The Middle Class Lens: Fight For the $15 Minimum Wage

Shortly after waking up this morning, I stumbled upon this argument against enacting a $15 minimum wage, specifically targeted toward fast food workers. His main point is that because working in fast food restaurants "requires no skill, no expertise, and no education," there is no basis for workers earning more per hour than others working in professions he deems more respectable, such as EMTs, dental assistants, or police officers. He directly associates the amount of income each profession is deemed worthy of earning with their worth to society. As he puts it,

"Your job isn’t worth 15 bucks an hour. Sure, as a human being, you’re priceless. As a child of God, you’re precious, a work of art, a freaking miracle. But your job wrapping hamburgers in foil and putting them in paper bags — that has a price tag, and the price tag ain’t anywhere close to the one our economy and society puts on teachers and mechanics."

The majority of his support is anecdotal, based upon his own experiences and those who read his blog and responded to the question of "How long did it take you to earn 15 an hour or more, and what job were you performing?" But the lens through which he is looking at the issue is fundamentally middle class; to him, a fast food job is a temp job:  once you have an education, or have finally succeeded in getting noticed by one of the numerous places to which you've applied for a position, you're eventually supposed to move on to a better paying job. To the author, the fact that there are people out there without the necessary experience or family stability to be able to move past that entry level position does not even occur to him. If someone is from a poor family who never graduates high school, despite effort, winds up working three minimum wage jobs just to stay afloat, can we really judge them as not worth providing enough for them to live comfortably? Not according to this author.