The Minimum Wage

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What do you think about minimum wage laws?

I think the Federal Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, is this too low? Too high? Why is it necessary?

If there are people willing to do something for $4 dollars an hour why not let them?

in my state its $9.10

its around to ensure people make enough to survive, at $4 an hour you'd die

By not setting a minimum wage, the corporations/employers could pressure people into working for less money.
It exists to protect the workers against pressure from the employers, and instead put some pressure on the employers.

Now, I am aware of the libertarian "arguments" that the minimum wage would only keep people off some jobs. But that is why I believe in Unemployment Benefits,
that should make up the minimum wage. The Welfare State and Minimum Wage should put pressure on the employers to make life better for the lower classes, so is my opinion.

Good luck trying to have any kind of functional economy in your little Stalinist utopia. Businessmen and entrepreneurs will flee en masse, and destroy what wealth they can't take.

I edited this out of my post.

Btw., I am not a Stalinist. Stalin was evil, I don't want evilness.

I admit 'Stalinist' is used loosely and humorously, but your posts detailing your loose standards of ethics and blatant statism (like proposals of using forced starvation as a form of re-education to coerce support of the welfare state, for example) make it difficult to refrain from said comparison, even as a sarcastic joke.

It makes sense, in a civilized society, to set a standard below which no-one should have to fall.

Some observations...



Sources:
https://www.deakin.edu.au/buslaw/aef/wo ... _14eco.pdf (page 33)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cep ... nimum-wage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnel_plot

... or, in plain English:

- The majority of the published scientific studies find that raising the minimum wage will decrease employment (negative elasticity as predicted by standard economic theory)
- However, the studies with the highest statistical accuracy (large sample sizes) find either no effect or a very limited negative effect on employment
- There appears to be publication bias; compared to the (expected, at least) more accurate large studies, significantly more smaller studies showing negative than positive effects have been published

A few reasons why no clear empirical consensus can be found (certainly not exhaustive):
- The simultaneous presence of a sub-minimum wage for youth workers may complicate the correlation between wages and employment
- Employers may already have an incentive to pay (some) workers more than the minimum wage (Efficiency wages)
- There are different types of minimum wage systems - legislated (like in the US) or collective bargaining (like in Denmark) - which may respond differently to economic changes and be more/less flexible

Furthermore, in the US only 5.2 percent of hourly-paid workers of 16 years of age or older earned a salary at or below the US federal minimum wage.

Here is an additional breakdown by category:

- Men: 3.9 %
- Women: 6.4 %
- Aged 25 years and above: 3.2 %
- Aged 16 to 19 years: 22.8 %
- Full-time workers: 2.4 %
- Part-time workers: 12.6 %

Source:
http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011tbls.htm

Oh my GOD!

Not this again.... raising the minimum wage would be a disaster.

Don't you guys remember what happened when Henry Ford doubled the wages of his workers?

He went out of business and crashed the economy of the United States, dooming that country to permanent 3rd world status!

Oh, wait.....

I like how a literal fascist was a better person than 90% of corporate executives.

Not if you hold down two jobs and do without sleep.

ruveyn

Here in the UK it's about £6.31, but then there is also a living wage I think, but I don't know what that is.

Doubling the minimum wage and giving the cashier at McDonald's 18 dollars per hour would be stupid. The reason why the US is among the countries with the most college graduates, is because education actually pays of there.

The problem we have here in the UK is that the minimum wage is set too low to make it worth peoples time to go to work. It set so that if employers want to take advantage, then after the costs of living have been deducted you may as well remain on welfare.

Its currently at £6.10 an hour but it needs to go up to at least £10 an hour in this country IMO.

No.
Skilled workers in america are continually getting their wages slashed and spend the rest of their working lives paying back their college debt.

Many skilled workers such as pilots are subsiding on food stamps.

The empirical research shows that the minimum wage is simply ineffective at reducing or alleviating poverty.

While there is some debate about whether the minimum wage reduces employment or reduces the growth rate of employment, it simply isn't a good idea.

Some light related reading and working papers:

http://www.nber.org/custom?client=test3 ... nimum+wage

EDIT:

On similar note, I think a guaranteed income system would be more effective. I would propose abolishing the minimum wage and creating a guaranteed income system where low-income people receive a monthly cheque from the government. I would further propose that most, if not all, welfare programmes--like food stamps, disability, unemployment, etc.--be repealed and rolled under the guaranteed income system. It would essentially be like social security expansion.

Last edited by CSBurks on 08 Feb 2014, 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.