Other posters apparently understood my point well enough, so I'm skeptical that the issue is me not articulating myself well enough.
But to answer your question (and get into this topic more than I'd wanted):
As far as I understand the psychology of such things, establishing and maintaining hierarchies is a fundamental human trait, with folks (at least in the US, possibly everywhere) having a tendency to maintain these hierarchies by keeping lower classes down. IOW, the way it plays out is if somebody is already richer than me, then I don't worry too much about how much richer he gets, because he's already above me. Whether he's a little above me or a lot, I've already lost that race. But I'll be darned if I let the guy who's behind me pull ahead of ahead.
It's been my experience that discussions of pay often wind up tip-toeing around the issue of these socioeconomic hierarchies, with folks who argue against things minimum wage hikes, pay transparency, etc often also having an obvious, but unstated interest in maintaining these hierarchies by keeping certain groups of people down.
That's what
@BPPLEE did when he tried to justify keeping the minimum wage low so as prevent the McD's worker's wages from pulling even with the guy who'd been working a job for 20 years.
That's what you did when you complained about the impact on consumers. (because, in your hierarchy, consumers are more important than workers)
And that's what you did with all of your derogatory comments about the people who work these jobs: they're kids; they're unskilled, they're "unwise", they're unmotivated; they're better off than poor in other countries, etc, etc - all different ways of saying that they're unworthy of more. All different ways of saying that they're somehow
less than.
This argument about minimum wage isn't purely about whether or not our society can afford to pay more money to the lower working classes, because you've already demonstrated that you don't know how to calculate whether or not we can afford it. When the subject of average age came up, you argued at length, a point that was obviously incorrect, despite it being based on math I learned in middle school. So, in your rebuttal, please don't pretend that this is about economics. What it's about is status and equating income to status. What you're advocating is a social hierarchy that denies income-based status to folks you believe are beneath you and, therefore, undeserving of it.
I don't like those attitudes. I think they're kind of gross, even if I understand where they come from. Sometimes, I choose to argue about them when I see them.
You wanted my point. There it is.
