Many jobs don’t pay enough for someone to make a decent living working them. Socialists often argue that minimum wages must be raised to change that.
Others understand that some jobs can’t exist if labor prices rise too much; they aren’t productive enough to justify it.
For a recent example: Amazon is considering opening 3,000 cashierless automate stores by 2021: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/amazon-is-said-to-plan-up-to-3-000-cashierless-stores-by-2021
Supply and demand should determine willingness to work or to employ at any level. And many jobs were never meant to be family-supporting careers – flipping burgers and fries or loading groceries or greeting shoppers – these jobs were never meant to be more than a way for teenagers to learn some socially useful employment skills or for bored retirees to have something to do. Raising wages by demand works well; raising them by government mandate often ends the jobs.
Instead of allowing millions of uneducated and unskilled people to reach the age where they are in the workforce without a chance to earn an adult wage, perhaps we should educate students, really truly educate them, and force them to acquire some useful life skills and employable skills while they are young – instead of dumping them out at age 18, not really prepared for the world. I repeat, many jobs should not be careers and cannot pay high wages. Young people must be encouraged to learn better skills, and to expect living wages for jobs that require training and skills. Living wages won’t work for every job, it will eliminate jobs.
We see an extreme example of this particular failure of Socialism in Venezuela recently:
“Nearly 40 percent of all Venezuelan stores have closed —some of them perhaps permanently —after the government of President Nicolas Maduro increased the minimum salary by nearly 3,500 percent in one fell swoop, according the National Council of Commerce and Services of Venezuela.
Many of the companies, which had been barely surviving the gradual collapse of the economy, saw the salary increase and other changes announced last month as the fatal blow in a series of policies that have been gradually strangling their businesses.
“These decisions are leading many business people to say, ‘No, I can’t do it any more,'” said Maria Carolina Uzcategui, president of the council.”
Socialist Venezuela is not an example to follow, it is a mistake to learn from.
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