> As long as you treat your employees with respect and pay legal wages, who are we to say that the wages are "poverty wages".

When working those wages leave you in poverty its poverty wages.

> Many of these low wage, entry level positions are/were meant to be filled by young people, still living with parents, or part time workers who may have a spouse that is the primary earner.

This is not the case, and has never been the case. The economy is not set up for the benefit of teens on summer vacation.

44% of all workers aged 18 to 64 made a median of $10.64/hr and an annual income less than $20,000. Its hard to overstate how many people across the country are living on poverty wages - the "young people" theory to me frequently only comes about from people who've grown up in affluent areas and had evening jobs at grocery stores. Most low wage workers in this economy are invisible.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/meet-the-low-wage-workfor...

> the "young people" theory to me frequently only comes about from people who've grown up in affluent areas and had evening jobs at grocery stores.

You've hit the nail on the head. This position is privilege exemplified, and indicates a lack of empathy for people who do not have the skills, opportunity, or desire to obtain higher-paying positions. Everyone in our society should be able to live with dignity, regardless of their vocation. No one needs to scrape by in the wealthiest country on earth, especially when minimum-wage jobs make so much of our society possible.

I don't think calling out people for having privilege is a good way to win someone to your side unless the person has had the opportunity to hear other perspectives and has chosen to ignore them. It turns an otherwise productive educational conversation (on both sides) into combat.

I don't blame anyone for having a (relatively) sheltered life, as there's plenty in our life that all of us being on this forum are sheltered from. I consider it a good thing to be sheltered from a lot of traumas growing up. Our children need not feel the same pains we did. But by using a combative tone you're lessening the change for empathy to win out.

Finally, thats not to say that combat (rhetorical, physical) isn't the solution in some cases.

Totally agree with your point, my comment was lacking the fact that I also have a very privileged upbringing compared to many Americans. I wasn't trying to speak down, but laterally. Tone is hard to convey online, but I can do better. :)

Then I'd say you don't know much about poverty.

I grew up in one of the poorest counties in America.

I now live in one of the wealthiest. And while the occasional affluent family has a teenager or two that works at the grocery store, in poor areas, lots more teenagers have jobs to supplement not only their own income, but that of their parents.

That's not to say that there are more teenagers working these low wage jobs, it's just to point out that "privlege" in this case is merely a straw man and sidesteps the main thrust of my point, which was, what is better, "poverty wages" or no wages at all?

Your second sentence asserts that poverty is some nebulous concept, and that if wages are "legal" then they must be "moral".

It is nebulous from the point of view of a single employer. If someone only wants to work 10 hours a week and you pay them $12 an hour and their spouse works full time and makes $100k a year, is the $12 an hour employee living in poverty?