stfuconservatives:

I know someone personally who also compared a higher minimum wage to a handout. This is a good sign of our times when a living wage is considered a “handout for doing nothing.” - zenodotus5

And minimum-wage workers are the hardest workers in America. I’ve worked minimum-wage jobs, and I’ve worked part-time jobs that pay barely above minimum wage. I’ve also worked well-paid desk jobs.

Compared to waiting tables and scrabbling at startups? White-collar jobs are a vacation. You’re not docked pay if you come in late. You take lunch whenever you want. You sit in front of a computer all day. Your legs don’t feel like cement pillars by the time you get home because you’ve been standing for so long. When you’re sick, you can take a day off without worrying about whether you’ll make rent. You can afford to take a vacation and relax for a few days. You can afford to visit your family at the holidays. You can afford to replace your car when it breaks down. This is paradise.

And there are fewer and fewer jobs like this in America, and more and more minimum-wage jobs that require physical labor and dealing with customers and not having benefits or health insurance, and the least - the VERY least - that we can do as a society is make sure that people who work those jobs, or two or three of those jobs, don’t have to struggle to pay for food and housing. Minimum-wage workers aren’t “doing nothing.” They’re achieving record-breaking corporate profits for their CEOs. They’re doing EVERYTHING.