We need universal basic income and higher minimum wage quick or shit's gonna turn real ugly real fast. No, it won't make people homeless. No, it won't shut down businesses. If you're not paying your employees enough in the first place, something is fundamentally wrong. And no, in no reality will companies pay people more or even reasonably if you abolish minimum wage. Give corporations the ability to pay almost nothing, and they'll do it. And because poverty and wealth inequality is so rampant, where employment means life or death, there will always be someone willing to work for less. To advocate against minimum embarrassingly exposes privilege of never having lived paycheck to paycheck.
I'm middle class right now, but only because I was lucky enough to be really damn good at stem AND i had the opportunity to go to school, even if it was through massive loans that I indebted myself with. I grew up poor, with drug addiction and violence rampant in my family and neighborhood. I was doomed to continue life in poverty if I weren't so gifted with opportunity.
I suffer from clinical depression (yes it's a real medical condition despite what some ignorant people suggest) and it has only gotten so much worse from the traumas I and my family went through because of how fucked this country is financially from decades of Republican policies tearing away at middle and lower class life. Most of my family is dead now, from unlucky cancer to not being able to afford medical treatment over the years. Things wouldn't have been so bad in my life had my full-time working parents been more fairly compensated. Had my educational institutions not been so crippled from decades of budget cuts. Had my family been able to afford proper medication instead of relying on affordable street drugs. Had we been able to afford therapy (what luxury!). Had we been able to afford a living space big enough to properly house a 4-person family (not even that big). I didn't have extracurricular programs at school, I didn't have connections to get me a job after college (took me years just to get a position that underpaid me but got my foot in the door.) My family and I were always stressed, always in debt, always fighting. To put it bluntly, life fucking sucked. And having depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation through all of that. It's fucking amazing I'm alive today.
And I was hardly the poorest of the poor growing up. My friends had it worse. Families destroyed, dead, miserable, working dead end jobs that don't pay them livable wages.
You shouldn't be looking at abolishing minimum wage, you should be looking at fixing the wealth disparity that is causing the need for minimum wage in the first place.
Sorry for the long winded rant, but the naivete and privilege that libertarianism reaks of just grinds my gears. I've lived through hell and all these silly libertarian "solutions" would just enable capitalism to become more dangerous and deadly than it already is.
