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Comment by wing-_-nuts | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't go that far. I think he's just reflecting typical blue collar culture which tends to be more conservative

> In April 2021, when asked about the debate about raising the minimum wage, Rowe said, "I worry that the path to a skilled trade can be compromised when you offer an artificially high wage for, I hate the expression, but an unskilled job."

Very much an advocate for the working man, there.

There's more to that quote if you click through to the source. Before it was this: “I want everybody who works hard and plays fair to prosper," Rowe said. "I want everybody to be able to support themselves. But if you just pull the money out of midair you're going to create other problems.”

“There is a ladder of success that people climb,” he continued. “Some of those jobs that are out there for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, in my view, they're simply not intended to be careers. They're not intended to be full-time jobs. They're rungs on a ladder."

"[Those jobs] are ways for people to get experience in the workforce doing a thing that might not necessarily pay you as much as you'd like, but nevertheless serves a real purpose,"

And picking up where it left off: "So to me, the brightest line needs to be drawn between skilled and unskilled work. We need to encourage more people to learn a skill that's actually in demand."

Given that the minimum wage was last raised in 2009, and even until then was always raised in arrears, I'd argue more that it's irresponsible of business owners to not be saving for an expected increase at some point in the near future (hopefully). It's not "pulling money out of midair" - these employers have been able to effectively "underpay" employees since then.

> Some of those jobs that are out there for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, in my view, they're simply not intended to be careers. They're not intended to be full-time jobs.

This is a huge conservative talking point - the federal minimum wage was intended to be a liveable wage, not "for teenagers/high schoolers/part timers" - this whole spin of "these jobs are not meant to be liveable" is a wholly after-the-fact revisionism.

fulltime jobs that are not livable should not exist.

jobs that are not meant to be livable should never be fulltime.

people stuck in a fulltime non-livable job don't have the time or resources to upgrade.

No, he doesn't. He straight up attacked Bernie on the College for All saying that we all don't need college, which is true. But the College for All bill included non-college related education and secondary education like trade schools and training programs. But he decided to ignore all of that to squeeze his head up Trumps ass and bitch about a program designed to give America blue collar people a fighting chance.

It's possible that College for All was a bad bill overall but happened to have a few good parts.

e.g. CANCELS $1.6 TRILLION IN STUDENT DEBT FOR 45 MILLION AMERICANS

The fact sheet says it would pay for all of this (in total $2.2 trillion) by taxing Wall Street speculation. So, somehow create a tax that represents almost 10% of total US GDP to cancel student debt and allow all future college to be almost free.

I can't imagine any world where that would actually happen. Bernie is living in the clouds.

This isn't giving anyone a fighting chance because it's not an actual, feasible solution.

Ref: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/college-fo...

> the College for All bill included non-college related education and secondary education like trade schools and training programs

This is not commonly known. If they had emphasized trade school and training, I feel like it would have had much less pushback from the right.

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