I hear some people say that the minimum wage should be $0 because you aren’t guaranteeing value to a company, but they are guaranteeing lost value to you and additional risks, in some form. With these minimum wage jobs, they are in person jobs, meaning you are risking your life and health everyday just by coming into work. You could die in a car crash or get seriously injured while driving in. Is your company going to compensate you because you had a collision coming into work? Something that wouldn’t have happened otherwise? You may have an unhygienic coworker and as a result, you get Covid and your lung collapses. Will your job compensate you the $500k it’s going to close in order to get treated because this was a result of their job? Of course not. Oddly enough the thought of holding a company accountable doesn’t cross many people’s minds.
Just the nature of any job requires us to take time out of our short lives and family, and forgo other opportunities in order to make this company run. If everyone did that businesses could never grow. If all of these politicians want to say that all human life matters, then taking time out of their life automatically has a minimum price, whether they are providing the company with value or not.