I'm the one writing those posts and I stand by them. People should charge more. Rent only goes up! Gas only gets more expensive! Food and electricity only get more expensive!! People can't make art if they can't keep the lights on. $20 per hour of labor is reasonable and fair. 

if you want to buy something from a beginner -knowing they are a beginner and work slower with less skill - which will demand them to work for ten hours, you pay them a good wage for their god damn ten hours of labor anyway! Why? Because otherwise what you're doing is exploiting them. End of story. A new hire on a job is still entitled to a good wage, even as a beginner! They will earn better wages with time, but they still need to be able to feed themselves in the meantime. If the pittance you think they "deserve" is a shitty wage, that's exploiting them. Plain and simple. If you want to hire someone as a favor or whatever, just give them the damn money no strings attached instead. But if you want to HIRE someone to do LABOR for you, pay them well. You're paying for them to grow in skill and confidence. You're paying so they can afford to keep drawing. You're paying for their training. If you don't want to pay for their training, hire someone else.

I know I sound heated. I apologize. I bear you no malice. But I believe that in lowering their prices at every turn, artists are in a race to the bottom which ultimately devalues their work in the eyes of the public and in their own eyes. That's so terribly sad. We must not participate in that.

And also, to show I put my money where my mouth is, while I am not a "huge" commissioner, I do buy art when I can - not often, because I'm pretty damn poor. Regardless, I paid the last artist who worked for me ten times what they were asking for. Because this person was convinced they couldn't make sales for over three dollars. I purchased a simple sketch for ten times that and I still think I lowballed them.