Comment on Minimum wage isn't survivable anymore
Skyrmir@lemmy.world 4 days ago
It was never sustainable, it was a hack to keep people from demanding unions. There’s plenty of countries with no minimum wage and well paid workers. It takes strong unions and labor protection laws, which is why the fascists will fight it to the death.
Sweden here, we have unions but no legal minimum wage.
For all the good, there’s still too many companies not unionized which mostly affects young people and foreigners with shit wages at shit jobs and with no legal minimum and far lower momentum for unionization these days these people don’t have a lot of leverage, stuck living with parents or in other shitty conditions to afford anything.
If you’re in a job with a good union it can be nice, but not all people have that luck.
I understand that since you’re working 400 less hours per year, with a months more vacation, and paid parental leave on a job that’s much more difficult to get fired on you might still have complaints.
But seriously, the tiny fractions of a problem that still exist in the Swedish labor market, wouldn’t even make rounding errors in the US. There are always going to be problems, and lots of arguments about how to fix them. Most people in the US, would much rather have Swedish labor market problems to argue about.
daychilde@lemmy.world 3 days ago
When minimum wage was instituted in the United States, it was intended as a living wage.
That has been eroded with time, though.
Skyrmir@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It was never implemented in the first place. What was intended never happened. Probably for the best honestly. Minimum wage is a poor way to accomplish a living wage, the only advantage it has, is political expediency.