The argument that minimum wage increases hurt workers by getting them fired is silly really, given the inelastic quality of minimum wage labour. There is no evidence that hikes actually have much of an unemployment cost at all.

Really, not too many establishments hire that many unnecessary employees in the first place. It would cut into profits and is economically irrational. Moreover, if they did attempt to, it would decrease product and service quality and they would suffer consumer backlash.

If you can't afford to pay your workers decent wages, then you shouldn't be operating a business in the first place.

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I think minimum wage should just be enough to float and survive with the basic needs, so that there is no desire that minimum wage is "good enough live" (unless you're doing a high school summer job or something) only "good enough to squeak by."

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

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Some type of entertainment should be factored into it, given life would be unbearably dreary. Entertainment of some kind is even factored into welfare. A good book on the topic was Nickle & Dimed. It was really shocking regarding low wage labour.

It's not even as if they are all lazy. Most aren't. It's hard to live on low wage. You need multiple jobs just to survive.

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Much entertainment can be found for free if you know where to look. The public library (at least here) will rent out books, movies, and music all for free, with low late fees compared to movie stores, and their stuff is not all that old, some 2002, 2003 stuff. Though I think basic cable is more than sufficent form of entertainment.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

The economy grows when the population has enough money to buy things. If the population is too poor to buy things, and only the rich can make purchases, the country fails. Trickle down economics does not work. Bottom up is the only way to have a healthy society.

You ignore basic market principles in your analysis. You ignore the threat of unionization of skilled (and unskilled for that matter) workers. You ignore competition among INDUSTRIES, not just businesses, and you ignore geography (we're a large country, plenty of industries and businesses within them). Your points are not based in reality, and were only true during a period of time when capitalism was PROTECTED by the government, not during a completely free market. Hell, MULTIPLE times throughout the 1800's did the POLICE break up striking workers at the behest of business owners. When the government REMOVES itself from the labor industry, it flourishes just like any other free industry.

So am I taking advantage of Sears when I negotiate for a lower price on a washing machine? Employers seek to maximize gain just like ANY OTHER ENTITY. When skilled laborers join together, prices NORMALIZE, and everybody benefits. Why do you think iron workers make $75k a year?

You really do have a simplistic understanding of macroeconomics. Yes, the income tax is slavery because it uses force to take wages from the worker. What do we call people who are forced to work against their will?

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"Bring me that horizon".

There is no threat of unionization of workers when the companies are free to band together aswell. The only thing that a union can hold hostage is the workers, and cause a MAD policy (the workers lose their jobs, the business owner loses workers and so the company closes down). Who suffers? The workers who no have no job and won't get another job after a stunt like that, or the business man that can liquidate everything and have tens of millions of dollars for himself? I wonder. You're points aren't based in reality, they are based in theory, which has yet to show to be true in the senerio that has been described.

History shows otherwise.

No one is forced to work, are you kinding me? You can go the whole year without working a day, and guess what your income tax is, $0.00, wow that is a lot of force. It's not slavery since you are paying for something, however I guess I'm a slave to Fred Meyers since when I take food from them, I am forced to leave them money or get arrested.

Damn that oppressive Fred Meyers.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

SOunds like the more the government regulates small business, the less benefits that business will offer it's employees. So they raise minimim wage...an employers will offset it by increasing employee contributions for benefits.

It's like the Macy's White Day sale. They jack up the price 30 percent, and then give you a 20 % savings. They actually end up making 10% more on you on thoses special "sale" days.

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How can a businessman liquidate his holdings if there is nobody to BUY said holdings? How can he spend his money if nobody is producing goods and services? You live in Candyland OE. Unions have been amazingly more effective and garnering higher wages than the government could ever hope to be. One of the friends of the family I knew growing up is an iron worker (master welder). He's a member of the union, and pulls down $75k a year performing his SKILL. Not bad for somebody who only has a GED under his belt huh?

Matter of fact, UAW is a similar story. Hell, now you've got guys pulling down $40k a year to work on an ASSEMBLY LINE. Yeah, those workers didn't benefit at all from unionization. Oh, and the oil cartels, they don't pay their workers well at all. I mean, the free housing overseas, the $50k+ jobs for rig workers, it's a real hell-hole.

Thank GOD for the minimum wage. Afterall, without it, oil companies would pay their workers $2 a day......

Actually no. The minimum wage cannot account for the average household American income being over $40k. Unionization is to THANK for better pay, not the government. As I noted, the nineteenth century was characterized by government PROTECTION of cartels and capitalists. If you completely eliminate the government from the picture, the worker/employer relationship becomes equal again.



Clearly my point when straight over your head. You work to support yourself, and the government, on threat of arrest and imprisonment, demands a significant portion of your wages for the federal treasury, all of which is consumed by interest paid on the aggregate national debt before ONE PENNY is spent on actual programs. Thus, the government takes your labor from you (your wages) and provides nothing in exchange for them other than your continued freedom. That's slavery.

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"Bring me that horizon".

Unions were easily destroyed by businesses by simply firing them, going around them, or hiring their own paramilitaries to break them up. It wasn't until the government protected them and followed up by creating laws regarding worker treatment that things actually changed.

Unions often lost. The reason why the government supported big businesses was that the businesses had a "legitimate" claim to their rights being violated by workers who sat-in, struck, or inhibited transportation.

The worker does not exist on an even playing field with the owner.

If we had no laws at all protecting workers, we would soon be just like the third world countries where businesses now send their shoppes abroad to be made by people who get paid pennies an hour. Big business will turn YOU into a third world wage serf. The only reason they can do what they do with third world sweatshops is that they have no even playing field there either. You must work to survive, and in the absence of worker protections, they will pay you the least amount they can in the worst conditions they can while still getting a product out of you. They literally have nothing else. To refuse to work under horrid conditions means they starve to death. That's not a bargain at all.

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