As with most issues, there are costs and benefits with the minimum wage. It appears that Norway, Austria and Germany, amongst others, do not see a balance in favor of the benefits. Unsurprisingly their unemployment rates are low. Were I useless to an employer (as once I was) I would rather work for some wage (as I did) rather than exist (and get used to existing) on handouts from the wealth created by other tax payers' work.
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> It appears that Norway, Austria and Germany, amongst others, do not see a balance in favor of the benefits.
Germany just approved a minimum wage.
> Unsurprisingly their unemployment rates are low.
I have never bought this argument. A business hires employees because it has some amount of work it needs to be done. The amount of work to be done doesn't change as a function of how much workers are paid.
Arguing that the minimum wage causes meaningful increase in unemployment is just as silly as arguing that paying CEOs huge salaries does.
You can argue that a minimum wage makes things more expensive: that's likely true, but I'm okay with that.
In any case, if a business requires paying its employees pitiful wages in order to be profitable, that business is unsustainable and should fail.
> I would rather work for some wage (as I did) rather than exist (and get used to existing) on handouts from the wealth created by other tax payers' work.
When wages fall so low that workers can't reasonably afford to live, they might as well be unemployed: there is no functional difference.
I agree though that we as taxpayers should not be required to subsidize corporations unwilling to pay employees livable wages. The solution is a higher minimum wage.
The amount of work to be done doesn't change as a function of how much workers are paid.
Whether the work can be profitably done certainly can change.
Arguing that the minimum wage causes meaningful increase in unemployment is just as silly as arguing that paying CEOs huge salaries does.
Could we make it $50/hour with no employment effects?
You can argue that a minimum wage makes things more expensive: that's likely true, but I'm okay with that.
Which means the minimum wage is indirect welfare that redistributes money to low-skilled workers by taking it from some combination of business owners, employees, and customers. That's strictly less efficient than just giving low-income workers extra money, especially since many of the customers now facing higher prices are themselves poor.
I agree though that we as taxpayers should not be required to subsidize corporations unwilling to pay employees livable wages.
This has never made any sense to me. If Walmart pays a cashier $10/hour, they're helping him more than you are, but somehow they're the bad guy.
> Could we make it $50/hour with no employment effects?
No, of course not. Nobody is asking for that.
> Which means the minimum wage is indirect welfare that redistributes money to low-skilled workers by taking it from some combination of business owners, employees, and customers.
That's a stretch... If raising the minimum wage caused a dollar-for-dollar increase in the price of everything then yes, but that would only occur in a business who's only major expense is unskilled labor, and even there it wouldn't be equal to the rise in wage. And for a low-income person, housing is a major expense that has a negligible labor component built into it.
> If Walmart pays a cashier $10/hour, they're helping him more than you are, but somehow they're the bad guy.
If people at Wal-Mart work and don't have enough money, and then they get welfare in order to make ends meet, that's you and I subsidizing Wal-Mart. I would rather that extra money for the worker come out of Wal-Mart's profits than your and my taxes.
There is a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment.
We already have a bunch of automation technologies where machines and software can do a better job than a low-wage person can, simply the people currently are cheaper even at USA minimum wage.
Once the minimum wage rises above that cost (or the tech drops in price), those jobs will be gone for good.
> There is a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment.
This is not an accepted fact. There's a variety of scholarly literature that argues both sides of this issue.
> Those jobs will be gone for good.
That's an entirely different problem.
It's not an entirely different problem, the point I'm trying to make is that this single factor causes a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment.
Currently, it makes sense for a poor person somewhere to make a living by sewing sneakers - because that person is cheap. It makes sense for people to work on data entry, it makes sense for people to flip burgers, it makes sense to do a lot of things - but only while the people remain so cheap.
There are many jobs already that are impractical to do in USA, because of the minimum wage - they get done either by automation or by someone in much poorer countries, but never again by a US worker. If minimum wage goes from $10 to $15, then more types of jobs will join that.
The 'entirely different' problem arrives when the true market rate of low skilled labor becomes negative - i.e., an automated process generally costs less than a manual process even if the workers would work for free or for basic shelter/sustenance (order of magnitude less than first world would call a livable wage). I don't want this, but it seems rather likely that it will happen within my lifetime.
> The amount of work to be done doesn't change as a function of how much workers are paid.
It probably does. But at least the number of business do change with salaries; I don't expect the relation to be monotonic, but it almost certainly have domains of negative rate of change.