• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Minimum wage for interns / students

Cisero

DP Veteran
Joined
Dec 29, 2015
Messages
1,663
Reaction score
1,214
Location
Valais, Switzerland
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Libertarian - Left
Often when talking about the 15$ minimum wage, people bring up the following argument :

"But if the wages are too high, young people & students will not be able to find a job during college"

However, the minimum wage is different for young workers & students, as you all probably know.

When you are under the age of 20 a minimum wage of $4.25 per hour applies during your first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer, as long as your work does not displace other workers.

After 90 consecutive days of employment or if you become 20 years of age - whichever comes first - you must receive the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour - or state minimum wage.

When you are a full-time student employed in retail or service stores, agriculture, or colleges and universities, your salary must be at least 85% of the minimum wage.

Source : US Paywizard.org - US Minimum Wage of Students and Young Workers under 20, Minimum Wages Students, Young Workers

If, for example, the minimum wage is set at 8$ for students / interns & 15$ for full time adults, wouldn't employers be encouraged to hire young people for easy tasks, thus allowing the young worker to have a first work experience ? Wouldn't this solve the anti-15$ group's concerns about making summer jobs & fast food work overvalued ?
 
If someone said they would only pay me 4.25$/hour I would tell them and whoever thought was that was reasonable could go shove it up their ass, I could understand 85% but not 50%. The same with student rates. Interns should be paid the same as any other employee and unpaid ones should be banned or very heavily regulated.
 
Last edited:
Often when talking about the 15$ minimum wage, people bring up the following argument :

"But if the wages are too high, young people & students will not be able to find a job during college"

However, the minimum wage is different for young workers & students, as you all probably know.



If, for example, the minimum wage is set at 8$ for students / interns & 15$ for full time adults, wouldn't employers be encouraged to hire young people for easy tasks, thus allowing the young worker to have a first work experience ? Wouldn't this solve the anti-15$ group's concerns about making summer jobs & fast food work overvalued ?

The idea of minimum wage is that if you work at minimum wage full time, you still be able to have livable salary. Adjusted for inflation the minimum wages should be around 22 dollars, so even 15 is way below the minimum standards.

As a student working full time at minimum wage, I managed to save some money, buy a car, pay rent and go to school, back in the late 80s. Fast forward to now, IF I worked exactly the same job and earned today’s minimum wage, I could not afford any of those thing, that I had back then, which does tell you something about why we need to increase the minimum wage.

Of course Conservatives will buck at the sound of Raising the minimum wage, because they are parroting the corporate out cry, which of course is the HERE COMES THE DEATH of THE INDUSTRY! Of course the same argument was shouted when we wanted to disband slavery! Or do away with Sweatshops....

There is zero evidence of long term negative impact on consumers, prices or labor force if the minimum wages go up.

What it will do, is To relive the burn to the tax payer because they no longer need to subsidies the corporation in food stamps and other social nets for those who despite of full time work still cannot meet the bare minimum living standards.

having said that you can't just increase it to 15 dollars right of the bat, Metropolitan first, and they incrementally down to rurla area.

So again we are paying with our taxes for corporate Greed…Go figure!

Let them Corporations whine as much as they want...Market adjust itself

having said that you can't just increase it to 15 dollars right of the bat, Metropolitan area first, and then incrementally down to rurla area....


Diving Mullah
 
Back
Top Bottom