How would you feel... if you worked at a fast food restaurant and earned $10.10 an hour?

In America today, minimum wage employees currently earn the sum of approximately $400 dollars per week and after federal and state income taxes that same weekly wage then ends up being closer to $325 to 350 dollars per week. This income level then rounds out to about 1300$ or 1400$ dollars per month... if the employee is given a full working schedule.

Whereby, that level of income does not afford employees; an automobile, a home or college tuition, often forcing this employee to walk to work. Furthermore, at this income level a minimum wage employee is then forced to choose between; paying their rent, paying for a car, or saving very little.

(*And I’ve written about my experiences with minimum wage before… in previous articles, here… http://civiliansnews.com/civilians-news/why-increasing-the-minimum-wage-is-not-the-answer-to-inequality/).

But, with that being said, I oppose increasing the minimum wage and here’s why.

And yet, I’ve personally disagreed with raising the minimum wage several times before and for a variety of different reasons. Whereby, I believe that bolstering the economy through increasing the minimum wage is like using a band aid to fix a gun shot wound. To be clear, this type of legislation is demeaning to currency and I believe that this type of solution often fertilize’s future wealth gaps… that then grow even greater over time. (*Minimum wage goes up but so does; rent, food, gas and everything else and then there’s the backlash of the previous aid.)

But with that being said… I would also ask that conservatives in office try to view minimum wage in terms of, “systems of thought," and to be more specific, I view the minimum wage in accordance with, “Stanley Milgrim's Stanford Prison Guards Experiment.”

Which is to say that in my experiences (*as a minimum wage employee) often times managers don’t want to promote minimum wage employees and that’s how the lower class functions. Most of us have experienced this, particularly in lower class work environments where employee’s feel insecure about their own value and their own job security. Whereby, sub-managers don’t want to hire new sub-managers and instead they want a revolving door of underlying employees underneath them. Worse yet, this style of business is incredibly common within the United States, today.

And in my opinion this situation leaves employees and employers… trapped in a system nearly congruent to Milgrim’s classic experiment on WWII prison guards. Whereby, in Milgrim’s notorious social experiment, carried out by Stanford University, subjects were asked to carry out inhumane orders upon other civilians who were deemed as, “prisoners,” although the prisoners, nor the prison guards, actually had any history of crime. Where, to be clear, in this infamous experiment... for those who don’t know… the guards did not know the prisoner’s were essentially NOT guilty of any crimes and they were still asked to torture them anyway making the variable in this experiment simply the concept of, “power," and, "taking orders from a superior at the workplace.”

This experiment was done to essentially determine the liability of subordinates and particularly those who committed crimes under orders from Nazi Germany. Would anyone follow Hitler's orders? What if there job was on the line? Furthermore, this experiment was run several times by various different groups in order to properly assess blame for heinous acts committed under orders in WWII. Nevertheless, in each trial people were most often seen as willing to torture, “their prisoners,” regardless of whether they were even truly guilty of crimes and this result was discovered on multiple occasions. But what’s most striking about this finding is that subordinates were almost always willing to inflict serious levels of pain onto people under their control, “when ordered to do so,” including potentially killing the person through electrocution... all just to keep their job. Whereby, to be clear, “guards in this experiment,” often hurt people simply because they were told to do so by a superior or boss. Now, with that being said, in many ways I also find that these results are nearly congruent to minimum wage employment within America today.

In fact, it’s a situation where people are willing to carry out orders over 95% of the time just to preserve their own job and even when those orders are cruel or inhumane. And if this is true of people literally TORTURING people through electroconvulsion than it's certainly true of lesser evils like cutting someone’s hours below the poverty line or turning off someone's electricity service. Whereby, people in subordinate positons of a work environment carried out these orders over 95% of the time simply because they were told to do so by their boss and feared losing their own job, even a job as miniscule as a security guard! Furthermore, I also see this experiment as nearly congruent to some of the circumstances that I’ve encountered… in terms of lower class power structures within America today.

Potential Solutions

The foremost solution to this dilemma... I believe is rewarding employees regardless of their career occupation or economic status/job. Whereby, often times workers in lower class arena's such as fast food are looked at as inferior to their superiors regardless of what they do! So, what I would first seek to reform is attention to detail… and pay grades that take into account exemplary employees even if that employee specializes at the cash register or the drive through window.

Furthermore, in many instances… this could be remedied simply by paying more attention to lower level employees at the corporate level and then by rewarding excellence regardless of what field an employee works. This could be accomplished through new corporate policies which underline the issues themselves and set forth increased awareness about people's willingness to hurt subordinates but also from higher ups and executives who might not lack the confidence to reward lower level employees. In conclusion, I would like to see management that does not hesitate to promote lower class employees regardless of whether or not those employees work at an unenviable position and without the need for approval from potentially jealous, "near equals," in the workplace.

-William Larsen, Civilians News Founder