Living Wage and Minimum Wage [View all]

[JayhawkSD]

A subheadline at Salon.com said that instead of fancy advertising MacDonalds should pay a "living wage." Finish reading this before you jump down my throat, but I submit that the point is nonsense.

MacDonalds, and other fast food outlets, should not be paying a "living wage" for the simple reason that working in these places is not a real job. This is something that high school kids should be doing to make spending money, not something that anyone should be doing to make a living. It is nonproductive, useless and demeaning work with no real future. It is a stepping stone; "make work" to fill time until one can qualify for a real job.

If this nation has deteriorated to the point that flipping burgers and selling Happy Meals across a counter is considered a "living wage" career then there is no point in discussing our economy because we simply no longer have a meaningful econpmy.

"Minimum wage" should be about high school kids and college students. It should be utterly meaningless in terms of careers and people who are working at full time jobs. The idea that we are willing to have people supporting families on minimum wage, whatever that wage is, is obscene.

We should not be working to make fast food joints pay "living wage" so that people can make a living working there, we should be busting our collective ass to get people the hell out of those trivial jobs and into the real jobs that used to make this nation a real economic power instead of the sham financial giant that it is today.