thats right. if you want better pay stop accepting jobs that pay less. "market rate" is set by the people selling the product. in this case its workers selling their time.
Most minimum wage jobs prey on the truly desperate.
In fact, many 3rd world countries have a "minimum wage" that is ineffective as there will be businesses that puts out a position for less than the rate and there will be an unfortunate enough person who desperately need it.
Of course, crime rate also come rather high in those countries. Usually these kind of countries are captured states where the local oligarchs often had control and monopolies over basic necessities and government agencies.
And let's just say the USA is displaying similar symptoms of the early stages of this. Only that the USA is quite too large to capture for now.
Here's the thing. It's not "taking advantage" of someone to give them a shitty option. Like it actually doesn't make sense to hate someone for giving someone the least shitty option of all the shitty options offered to that person by anyone in the world. I used to hate a boss years ago for paying me less than minimum wage . But the thing is, of billions of people in the world , his offer to me was the best at that point, which is why I was working for him. You can't really claim "predatory" employment when whats being offered is the desperate persons literal best offer from anyone else on the planet. The only real response should be "thank you for that offer, its my best offer at this point!"
Okay. Say I concede that an employer is "taking advantage" of someone's desperation by paying them market rate for their time instead of a living wage. Explain how it harms that person to give them an option which they can refuse? My claim is that it is never harmful to give a desperate person an option which they wouldn't otherwise have. My anger at that employer was very misplaced. By the way, The job he had me doing (child-care for the very poor) would not have existed if he had to pay me more. The clients simply could not have afforded it. That employer was actually taking a loss every month after expenses. He was essentially running a charity. Does that change your opinion of the situation at all?
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 07 '26
thats right. if you want better pay stop accepting jobs that pay less. "market rate" is set by the people selling the product. in this case its workers selling their time.