There are definitions and I believe another commenter in this thread has defined it very solidly about poverty.
There will always be service sector jobs, this is the argument luddites were having in 1815 (I don't want to get into this as it is distracting from my main point).
We should be ensuring that anyone putting in 40 hours a week should be able to support a family. The wealth is there to be able to create this society (not saying it's easy not saying there are not problems).
Support a family? How many kids should I be able to support on my unskilled 40 hours/week?
Look, I might be convinced that minimum wage is too low, though I'm much more inclined to leave that as a matter for the employee and employer to reach agreement on.
But if you have no marketable skills and the only work you can get is entry-level minimum wage, you have no business starting a family as the sole income-earner. None.
That’s a rather eugenic standpoint. I think the argument is actual children are part of those family’s, it’s up to society how to deal with it. Currently we subsidize business and families, but perhaps we could remove the business subsidy.
What does it mean to support a family? Is getting them sheltered, clothed and well fed good enough? I think it is way easier to achieve today than in almost any other time in a human history, even for the low earners.
Restaurants are a part of the service sector. A service job does not imply that it is attractive. And they differ in requirements. The well paid ones get more and more complicated and hence, proportionally to the whole population, less and less people will be able to qualify for them.
Finding shelter is exponential Harder now than any time in my memory.
We have a homelessness problem that it unpresidented. I would bet more people are now than anytime in history. (Pioneers could camp when they were tired. Cavemen weren't ticketed for sleeping under a ledge.)
Hell--30 years ago certain states were still offering homesteads. There's not an inch of land in the USA that live for free. (BLM land requires you to move every two weeks. Only some BLM land us open to camping.)
Try taking a nap in your closest park, or open field. You will get poked by a angry cop. You will understand loitering/trespass laws innately.
People, especially in service jobs, are living on top of each other. Why was the Corona virus so prevelant in the hispanic communities?
As to your previous statement, "We all can't be Coders." I have personally know three older Programmers. Two died because they aged out of the industry, and became homeless. The other is currently being harassed in Richardson Bay by Sausalito cops, and the coast guard, over a dispute of the seaworthiness of his sailboat.
One was Jim Fox. A huge contributor to Word Star. He ended up in San Rafael wearing a fuzzy Penguin outfit begging. He died a few years ago.
You might be one of those Service applicants in a decade?
(I'm not going to debate this guy. My biggest worry post Covid is the huge increase in homelessness we are going to see. The government needs to open up any excess federal, state, and local to to free camping. We need to put up tent cities. I feel it's going to get very ugly.)
At least in the US, that's just not true. Rent and healthcare costs (which together are the majority costs for low income people) have risen way faster than inflation since the 1970s.
There will always be service sector jobs, this is the argument luddites were having in 1815 (I don't want to get into this as it is distracting from my main point).
We should be ensuring that anyone putting in 40 hours a week should be able to support a family. The wealth is there to be able to create this society (not saying it's easy not saying there are not problems).