Buried Headlines – News Stories You Have To Dig For

California has just passed a law requiring fast food restaurants to pay a minimum wage of $20 per hour.

California has passed a new law that raises the minimum wage to $20 per hour for fast food workers. While some argue that the raise was needed in order for people to “make a living”, perhaps they should evaluate skill versus pay. It’s simple, not everyone can be a brain surgeon, a CEO, a welder or any number of other highly skilled professions. The reason we pay those positions more is because not everyone can do them. We will always need fast food workers due to high turnover, though probably not much more if this trend continues, as people will be able to eat at a regular restaurant cheaper. People tend to forget that just like increasing taxes on businesses, minimum wages costs are simply passed on to the customers.

Fast Food has traditionally been a teenager’s way to get money during their high school years with few making a career out of it. Granted, some of that has changed because adults needed a second job or the job market has been so bad at different times, the adults took over the positions that were once held by teens out of necessity. Regardless of who is doing it, the fact remains, almost anyone can do it. Yes, it can be hard work but the majority of time, nobody will die if you leave an order of fries out of the bag. You can’t rule out a random irate customer that is really THAT upset over their fast food order, though.

It’s the same with the hard working people that come by and pick up your garbage. Not everyone can be a brain surgeon but somebody has to pick up the trash. As with fast food, unless you are the driver, it doesn’t require a lot of skill to collect garbage. However, if anyone deserves a pay raise, it is these workers. While it is not a highly skilled profession, it is a necessary one to help protect the health of the population. Can you imagine if the trash pickup stopped for a few weeks? The smell, the animals it would attract, including rats that carry disease, runoff into watershed and many other issues are a concern that would affect everyone. Not being able to get a fast food meal that is going to give you a myriad of health problems is not going to have a detrimental effect on anyone.

The minimum wage was never intended to be a true living wage but a minimum to be paid to protect workers from unscrupulous business owners that were severely underpaying employees. The minimum wage in 1938 was a whopping 25 cents per hour. The Great Depression created a scenario where the government was forced to attempt to stabilize the economy while ensuring workers were not taken advantage of. This minimum wage allowed workers to put money back into the economy but it was up to employers to determine which positions required a higher salary to attract qualified employees.

Unfortunately, society has spent so much time trying to tell youth that everyone is the same, giving out participation trophies, not keeping scores in sports and demanding all learning levels remain in the same classrooms that when they hit the job market, they don’t understand the relation of skill to pay. Colleges have lowered admission standards basically rendering a college degree useless. Now having a college degree just means you went to a college, it doesn’t guarantee that you have actually reached a higher plane of learning.

The fact remains, not everyone can be a brain surgeon, somebody still has to pick up the trash and someone has to scoop the fries. It’s not the same thing and the pay should reflect that.