4.
On-the-Job Training
Besides costing low-skilled people job opportunities, an even greater
social injustice resulting from minimum wage legislation is the
destruction of on-the-job training. Most employees make wage gains
on the job not due to formal training but from working and proving
themselves to their employers. But for low-skilled workers whose labor
is not valued at the legally required minimum wage there is no job
from which to gain training. Low-skilled workers need to be able to
start at a wage which matches their skill level so that they can then
make the same gains on the job from working and proving themselves to
their employers that higher-skilled workers enjoy. As an analogy, the
minimum wage is like knocking out the lowest rungs of a ladder. For tall
people who can step up to the fourth rung readily this is no hardship.
But for those who are only capable of reaching the first rung to begin
their climb the missing rungs are a tremendous burden.
Higher-skilled workers (and those sympathetic with the notion of minimum
wage legislation) need to be understanding of the plight of those less
capable than themselves. As a general principle, people must have the
opportunity to be bad at a task in order to ever become good at it.
This applies in the job market as well as all other endeavors in life.
An analogy would be an eight-year-old wanting to learn to play baseball.
If the coach first set a minimum ability above this player's beginning
skill level such as requiring the successful fielding of 6 out of
10 grounders, the new player obviously would not qualify for further
practice and would never become a good baseball player.
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