Starting with the fact that we actually had for the first time a drop in how much people with educations made.
Going to the fact that many of the people working those low wage jobs are people with educations who can't get work in their fields.
Add to that, the fact that states are making it even more difficult to get a decent education in the inner cities as it is.
So education is not the magic bullet you claim.
The fact that if the minimum wage from the sixties had been raised to keep up with inflation it would be some where in the 20 dollar range is well known.
Then we move on to how countries like Australia have minimum wages that high and have a much lower unemployment than we do, from there I'l jump over to the dozens of studies that prove raising the minimum wage doesn't hurt the economy, that there isn't new job loss and the influx of money to the working class, in fact helps it.
Your claim that somehow people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps is a bit ludicrous considering that the current conditions have created a a situation where major corporations are using government funding to pay part of the wages (through food stamps and Medicare) in order to not have to pay people reasonable wages.
If they charged an extra .10 a burger they could pay people to live rather than pay millions to CEOs and stockholders.
People live where they do for many reasons, to tell them just move and that they are idiots if they don't shows little compassion and a lot of hubris.
Higher education is bullshit unless you're going into something very specific that requires extensive knowledge about a particular subject, and even then half of your degree might not directly pertain to the field that you want to work in. Actually, higher education is one of the biggest problems in this country right now considering that student debt is now the #1 form of debt. A large number of people are racking up the equivalent of a mortgage or more before they even graduate and that bubble is going to completely burst at some point and it wouldn't shock me if the government eventually ends up saying "lol, we were only kidding... you don't have to pay back that debt... you deserve to be bailed out just like failing corporations" to the majority of students.
So... I'm not talking about "higher" education and how much that does or does not lead to post graduate employment. I'm talking about starting at the elementary level when people's brains truly are still sponges sucking up everything they're told and raised to believe... and doing the absolute most we can to impact people's lives before they grow up to have a victim mentality about life because that definitely seems to be the trend in this country right now, across the board. Nobody wants to take responsibility for anything and everything is someone else's fault and they're a victim in some way. This type of mentality has spread to everyone regardless of economic status. We could go into the degradation of morals as a society, the lack of an even close to functioning family unit, etc... but that goes pretty deep and I am straying from the topic.
As to your point about corporations and government, well, haha... a big part of that problem is that people flat out do not educate themselves about the politicians that they are voting for. They listen to a few talking points, vote for someone based off of a single viewpoint of a candidate or that candidate's party rather than educating themselves and actually choosing the best candidate. It's quite sad how far thing have fallen. Again... education. And those laws that you speak of that are being exploited need to change. But that really has nothing to do with minimum wage. That has more to do with the entitlement mentality. If we *did* stop subsidizing companies in that manner, they would have to change their policies on wages or the quality of people that work there would lower and the company would suffer but we as a society and the government are not allowing that to happen.
The problem does partially lie in with the fact that ultimately, CEOs are making too much money and the lowest paid workers are not... but that's one of the prices of living here... in this country. What you're essentially suggesting is that we regulate a company's moral compass. What we have right now is some type of bastardized form of capitalism... because it sure as hell isn't free market capitalism.
What about innovation? Please, I would love for you to compare a list of technological advances that have come out of Australia and then stack that up against what has come out of the US.
Please, please do...
Essentially, in America, we now pretty much only produce one extremely quality thing... and that is ideas. Ideas, ideas, ideas. Let's not give motivation for those ideas to go elsewhere.
People are idiots no matter what their economic status, profession or any other notably defining characteristic. I always question myself as to why I even try... perhaps that makes me the biggest fool of all.
