When did this minimum wage must be a living wage nonsense start, and why does it persist?

Irish lassies learn a trade, courtesy of the Mickster

Back when I was 14 I took a scuba diving class at the Stamford YMCA and earned my diver’s certification. That summer I began cleaning boats for the racing sailors at the Riverside Yacht Club, charging $1-per-minute for time spent underwater. I disguised that fee, of course, because no boat owner wants to think he’s paying a kid $60 an hour, especially in 1968 dollars, by telling the owners that I based my charge on the boat’s length, beam, and draw, yadayadayada, but actually, I’d quickly learned how long a hull of a particular size would take to clean, and priced accordingly. My income soared as I began selling skilled labor instead of my previous work of offering unskilled lawn mowing and snow shoveling.

My point is not what an industrious lad I was back then (vs the lazy bum I grew up to be), but that there was a lesson there: learn a useful skill, make more money.

A minimum wage job is an unskilled job, and was never intended as a permanent pathway to the middle class. Any 12-year old can wrap up hamburger patties and hand them to a customer, any 13-year-old can operate a deep fryer. Why should, or would, a person who has dropped out of high school and entered into adulthood illiterate, lazy, and, probably, drug dependent, expect to be paid a “livable wage”, large enough to support a family of three kids and a non-working coinhabitor? That person offers very little to an employer and is paid accordingly.

If someone is dissatisfied with his pay, he could either work longer hours, take a second job, or do something to improve his worth. Go to school at night and on weekends and get that GED and then, hell, maybe get an associate’s degree at a community college. There are still unions in this country, and they’re still offering apprenticeships. Get paid ($25 hr is common) while learning. In short, do something, rather than lie about in your mother’s basement and whine about the lack of new, really cool video games, and jobs offering a livable wage.

Or vote Democrat/Socialist.