I paid my own college tuition, as well as a large portion of that of two siblings, partially with cash earned before 18. I wouldn’t have enjoyed working my ass off for 60% of what my coworkers were making.
My reasoning for my proposal is that with higher minimum wage, a true entry level grunt job will go unfilled because the value of the work is not worth the cost of the wage.
But, for young people, the value of work is not learned as easily, because minimum wage is too high. As someone else said, minimum wage is not meant to be a career wage.
For a kid, who’s food, shelter, clothing and basic needs are paid for by his parents, that first job or two is for learning how to work, show up, be courteous and not get fired. Getting fired can also be a tremendous learning experience, one that’s better to learn when you’re 16 and not 25.
If you were that productive as a youth, I’m sure you wouldn’t have been at my sub-minimum wage proposal anyway. I didn’t say that employers had to pay that, I said that they would be able to.