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Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

Because you basically need a college degree to have a decent chance of getting a job at above the minimum wage. Semi-skilled labour in places like factories has gone and isn't coming back and jobs that didn't used to require a degree are demanding them because why the hell not?

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Something like 28% of American adults have college degrees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...

0.8% of Americans over 25 are earning minimum wage.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/01/30/almost...

That leaves 70% of American adults do not have college degrees and are earning above minimum wage. Of course, depending on how one defines things those numbers can go up and down, but it's not a stretch to say that most workers do not have college degrees and earn above minimum wage.

One last observation - starting your own business does not require a college degree. (Probably the most famous of those is Microsoft, and Microsoft has hired programmers without degrees.)

That you quoted the percentage of total population rather than the percentage of total workers suggests that you're trying to spin-doctor. The same link calls $9.50 "well over" the minimum wage of $7.25... conveniently ignoring that $9.50/hour is still a shit wage. That link clings to the literal minimum wage like a limpet - notice how it never tells us the numbers of people barely above minimum wage? Earn $7.50/hour? Well you're too well off to be part of those statistics...

The author then has the gall to accuse others of using selective statistics to make their argument, and even throws out the 'class warfare' canard.

I did believe I was accounting for spin doctoring by increasing the 0.8% to 20% when I acknowledged different definitions and said "most".

Your link that you are taking as minimum wage doesn't account for people trivially above minimum wage. Yes, 'most people earn above minimum wage', but that's not the spirit of the discussion - someone earning 25c/hour more than minimum wage is still earning a crap wage. There are significantly more people on a crap wage than "the numbers go up and down a bit from 0.8%".

Similarly, that link only takes the federal wage into account - of course it's going to be abnormally low, given there are states with higher minimums. For example, Washington state has a minimum wage of $9.47/hour. A minimum wage worker in Washington won't show up in a study claiming $7.25 is the minimum wage.

Also, where do you mention 20%?

"Most" means >50%. 70 - 50 = 20

If it's such a small number of people, is there a problem with substantially increasing the minimum wage?

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