish highschool or college, it needs to continue throughout your entire life, otherwise you'll likely just tread-water until you retire.

I'm 22, I've got myself a degree (in Computer Science with AI), have had 7 jobs (plus a paper-round). If you've got yourself some shitty degree in, like, Women's or Minority Studies from some middle/low tier Uni, and you've barely had a job except that one time you did a trial shift at Starbucks, but the manager was a bit of a dick, so you left 40 minutes in, don't expect to get $15 an hour. Hell, you'll probably find that to most employers, you're not even worth $7.25, and that's why you can't get a job, and why you now spend your life posting shit on reddit about how much capitalism sucks, and if only you were born in Sweden, life would be oh-so-grand.

My fiancé understands full well that the reason a nurse does the bed side care and not the doctor is because the doctors skillset and time is too valuable to be spent checking IVs and making sure a patient is comfortable.

SamuelRSmith said: When unemployment is high, it is the unemployed who are bidding for jobs, thus incomes fall. When unemployment is low, it is the employers who are bidding for employees, thus incomes rise. Minimum wage is, at best, a temporary sugar rush for a few years until it needs to rise again; or, at worst, a job killer that shuts down businesses, increases prices, and reduces the choice of goods and services available to us. The real way to increase incomes is to bring down unemployment. Here's Walmart advertising for jobs in Williston, North Dakota (In Williston, the unemployment rate is 0.9%. USA national average is 6.1% according to official statistics): Employers in Williston do not advertise jobs at, or near, minimum wage, because they'd essentially be laughed out of town. I'm currently living in the UK (about to emigrate to Hong Kong in a few weeks), I've just finished University. While at University, I had to work part-time at McDonald's - my parent's income is too high for me to receive additional benefits from the Government, and my parents fundamentally believed that my education is my investment, and not theirs (I don't necessarily agree with this, but that's their decision to make). McDonald's paid me minimum wage. I didn't care much about this. It's what I was worth to them. And here's why: the manager told me that, on any given week, their one store would receive at least 50 unique job applications. It hires about 1 or 2 individuals per month. Everybody knows the job is minimum wage, and yet still 50 people per week want to work for it. Incidentally, there's a second McDonald's in the centre of the city which apparently receives even more job applications. Incidentally, in line with the whole career thing, my managers at McDonald's loved me, as I always worked hard, had a smile about my face, and genuinely enjoyed my job. Before I left, they were training me up for a promotion. Wage increases in places like McDonald's are actually fairly dramatic, after 2 or 3 promotions in as many years, it's quite easy to be on double minimum wage. As for my move to HK, I'm a fresh graduate, but I did an internship at a major bank a few years ago, and now they want me back. I wasn't on a huge amount before, but it was livable. I'm going back to close-to-triple the amount I was on before, on the understanding of a steep career path. Get in early, work for low amounts, work hard, and constantly increase your value. Education doesn't stop when you finish highschool or college, it needs to continue throughout your entire life, otherwise you'll likely just tread-water until you retire. I'm 22, I've got myself a degree (in Computer Science with AI), have had 7 jobs (plus a paper-round). If you've got yourself some shitty degree in, like, Women's or Minority Studies from some middle/low tier Uni, and you've barely had a job except that one time you did a trial shift at Starbucks, but the manager was a bit of a dick, so you left 40 minutes in, don't expect to get $15 an hour. Hell, you'll probably find that to most employers, you're not even worth $7.25, and that's why you can't get a job, and why you now spend your life posting shit on reddit about how much capitalism sucks, and if only you were born in Sweden, life would be oh-so-grand.

That only works in Williston because nobody wants to live there, but certain businesses need people there in order to conduct business (mainly for gas extraction), so they have to hike rates for EVERYTHING because there are so few people there that they need to compete for the few who are, and draw in people who are not.

This is a very isolated case. Likely similar to a fat check you could get as a British teacher if you volunteered to go teach for a few years in the Falklands. The islanders need professionals too, but who really wants to live there?

Thus the model doesn't apply in cases where there is a surplus of labor, and you can't get a deficit of labor without either kicking the bottom out of minimum wages, or providing a Negative Income Tax such that jobs that are both underpaid and shitty would have to pay more or no one would bother.

I think that position falls flat on its face when you consider that if nobody wants to live in that city, how in the world is Walmart generating enough revenue to be able to pay $17+/hr to various position. Not just technical jobs, like in automotive, or strenuous ones in the unloading bay. But the freakin cashier. If (figuratively) nobody is living/wanting to live in that city, who's shopping there to fund people's paychecks?

After a quick search, I found that Williston is actually a drilling and oil city. Jobs that are just hard manual labor but are extremely lucrative (ROUGHNEKKIN'!!!). No need to work at Walmart when you can go out and be a roughneck for $25-30/hr straight outta high school with limited skills. "Nobody wants to live there" but even if that were the case, for the people that do live there, they make enough money doing to support themselves, a family, and then some, leaving low-wage Walmart jobs in the dust. So, to attract more employees, Walmart increases its wages. I think what SamuelRSmith said makes perfect sense. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work on a rig, so there's a lower barrier for entry into the field. Everybody and their mother is gonna want that, with the kinda pay that comes with it, instead working for cheap at Walmart, so that Walmart was forced to act.

When has this NOT occured in this country? When I was a kid, min wage was $4.XX and the price of a pack of cigarettes was $1.45. Inflation is real lol

Remind me the next time the doctor comes in to adminster your medicine and make sure you're alive after an incident.

everyone is so entitled now.

they feel as if people/the government owe them something.

No one owes them anything, some people have it rougher than others. well toughen up. life isnt fair. not everyone is as fortunate as others.

so work hard, and move up in life without feeling intitled to a standard of living you think you deserve.

Let's just ignore what Euphoria said about what it takes to become a nurse, and what actual nurses say about their jobs in relation to doctors vs. what it takes to be a doctor, and all the training therein, as well as the tasks that doctors do that nurses can't, and let's all remain confused as to why there is a discrepancy in pay between the two professions.

Let's also ignore that doctors have to learn everything nurses go through in order to become nurses....and then more on top of that to become a doctor (higher qualification should equal higher pay, right?). Let's ignore that a doctor could do everything a nurse does, but is 99% of the time needed elsewhere because there's 20 nurses for every 1 doctor in a hospital, so his/her services are stretched thin because of how many patients there are vs. nurse services not being as stretched because there's many more of them. Let's ignore that if hospitals didn't have as many patients, doctors could very well be the ones administering your medicine and making sure you're alive because they are also trained to do that.

Let's ignore all that so that you can keep those feelings that while a nurse is "at your beckon call", a doctor isn't somewhere else in the building...doing doctor thing, like diagnosing illness, performing surgeries, giving second opinions, prescribing drugs, etc. You want to paint the picture that nurses are putting in an exorbitant amount of hours each day, so they're "just as important" as doctors, like doctors aren't working an equivalent or higher amount of hours.