Why Increasing Minimum Wage is Meaningless

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well, "jerking oneself up by one's own bootstraps" is no answer either. that's just right-wing claptrap.

I wouldn't call raising the minimum wage irresponsible handouts and printing of money.
If done thoughtfully, it can be more about fairness and wealth distribution. And allowing people to earn enough to survive without relying on handouts.

I agree with funeralempire, it would be nice if governments put a cap on how much bonuses were paid out to executives who literally do nothing to add value to a company.

Perhaps instead of buying a luxury villa on the Swiss Alps or a yacht in Monaco these executives make do with their mansions in the wealthy suburbs they live in. Instead of importing $1000 bottles of champagne they buy regular wine like everyone else.

Hardship for some doesn't quite compare with those who live hand to mouth and who are one paycheck away from losing their chidren to social services and living on the street.

I feel like I'm seeing a lot of what I call the "human right" fallacy here, the idea that if we declare something to be a human right, it somehow becomes exempt from market forces and the laws of supply and demand, e.g. housing or healthcare. In this case, there is a real problem when you arbitrarily set the minimum wage above the economic value of the work, as businesses are not there to lose money by paying $15/hr for work that only generates $9/hr in revenue, so they eliminate those positions and automate or force other workers to pick up the slack, and no amount of slogans or shaming can change that simple economic equation. A much better solution is to raise the marginal tax rate on high earners and use the revenue to directly subsidize low earners through a negative income tax or similar mechanism, but that is a much harder political lift than simply hiking the minimum wage, and so people ignore it and moralize about greedy business owners.

There is mutual benefit in keeping people working and owning a home though. People who fall through the cracks can no longer pay tax and become an added burden to social services. They might also turn to crime,

henry ford was smart enough to get the importance of paying his workers a living wage, at least in the beginning. he knew they had to make enough money to buy the products he was selling. if too many employers think "it doesn't matter if my workers can't afford my products, there are always middle-class suckers to sell to," they may well find that they've run out of suckers before long.

If you can't pay your employees a fair wage. You can't afford to run a business.

He was somewhat of a visionary for what he planned for the Ford Motor and (yes) he was ahead of his time in terms of employment practices.

In theory yes, In practice, hundreds of businesses operate using under aged staff or staff on overseas visas

Henry Ford’s workers made about twice the average wage. He paid workers $30 a week, $5 a day when the average wage was about $15 a week.

What is a "fair wage"?

Yeah, seriously.

fair would be what the minimum wage [federal] would have been had it kept up with inflation. as it is, it only has a small fraction of its original purchasing power back in the day. they say if it had kept up with inflation, it'd be about $22/hour nowadays.

I'm not disputing that, what I'm saying is that you can't bend the rules of economics, i.e. force businesses to pay more for labor than it is worth to them, in order to make those things happen, those are more issues for the state to address directly through something like a negative income tax, as I previously mentioned. This is one of those funny areas where I'm much further left than people expect, I'm not a "nationalize the means of production" guy by any means, but I'm very much in favor of wealth redistribution, particularly at the margins.

How would that be fair if the job in question only generated $10/hr in productivity for the employer? Why is it the job of the employer to see to the welfare of the citizenry, isn't that a job for the state?

Problem is, people in retail and service industries won't be able to produce $22 worth of work in an hour. A single one won't make and serve enough $4 lunches to cover that wage. If businesses were faced with such wages they would replace those workers with machines. That would leave only people who can service the machines, and being skilled labor would be out of reach for those who used to work at minimum wage.

Minimum wage is unskilled labor, that's really the issue. Those people just aren't worth more.