 Welcome to Teens on Topic. I'm your host Emma and today I'm joined by I'm Hattie Shaw. I'm Sam Sheridan. Eric Aguilar. And today we're talking a little bit about minimum wage. So let's see what adults and Davis have to say about that. Okay, so our question this week is are you for against the concept of a minimum wage? It's complicated. So I do think that workers should have a living wage. But it's in the economics of it can get a little difficult. And so one thing that it's often not considered in this issue is the fact that we have sort of a hierarchical wage structure. And so if you raise the floor, then you have to raise everybody else to kind of keep that status hierarchy. And so I think that's where a lot of the inflation comes in is you have to not only raise the floor, but raise everybody else's. So I do think that having a minimum is good because there is a lot of exploitation that can happen and so ensuring that you know companies can't pay, you know, four dollars an hour when cost of living is astronomical. So but I think it's just a complicated issue and you know, I think we need to talk about executive pay and you know bring down the ceiling in addition to raising the floor. So I'm just sort of get rid of the inequality that we currently experience. Okay, so our question this week is are you for against the concept of a minimum wage? For. Do you think the minimum wage at the state level, so just concerning California should be raised? What is it currently? 11. I don't know. I support the concept of a minimum wage. Okay, and then do you think that in California the minimum wage should be raised above $11 or do you think it's fine where it is or how do you feel about that? I think it should be raised because living in California is very expensive. All right, so I'm against it. Wait, why? I don't know. I just everybody puts in the work. Everybody's in like no matter what job you're doing. Like wherever it's at you are working hard to get something done. So I feel like it should be pretty even for everybody. I mean the concept of minimum wage is a great idea, I think. And then concerning the state level, so 725, do you think it's fine where it is or should it be raised or what are your feelings about that? The minimum wage should be able to support someone working 40 hours. So right now it's not supporting anyone. So it needs to be raised quite a bit. And then even even in California $11, is that do you feel like that's enough or do we have work to do in the state at the state level? The California level is higher because the cost of living in California is higher. But they need to raise it more because the $11 an hour is still not going to be able to get you a house and you know rent, food, all your basic necessities. Yeah, I Well, that was a lot of interesting thoughts there. I would like to hear what you guys have to think about their opinions. It's a really tough issue and I don't know enough to have a very strong opinion, but I mean, of course in concept if we could just raise minimum wage and we'd all get paid more, of course that would be for it. But I feel there's a lot of other factors that would go in and for example, I could totally see myself not being able to get a job as a kid in high school. If all of a sudden everyone got paid $20 an hour, so my position would be taken pretty quickly and I would just would have no money rather than the little I earn. So I would kind of more safe bet to leave it how it is. Yeah, I think it just has to fluctuate like as the like cost of living fluctuates because like the one of the women said like if you raise the minimum wage because housing costs so much but like if you keep raising the minimum wage like inflation is just like going to probably worsen and then the cost of living will go up even more and so I think it's really hard like question to answer because how do you like keep prices relatively the same while giving everyone a wage that they like the like the idea like living wage, which is something that I felt politicians say a lot is like the living minimum wage. But I think it's it's hard to like defer me at least to differentiate like like because I think minimum wage just went up and so it's hard for me to differentiate from like just like oh I'm getting paid more now to like oh I also see prices of things increasing around me as the minimum wage in California was raised on the first of the year. Yeah, pretty much what I've seen is when price you get paid more stuff goes up like an example milk used to be three dollars and now it's like five dollar for a gallon but just because they're got a dollar more per hour you know it wouldn't work out they'll be the same price go up. Yeah, so everything's gonna increase but at the same time I think that they're they're kind of needs to be minimum wage just to to protect the workers rights because people don't deserve to be like worked a ton of hours for for a very small cost so I think having that hourly minimum allows for there to like for there to be at least at least a base level but the thing is is I feel like a lot of companies like just leave it at that like whatever they can get it to be the lowest that's what they're gonna keep it when maybe if companies had a little more freedom they would they would raise it on their own without making prices increase and fluctuate so much. That's definitely an interesting point because I know we would like to think that everyone is virtuous and would want everyone's best intentions in mind but if we just completely abolish the minimum wage I think it would be interesting to see the company's reaction because would I know there definitely be out excuse me backlash from a company if say they rate or lower the minimum wage a lot if that would be enough to keep them in check or if it would just like that laws are the only thing that would really yeah and so and it's also how much of it like is like the worker's choice of it all like where will the person who is the work like the employee will they continue to choose to work for a business that pays them very little or will they make a decision to go somewhere else that pays them more and treats them better so then the business that isn't as like isn't treating them well closes down pretty much so that's that's something that I don't know how exactly that would work but I think that having having some sort of minimum wage or some like having workers rights is something that is important and maybe the other thing reason not to or to be at least concerned about raising the minimum wage is companies will like a big chunk of their the cost is the salaries so if we had to make that go up the companies would try to make the same amount of money probably and reduce the cost of other things so maybe the certain the products would be buying would be a lot lower quality and or the service would be worse or like if we made if we raise minimum wage we might lose a lot of things like that that we really value and we don't even notice or we don't think about so there's another aspect yeah so she said like like one of the women in the beginning said raising the ground floor um but then that raises everything else so she's like bringing down the ceiling but also raising the ground floor um I don't think we necessarily have to take like like decrease salaries um but I think that that's one thing to consider is like when your minimum wage is getting raised everything is also getting like every other salary the company is getting is going up like everyone else is getting raised too so because of that um then it kind of just stays the same and like the inequality just stays the same so yeah yeah I definitely would have to agree with those sentiments I think another aspect is if we raise the minimum wage up to a certain point the companies are having to spend more money on employees they might cut back on ethical business choices because I know now a lot of companies outsource to foreign countries that have very unethical business practices so I wonder if that would make it worse um or if that wouldn't really have an effect on it yeah and um like technology too like how would um how would companies like if it becomes too much of an expense to have employees I feel like after a certain point it's more of an incentive for companies to like make machines that do the employees jobs for them um so that just like Hadi had said about um raising it to like would cut jobs it would also replace people with things that are cheaper like machines or like that that innovation becomes easier to to replace so Emma if you could just pick the wage minimum wage right now just pick it what would it be California pick it right now for just me for no um I would say I think we I believe we raise it to $12 I think that's a pretty solid minimum wage I think that's how much I'm paid an hour I'm not exactly sure um I don't know um but I think that's a pretty like I I only work weekends and I make a like you know a nice amount of money that I think um what works for me but also another aspect you have to think about like it's not just high schoolers who have to work minimum wage there's definitely people I know of who are older or who are trying to support more people I have the luxury of not having to support myself but I know there's other people who have to do that so I think I I personally I don't really know the cost of living in California because I've been supported by my family so I think that I I don't think I have the ability to properly set a thing but I think at least for me $12 works it's fine yeah definitely as a teenager $12 is good and I feel like like especially with school and stuff I'm able to kind of like choose my own hours and pick how much I want to work if I want to work more if I want to work less but if I was trying to like live and like pay rent and do everything like that I think it would be really really hard for me to do that especially in California where I know that the like what you pay for house here is not at all what you pay for house anywhere else especially in Davis so I just I I worry because I'm like you couldn't you couldn't live in San Francisco on a minimum wage job like you can't and I know that like the wages in larger cities are different the minimums they set there but I know especially in San Francisco where it's like the cost of living is super high the cost to commute is super high yeah I don't think that you could just live there off of minimum just minimum wage even though there's a lot of like college students and a lot of high school students there um yeah yeah also taxes they take it off the check like for us the teenagers doesn't really matter but one of my co-workers she's a mom and gets paid the same as I do but needs to pay rent bills and I just don't know how she does it just don't bother ask her because it's rude but you know yeah but I'm just curious how she does it yeah like how would you feel like if if us teenagers get different pay than like someone's a kid I don't know I just what I think you know I agree with that yeah and like I know people a lot of people like choose to have more than one job or choose to do different things on the side in order to make money I know that you have two jobs and I know that I kind of do like different things to to make money I know we know a lot of people who do door dash recently it's been a big thing recently because like once you turn 18 and you can do that like that's a really good way to like make money on the side especially if maybe you're not getting like as many hours as you want to so that's something that's become pretty popular I feel like with teenagers or once once people are 18 to do that yeah I think it's really interesting the effect of things like uber and door dash will have on minimum wage because I know more and more people who are choosing to do like these jobs that are like relying on them you don't really have like a traditional job structure that you get to work on your own hours so I wonder if like if more and more people will start to do that if that will also cause people to like change their minimum wage yeah well I know that on those apps and I don't know about uber but I think on door dash you don't have a set minimum wage so it's kind of like however long the drive is or however long the order is to pick up like and people really like to do those um but they they don't have a minimum wage and they don't really have like like there's not really like workers rights just because you're just driving around yourself and and like another person or a customer so I don't know I'm actually interested in seeing how that impacts it it's a great point to bring up yeah I think the more things that are like easy odd jobs people to do that are in the state certain area where the also minimum wage and like low like typical McDonald's work that will probably bring up the the uh the salary of those people just because there's so many other options and they'll just leave the jobs they don't so yeah and there's more and more options to like take on multiple jobs um so I think that that will also change a lot yeah I think it'll be interesting to see in the future how those types of jobs play out and if if it's going to be even harder because I know more people are having to do more jobs so I'm wondering how like uber or door dash will affect that in the future yeah me too thank you all for coming in tune in next week oh yeah