I simply can’t relate to the mentality of demanding more instead of improving myself.
Wages are, and always have been, a measure of the productivity that the employee can bring to his employer.
If the employee cannot provide enough additional value to the product to pay for the cost of the maintenance of his position in the work force, and allow the owner or proprietor to earn a positive cash flow, then the position disappears.
If there is no growth, then contraction sets in. There is no “neutral point”.
Especially when lots of other people are excited to work hard to earn a lot less.
Easy; imagine improving yourself and you still can’t get a decent wage. I oppose these minimum wage hikes because they are job-killers, but I assume they are in the works because most of the remaining jobs in this country are McJobs. The information superhighway has let many white-collar jobs follow blue-collar jobs overseas; what is left for many are jobs providing for the material comforts of the 1%. If everyone went to college/trade school, we would still have this same problem: Employers prefer to pay foreign workers much less than they would have to pay us, so our available jobs are Wal-Mart greeters, burger flippers, and dog walkers.
In my area illegal braceros were already getting $10/hour (25% above minimum wage) 10 years ago; $15/hour would not let you start a family in the NYC metro area (including northern NJ).
I was recently in a WalMart where they were advertising 9.00/hr jobs, and I was thinking that 36 years ago, I was making $4.35/hr in a job I had at a department store while in college (which at that time was above the minimum wage).
I think that the real problem is that those jobs were never meant to be a “career” where you could own a home and raise a family - they were meant to be supplementary. I worked with other students and married women who wanted a flexible job where they could pick up some extra income. In high school, many of my friends worked at fast food places. No actual “adult” would EVER work at those jobs. The real problem here is a lack of skilled adults and jobs for them. As usual, Democrats are “solving” the wrong problem, which, of course, causes MORE problems.