I've heard this argument a lot - that someone flipping burgers shouldn't make much more than minimum wage because it's a "kid's job." I wonder how many wages in the US are determined by arbitrary sentiments like this? The author mentions "value to society". It's not always easy to determine the value to society a particular job brings, but a metric that is MUCH easier to calculate is the value a worker's work ads to revenue.

I read an interesting article a while back:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-the-fleecing-of-the-american-worker/

Turns out, even a 'simple' job like flipping burgers or working a cash register generates around $200k/yr of revenue for fast food companies.

I think the real question is not: "How much should a burger flipper get paid to do a kids job?" but rather "What percentage of the revenue that I'm generating for this company is being returned to me as a wage vs. being withheld as profit?"

Does the fact that someone working a "kid's job" at McDonalds mean that McDonalds should withhold a far higher percentage of the labor value created by that worker, than a more skilled worker? I don't really see why McDonald's should be allowed to exploit the labor of a worker at a far greater rate merely because of some societal notion that it's a job for a kid when that 'kid' is still contributing $200k to the company's bottom line.

I think salaries should be pegged to profit margins. Too often, companies make bumper profits, but that increase in value/productivity is not returned to the worker.

Another interesting statistic from that Bloomberg article is that someone who makes $40k today really should be making around $90k if wages had kept up with inflation (and profits). American workers are more productive than they've ever been. But, those gains aren't going to them.

Instead, arbitrary sentiments of various types of work like: "It's a kids job" work to keep wages far lower and profit margins far higher than they've ever been before.

I agree that it doesn't make much sense for a burger-flipper to make as much as an engineer or doctor - but a lot of companies are lying to us about their supposed 'inability' to raise wages and still remain viable.

One thing that helps with this are unions. Unions are able to collectively bargain better wages and peg them to profitability goals as opposed to just random arbitrary sentiments about. Unions are one of the reasons why McDonald's workers in Denmark have much higher pay with full benefits - which shows it is possible.

"The idea of paying workers a livable wage raises fundamental questions about the value of work"

It also raises fundamental questions about capitalism and the profit motive. In my opinion, if a company can't pay workers a livable wage necessary for them to sustain life, then they really have no business being in business and their business model is broken. What they're basically claiming is that their business brings in so little value, that it will only function if they pay starvation wages. This is essentially the argument plantation owners tried to make: That they wouldn't be able to operate a business producing agricultural products without slave labor. If you're using the argument of a slave owner in the 1800's as a premise for running a modern business, you shouldn't be in business.

It is true that another fundamental problem exists in capitalism, and its one Karl Marx pointed out in his analysis of capitalism. He wrote that capitalism will eventually "Dig its own grave", because workers will never be paid enough to buy back all the value they produce.

A modern example of this is short video clip I saw of a worker on an assembly line making some sort of molded plastic component. They made minimum wage (something like $7/hr) and 70 components an hour. Each component retails for around $10. So... the worker didn't even make enough in 1 hour to buy 1 of what he made 70 of in that time, netting the company a revenue of $700.

Eventually, when prices get so high compared to the wages workers are making, they can't afford to buy most of the products on offer in the market or even sustain themselves. The system collapses, which is one of the reasons why capitalism is prone to cycles of crisis and crashes.