"Get a better job" is not an answer to bad wages and an absurdly low minimum wage. If it were possible for most average Americans to get better jobs they would, so in absence of those better jobs why not make the shitty jobs a little less shitty?
The solution to said wages has already been brought up by me. Nobody is saying "get a better job", or at least I'm not reading that part.
Economic growth and jobs growth without proportional growth in wages only leads to worse and worse economic inequality. All the arguments against raising wages and benefits for low level employees tend to revolve around how it might damage the corporations or "make fewer jobs," but how good is a job if it doesn't pay you what you need to live comfortably?
See, "live comfortably" and "basic human needs" aren't the same thing. While it is your right to argue about wages being high enough to live off of, it's a different discussion when you add in the qualifier "comfortably".
I think about this Henry Ford quote when I see debates on wage increases. Henry Ford is the father of American industrialism and one of the greatest figures in the history of capitalism, but his successors seem to have forgotten his words:"There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible."
You're not going to tell me that any Fortune 500 company can't raise its wages by just a little, if necessary at the expense of the executives' salaries.
You and I must be thinking of a different Henry Ford. The one I've read about treated his employees like garbage.
Exactly, it's better to have babies starve and grow up in poverty, than to give one cent to the parents.
Yup, that is EXACTLY what we're saying. 👆
Edit: Note the sarcasm.