I recently visited my parents, and had a conversation with them about minimum wages and Biden forgiving $10k in student debt. For context, my parents’ household income is in the top 5% for the state, and I’ve never seen a dime from it during my childhood, during college, or afterwards. Joining the military was how I paid for my college and how I can afford healthcare.
I brought up the news that Biden had forgiven college debt for anyone with a federal loan and my mother took umbrage with the fact. She argued that going to college was a choice and the money would have been better spent on forgiving medical debt (because getting sick isn’t a choice). The conversation devolved into “no one wants to work anymore” and “why work if unemployment benefits are more than working for a living”. At this point I agreed and said “Yes, I agree that minimum wage should be more than unemployment.”
This was apparently the wrong response for a small business owner, and we switched conversations to someone else. How can someone who makes more in a quarter than I’ll probably ever see in a year have a realistic view of what a median job should pay?