I wanted to continue a discussion on this topic but either the thread got locked or Reddit broke for me.
We were discussing the cost of minimum wage (based on a living wage) needing to be lower for people in the country because housing is cheaper out there and it would damage small businesses to make them pay a city living wage due to their traffic and costumer base in the country.
Now I disagree that this is an issue, and here I'm gonna outline why. This is a copy of what I wanted to say before I wasn't able. I really feel like I need to post it since I put so much thought into it.
I grew up in the country so I feel like I have an idea of what it's like to have to travel to get stuff. The closest Walmart to me was 45 mins away.
Here's the thing though. If we want to continue doing capitalism here there's a concession we have to make, and that's that businesses who can't make money don't get to exist. If we're REALLY attached to the idea that people should be paid enough to live for working AND capitalism than we have two concessions to make. The former and that workers MUST be paid a living wage.
If you know these rules and you know what the lowest possible wage you can pay is and you want to set up a business you HAVE to do it in a place where you'll get the amount of customers needed to sustain it. If you can't get enough people to pay you for your goods than your business doesn't deserve to exist.
Now that might sound like it's a problem with increasing the minimum wage but it actually is a problem with capitalism. The problem is that capitalism isn't conducive to starting a new business. You're 60 years too late if you want to open up a food place. McDonald's and Starbucks have already won. You want to open a tech startup? Too late Microsoft apple and Amazon already won. The best you can do is hope that your business does somthing interesting enough you get bought out and can live on that for a while, maybe even reinvest. But you'll never be the next Bezos. Someone will. But you'd have a better shot buying lottery tickets and if you weren't born into money you can forget it entirely.
Small businesses aren't really supposed to succeed and it's unfair to workers to sacrifice their well being for one person's small business. And yeah that means that country ppl are gonna have to travel farther to access certain types of stores but that's to be expected. And that's one of the tradeoffs of living where it's so cheap.
That's something else people seem to be forgetting.
Yeah living is cheaper out in the country but that doesn't mean it's SO So much cheaper. Don't get me wrong it is. But not as much as ppl are imagining. I pay $1250 a month to rent a condo in the city and my parents pay $500 a month for their mortgage on their house in the country. But here's the kicker. My parents need two cars to get to work and pay a shit ton in insurance because they have to both be insured on both cars. Then they have to pay gas and they commute 45 mins each way on two cars 5 days a week. That's like 4 fillups a week which in this economy is already like $200. So that's a definite $700 theyre paying before whatever their insurance is. They've been driving a long time so let's say collectively for 2 ppl on 2 cars we got $200 . That's almost $1000.
I pay $50 a month for a bus pass. Bringing me to $1300.
So what you have to consider is that those minimum wage workers in the country ALSO need cars to survive out there. And that's not cheap. Especially because if the bus breaks down, I don't have to pay to fix it.