You are walking along the street and see a brass lamp in the trash. You chuckle to yourself but decide to rub it anyway. Out pops a genie, he offers you fortune in exchange for something. You agree and the Genie says “I will offer you $58 in exchange for one day of your life, you can chose how many days you wish to exchange.”
I am very disappointed, and decline this offer. The genie thinks for a moment and says, “what if I offer you $120 per day?” I still decline. The genie thinks a little longer and says “You agreed to this, so this is my third and final offer. You can either take this, or we will part ways and I will not grant you anything. I can offer you $200 per day of your life, however you need to give me at minimum of 520 days of your life. should I take it?
This story highlights what wages are. Each offer is the same as popular wages for an 8hr day. First offer is $7.25/hr, minimum wage. You can clearly see this is in no way a good compromise. You lose an entire day of your life for less than $60. Offer two is what people have fought to get for the last 10+ years, $15/hr. This not only is crappy trade for an entire day of your life, it would barely cover your expenses to live. The final offer is what most consider a “Good wage” of $25/hr. When you put it in perspective of you give them a day of your life that you will never get back you can see that the exchange isn't worth it. However we are expected to do it every day. In the final offer the demand of 520 days seems like an absurd amount of time to give away for so little money, but it is only two years of working 5 days a week. Before I catch shit for saying an entire day because “YoU oNlY wOrK 8 hOuRs…” you work 8 hours, sleep 8 hours, have an hour or two to commute, an hour or more to get ready before work 1 hour unpaid lunch. Now you're looking at 20 out of 24 hours, and those few hours are usually spent cooking, spending time with family, and unwinding. But 20 out of 24 hours is basically an entire day.