this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Someone play Devil's Advocate and give us a workable argument for a society where people can't live off any single job. I'm not one to shy away from arguments and perspectives I don't agree with. It's important to understand both sides.
it's really not. the most charitable thing you could ascribe to this lady is she's assumed the wrong priors.
perhaps in her head DQ and similar jobs should be staffed only by teenagers making spending money in a world where adults are so gainfully employed that they have no need to work here.
that is not the world we live in today. it may or may not have existed in the past. it certainly doesn't under our corporate overlords today. advocating for low wages for these jobs today is advocating for people to struggle, to overcrowd their apartments, and to resort to desperate means to survive.
It's also a world in which DQ would have no employees to serve you during school hours.
The usual argument is that those jobs are for teenagers or some shit. Nevermind the fact that teenagers have very limited working hours (can't exactly get that chicken strip basket at lunch on a workday if only teens are working there). The other part of the reasoning is something along the lines of wanting to "motivate" people to move into other fields/jobs. But quite frankly, that's a stupid argument. I wouldn't want to work fast food again even if they were paying me the same money I make now. I would much rather work from home at a computer than deal with shitty people all day in a hot greasy environment.
as a dude who works from home from a computer but used to work in a kitchen, sometimes I miss it. It can be stressful, sometimes more stressful than a deskjob, but it's also contained. It's nice to clock out and not have to think about my progress on some work item or how I need to study up on some new tech.
Oh I get that. There are times that I miss aspects of my old jobs, but I'm quite certain I miss the idea of it, the nostalgia, more than the job itself. Like I have a lot of great memories of working at Taco Bell as a teenager - good friends, staying up super late (worked late shift on the weekends and when I was out of school), the freedom of it as a teen. But going back and doing that job now would suck ass, dealing with rude customers, the coworkers that were dead weight, the inconsistent schedule, constant commotion and high pace. I'm too old for that shit now, and a lot of what was fun then would be probably be annoying now. I'm sure plenty of things were different in fast food vs an actual kitchen in a sit down restaurant but I imagine you would deal with a lot of that same stuff.
A "functional" society is not the same thing as a society worth living in or supporting.
Corporatism with wage slaves working 80 hours a week in the most productive period of human history ever is functional, in that people are deliberately kept alive and productive as long as they don't get too uppity.
Sure, this makes the upper class obscenely wealthy at the cost of everyone else, but it does technically work. Lines do go up.
Just not the lines that should go up.
It's ok if certain jobs can only exist to provide income for young people so that they can learn to budget, save, buy things to pursue their interests, and so on. I had a job at DQ making minimum when I was 14, left when I turned 15 to make 1.50/hr more, and found yet another job when I turned 16 making another couple Dollars per hour. If you didn't have minimum wage or very low wage workers willing to do these jobs, then they probably would cease to exist. That means no more ice cream. When I was 14 I appreciated being able to earn extra money even though I didn't need it, and now I appreciate buying ice cream every once in a while at a reasonable price.
If Dairy Queen paid a living wage, there would be no motive for people to move to higher level jobs. People would just stay in these starter jobs forever and we would have nobody in offices, power plants, or construction fields.
This is not my actual opinion. I think all jobs should pay a living wage.