Thought I'd devote a thread to it, by itself....apologies if this is an old debate rehash.

Minimum Wage. It wasn't raised for ten years or so under the Republicans, now the Dems raised it. Correlation/causation regarding inflation now? Should we even have a minumum wage, or just let the individual worker "shop" for the best terms? Is work a situation that even has that much fluidity of supply/demand? Do workers at the lowest end of the scale deserve/require protections that try to ensure a reasonable quality of life? How much real effect does the minimum wage have on profitability or inflation?

I know little of economics beyond Econ101, I'll admit, so I'd love to hear a discussion on this.

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

The main problem with this perverse notion of minimum wage is that it artificially inflates the value of menial jobs and artificially devalues more skilled jobs since employers don't generally raise the wages of higher paid jobs to maintain the pay difference between those jobs and the minimum wage jobs.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

I would've voted to leave it where it is for now if that was a choice. Salary cap?

Doh, forgot that option....but we can't leave it indefinitely, can we?

And re: salary cap, I have actually heard people talking about it, odd as it sounds....thought I'd toss it in there for discussion.

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

I'm in commission sales. The idea of a cap sounds terrible. My previous 30 years before sales were operations, 26 of which were in management. I started at min. wage when I got out of the Marines. That was my reward. I was lucky to work for companies that paid based on merit not scale. I've never had a salary cap and my employers always stressed that point.

I have heard it discussed more in context of multi-millionaires, like CEOs, by folks interested in redressing what's seen as a gross imbalance in salaries and damaging social stratification.

Some say it's gotten obscenely out of hand and it's wrecking society, others say it's an American way of life to maximize profit. Just thought it was worth mentioning an idea about maximums in contrast to minimums....

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

Like I said before, I was lucky.

Eliminate minimum wage laws entirely, they're counter-intuitive to advancing the poor.

If I own a business, and I can afford $10/hour for employees, even if I can find two people will to work for $5/hour, I can't hire them, and must cut my labor IN HALF because the government thinks it knows what's best for not only my business, but for the pocketbook of the workers.

If I CHOOSE to work for pennies a day, an employer has the right to contract my labor. The government has no authority or place in regulating labor.

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"Bring me that horizon".

It's for preventing cartels and a lack of choice. Choices only work when there are choices to make. If you're choices are $0.10/hr, $0.10/hr, $0.10/hr, $0.10/hr, and $0.10/hr, then you're SOL. When there are no wage laws, every employer will cut wages on the lower workers, and effectively prevent them from going anyware else to find better wages (since everywhere will still only pay ****). So the worker becomes stuck with the option of, work for $0.10/hr, or not work and get $0.00/hr. That's how it was back before labor laws, when working 60 hours a week was part time, and most poor children had to drop out of school in order work so that there would be food on the table for them.

The Government has every right, and requirement to ensure that it's people are not being taken advantage of by companies. I find it funny that some people want to send our workers back to the lifestyles of the 19th century, yet call income tax "slavery."

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

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

Good point, OE.

I think the arguments against the minimum wage would be more effective if there weren't millions of jobs that paid that absolutel bae bones minimum. That leads me to believe that if the companies weren't required to pay at least that, they'd love to pay far less. This also leads me to think that companies look to hacking the benefits of their own workforce to obtain slightly greater profitability. Burning the village to save it. Most companies I have ever worked for considered us all completely expendable, replaceable commodities.

That said, there is also no more reciprocal "loyalty" on the part of workers, either, who agitate for greater flexibility of movement. Which is great for the workers, but leaves the company pretty hosed -- giving them training and benefits, only to see them leave en masse once some competitor with slightly higher wages comes along. Used to be you went to work for Ford or US Steel, and you had a job for life.

I have no idea what an "ideal" minimum wage would be, but it's pretty obvious that the American Dream isn't gonna happen on what it is now. At least we need to tie the min wage in to inflation indexes or something, or some other flexible indicator. I keep reading stories about how "real wages" have declined.....

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....