it's not supposed to be. Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be a sole source of income. I'm sorry, but someone with a job that requires little to no skill should not be paid as much as someone with a job that requires a college degree. Of course you're probably going to come back with "that's not fair" because some people are not presented with a good job, while others can access one quite easily. Well if you want everything to be "fair", maybe we should switch to communism, where everyone makes the same. Oh wait, you'll lose basic human rights in the process.
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But the thing with waitressing is, it doesn't require that much skill at all. Sure, you have to be coordinated, but most people generally are. Think about it. If we raised minimum wage, we would have less doctors/lawyers etc, simply because people would just take the high paying minimum wage job flipping patties.
Minimum wages are meant to be a base rate of pay, and from there you're meant to get raises as you excel in the work place. Your minimum wages should however, be enough to start with to afford to live. I worked extremely hard at a job where I made $9.32 to start off, and I was barely, just barely able to make rent.
Another thing, to say that someone who works for minimum wages vs. a salary doesn't deserve good pay because it doesn't "require the same skill" is an extremely skewed perception of income and employment.
Salaries, are fixed rates of pay that stay consistent unless raised regardless of the amount of hours you work. Why would you want to take a job where you're given a salary but expected to work exorbitant amounts of hours, when you can take a job that starts pay at minimum wage and you can work just as many hours but get paid more for overtime and time/and a half? (Unless you're making a 6 figure salary).
On topic with the OP however, I believe the rate of minimum wage should be uniform throughout the United States. So therefore, it should be raised to a livable amount and be the same for each state. Right now the federal minimum wage rate is $7.25 /per hour. However, each state varies in their wages. For example, Washington's minimum wage is $9.32, Florida is $7.93, California is $8.00, and Oregon is $9.10, whereas a vast majority of the East coast is uniformly $7.25 or $7.35 /per hour. If the people on the East coast are working the same jobs that require the same skills, as the people on the West Coast, the rate of minimum wage should be raised to be relatively even across the nation.
Not everyone has equal opportunity (though they'd like us to believe) to go to college and earn a degree(s) to get a higher paying salary based job. Some people can't afford the tuition, or student loans (I only went to technical school and wracked up a bill of $10k in student loans, which I can't even afford to pay right now because jobs are scarce where I live, and the minimum wage is only $7.25 here, but that $10k doesn't even scratch the surface of other peoples loan payments for college).
If you want people to further their employment by going to college to be able to get better paying jobs, you have to increase the pay they're getting from the only jobs they can get so they can afford to go to college.
Regardless of whether you have a degree and work at a law firm making 6 figures, or a high school diploma and you ended up working for Walmart for minimum wage, the work put in to your job is the same.
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Here's an example of raising wages of all walmart employees so that they are no longer eligible for food stamps, and the effects on price of product.
http://youtu.be/vAcaeLmybCY
Thank you for posting that video, it was very informative
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