this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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The retail industry does not exist to teach kids retail jobs suck.
The industry, no, but the jobs do.
Compare working at Target to working at Costco. Target is a "working retail sucks" job, whereas Costco is a "retail is a small part of a career" job. At Costco, you do a wider range of jobs, like driving forklifts, selling memberships, etc. At Target, you just restock shelves and occasionally help customers find stuff. Target wants disposable employees, so its onboarding process is streamlined to narrow roles (i.e. perfect for students looking for a part-time job).
So while those jobs may not have been created with that in mind, that's how they've been optimized. Most retail jobs are intended to be disposable, which means they're targeting the low-end of the market.
None of this changes the fact that a job's purpose is to create profit for the employer and that any educational benefit to the worker is entirely coincidental. Target doesn't care how many teenagers need to learn that "working retail sucks". That's not what the job is for. Target only cares how many people are required to keep their stores running well enough to make money for them.
If you think there should be some kind of work-study program specifically for teenagers so they can gain a bit of job experience as part of their education, fine. That's something that can be discussed. But don't lie to us that Walmart is this program.
"[job type] is intended for teenagers" is nothing but corporate propaganda to justify poverty wages. If it were actually true then why the hell is McDonald's open during school hours? Which teenagers are supposed to be working those jobs?
Yes, nobody is counting the number of teenagers and creating that many jobs, that's not a thing that happens in a market economy. The actual mechanics are that a certain amount of unskilled labor exists, so companies adjust how their businesses operate to take advantage of it. If labor is expensive, businesses find a way to reduce labor needs (e.g. automation), and if it's cheap, they create jobs.
So, if we increase the minimum wage, businesses will hire fewer teens because they're too expensive for the quality of labor and inflexibility of schedules. If we decrease the minimum wage, they may find a way to use more of that cheaper labor.
Yeah, that's one of their busiest times, so they'll make sure their labor needs are met. Maybe they'll pay more, or use college students who have more flexible schedules. Teens tend to get less valuable shifts, like late nights, and that's for a reason.
If labor is too expensive, they'll also probably just close earlier because the labor costs aren't worth the minimal business they'd get.
If we instead use something like a Negative Income Tax or Universal Basic Income, it won't matter if wages go down because people will have enough to live on. And if we only provide NIT to citizens and permanent residents, we won't have as much competition at the low end and can reserve those jobs for our teenagers. So a teen could make $5/hr and be happy because they don't need to pay rent, and a college student could make $5/hr and receive $10/hr or whatever as NIT and be happy because they can afford rent and tuition. We don't need a $15 minimum wage in that scenario.
I support UBI. I just have issues with the claim that jobs in a capitalist system exist for a purpose other than generating profit for owners. I also resent the implication that some workers don't deserve a living wage. Without UBI, all jobs should pay at least enough to cover living expenses. If a full-time job (or job that expects full-time availability) doesn't pay enough to live on then it's not a job that needs doing.
My point is that it shouldn't be the government that decides what jobs should and shouldn't exist. A minimum wage essentially does just that, whereas UBI/NIT and eliminating minimum wage allows the market to decide what jobs are worth, and we just socialize the cost of some of those jobs (which totally makes sense for teenager jobs).
Let the market figure out the costs of things, and then have government step in to fill in the gaps.