This is economics 101. Price floors cause surpluses while price ceilings cause shortages. Unemployment is a surplus of labor. You don't need a PhD in economics to figure out whether a minimum wage causes unemployment.
Low unemployment doesn't mean your economy is successful. The median income while excluding the extremes of a bell curve is the best way to see where your people are at.
@@52000rightwing People aren't numbers on a spreadsheet to be used as you please. We are not slaves and deserve more than just to be equated to another product.
Gart, great question. It's because it limits the ability of uneducated and unskilled people to sell their labor at a price of their choosing. If you have no skills and no education, the only way you can get skills is by selling yourself short to get the skills that command a higher wage. If you have a price ceiling like the minimum wage they are not able to sell their labor as easily.
"Citation Needed" in my experience people sell their labor for whatever they can get without a minimum wage it's not difficult to see wage theft become more commonplace. Without a minimum wage what is to stop employers to adjust the wage on a whim, accounting software is more than capable of making those adjustments. A minimum wage would allow for racists to pay unskilled workers less for the same Labour as others solely on the basis of race. The education system needs improvement in the case of unskilled labor as much of their jobs are being automated. Instead of delaying the inevitable why not increase OJT?
The mechanism that stops employers from adjusting wages are the employees themselves. If your pay constantly being adjusted and you were unhappy you would find another place of employment. Now, this brings up a good point on market failures. That is, if there is only, lets say, a single coal company in town that the majority of people work at and there are no other jobs to go to then that single company has monopoly and can be a price setter for wages. This is a bad outcome of unbalanced competition in the marketplace. The market failures in these situations are a strong argument FOR the minimum wage. However, with enough competition this line of reasoning becomes invalid. On the topic of race or any other form of bigotry including sexism. If an employer wishes to discriminate for whatever reason despite the person in question having the same skills as the white person, the employer then has to bear the cost of doing so. This is due to the fact that if he can hire a black person at with the same skills as a white person for less and does not do so because of prejudice, the employer has just imposed additional cost on themselves. What the minimum wage does in effect is reduce that cost to 0. Meaning now they do not pay a penalty for being prejudice.
"Citation Needed" so if I read you correctly having a minimum wage is bad because it makes the cost of discrimination 0. No actually because before the minimum wage discrimination was rampant. To be fair afterwards it was also rampant but it opened the door for equality in the workplace. There is also generally a lack of consequences for the discrimination. Look at the tech industry they get billions but have been found to discriminate Workers need jobs more than employers do for example, when I was hired the wage was 15/hr to me that's great. However I later learned that the site a couple years before was paying 20+/hr despite the decline in pay we still had people lining up for the job.
The argument for minimum wage in this video entirely disregards the economic benefits that abolishing it could have. They assume that abolishing it automatically leads to a lower standard of living. It sounds sincere, but is actually a very shallow argument.
Note Bernstein from 15:04-15:42. His "common sense" argument is the following: (1) The minimum wage has not been abolished in the 75 years since it was enacted. (2) In fact, the minimum wage has been adopted and expanded by multiple states during this time. (3) Therefore, the minimum wage is good and beneficial. The conclusion simply does not follow from the premises. This is called the fallacy of appeal to the people (argumentum ad populum): if many people believe it, it is true. This is clearly false as a valid argument. Try this reasoning on another issue in American history: (1) From the beginning of the slave trade to the American Colonies in 1619 until the abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the number of slaves increased continually, with more states and more and slave owners acquiring slaves. (4) Pro-slavery advocates sought to expand slavery into the western territories in the mid 1800s. (3) Up through the Civil War and even Reconstruction more and more southern slave owners, Congressmen, and even many religious leaders fiercely defended slavery as being beneficial to the slaves, the natural order of humanity, and even approved of by God. (4) Therefore, slavery was good, beneficial, and true. You can see the nonsensical nature of this logic. Just because many people adopt some policy, extend its influence, or believe a certain thing does not make it true. The same is true for the MW. Similar invalid arguments could be run for Nazi Germany and geocentrism to show that even if the vast majority of a population believe something that does not make it true. There must be solid economic, historical, and well-researched arguments on the MW and this is not one of them. This is just one example of many problems with Bernstein's and Kornbluh's arguments.
It's great to see the comments on the side of reason. It seems that you can tell which side of the left | right politics is right by which side uses the most facts and numbers.
here's the killer..... sure you are an employee at your job, but you are an employer to your plumber, landlord, mechanic, lawnmower, daycare, grocer, doctor, computer repair guy, dentist and and I could go on. If you want a minimum wage for your job, then why don't we set a minimum price for all those people YOU employ??? When will we learn to give up trying to control the choices other people make. if you're willing to take 7.24 instead of the 7.25 set minimum for a job, what's wrong with that?. and if a company is willing to pay you 3 million a year... let them.. why is everyone so bent on controlling the choices of others? are you not happy with welfare, ssi and obamacare? now you want to control how much I can pay people who work for me.. oh well, that's why I hire Filipinas overseas. That's like someone setting the minimum price of socks.. or setting a maximum price for cars... what is wrong with people... its all voluntary and all employees to one company are employers to dozens of other companies.
***** Price controls definitely have unintended consequences. But, your assertion that price controls lead to higher prices is putting the cart before the horse. Price controls were established because prices were already too high, and the markets were signalling a trend of increasing prices.
***** You're talking about San Francisco, which is a Mecca for IT companies. As IT companies move to and are started in San Francisco, they bring highly paid workers. This increases Demand, which increases prices. Is it possible that price controls are actually driving up prices? Sure. But it is also possible that the influx of new workers is serving to drive up prices. It is possible that the increase in prices is due to a combination of jobs and price controls. Its also possible that the price controls are keeping the prices from increasing too quickly because they provide cheaper options.
"When will we learn to give up trying to control the choices other people make. if you're willing to take 7.24 instead of the 7.25 set minimum for a job, what's wrong with that?." In economic terms it's called a race to the bottom.
"Lowering your own personal wage rate may be the only key to unlocking future opportunities for higher paying jobs" That's exactly what the wealthy want you to believe, but it just isn't true. Raising the MW applies to everyone so it doesn't affect anyone's competitive advantage. Get rid of it, and every individual will be encouraged to lower their wages, lowering wages for everyone at the lower end of the scale, and increasing profits at the top.
Minimum wage needs to be abolished as it hurts the poorest workers. What many people who like to tout studies that say increasing the minimum wage doesn't affect unemployment neglect to mention is that after 6 months of being unemployed you're no longer counted even if you still are unemployed. Think about it if you're a guy with a spotty job history no good references and possibly a criminal record due to poor choices you've made you're gonna have a lot harder of a time finding an employer willing to take a chance on you at $15 an hour since the employer has candidates without those negative aspects to choose from while at $7 an hour the employer is mostly dealing with applicants in the same boat as you. We see this scenario happening in real life. In NYC for example the young black male unemployment rate is damn near 50% for those reasons and no you can't say I'm racist for saying that because I'm a black male myself.
+Yewon2001 It's no accident that nearly ALL the cities were blacks are doing the best are in the south. With lower entry into the workforce barriers. www.forbes.com/pictures/edgl45gkhj/no-4-baltimore-md/
+Yewon2001 Who cares about minimum wage workers, they can't support the economy in anyway, they can't even support themselves. Minimum wage or not they will depend on someone, and the tax payers. Its a waste of time to talk about people who would make even less money than minimum wage, those people will in fact be an expense to society the same as girls playing kitchen asking people for doe and silverware.
@@QueenofBluntTruth Government has good reasons for creating a minimum wage. Entrepreneurs don't like it because they are put on the spotlight to create a serious functional business and it prevents big business from exploiting people and extract wealth from the taxpayer. The reason is that most people are not good with math, maybe they will take a job for 25 cents p/h, for the employer these suckers are right to get scammed and exploited because they are fools, and they will make money while it will take employee at least a month to realize they spend more money going to work than what they make at work, and then there is always another victim to scam when they quit... So that is bad businesses but it also means that those people not making it on their own salary will have to take handouts from social programs which come from the taxpayer. Walmart did this tactic of paying at the edge of a minimum wage which was too low, offering full time jobs to many people that simply couldn't even afford food! so they had food stamps, thus technically the taxpayer was subsidizing Walmart workforce, which was very unfair for other competitors which to compete had to also lower wages and get their workers on the food stamps as well... It's a fantasy that business left alone only benefit people, they don't, business are productive and effective as long there is an arbiter that prevents abuse, just like in any other part of life.
"90% of workers on minimum wage support raising minimum wage" Why is this even an argument? Of course people will gladly vote to give themselves a raise if they can. Thinking they're voting on purely political grounds is nonsense.
My opinion is that "for abolishing" had better arguments, but the "against abolishing" made more appeals to the audience which lead to their victory. I also notice Dorn and Roberts didn't criticize their opponents as much as Bernstein and Kornbluh did.
My opinion would be that the 'pros' had arguments based on verifiable facts and the 'cons' had arguments based in emotion. Clearly the audience likes to feel warm and fuzzy in lala land instead on being in fact based reality.
+Josh White Ok? I'm not really sure you can equate freedom as an emotion, but as they explained, raising the minimum wage is just a price floor which won't raise earnings of those working entry level jobs, it's much more likely they just won't find employment. Also, if you want to throw out such an unsupported argument such as the minimum wage price floor keeps people out of "slave" wages, then why do the vast majority of Americans earn more than the minimum wage? Surely all those greedy companies want to pay all their employees no more than they have to.
"why do the vast majority of Americans earn more than the minimum wage" -citation needed. Many areas have minimum wages above the federal, so of course very few will be at the federal minimum. If we lower or remove the minimum, then presumably there'd be an increase in supply of sub-prime labor, and who knows what the market minimum would be, so I don't even see how your point of what people make now is more supported than my point. "not really sure you can equate freedom as an emotion" I said emotional points about freedom. Stories about some random poor guys that can't get their first job because they don't have the freedom to work for less is an appeal to emotion.
+Josh White I'm actually having a debate with the user "bdpride" a few comments below this one. I don't feel the need to re-word my argument in order to fit your specific case, so I'm simply going to copy and paste what I have said. If you read all of it, then I would like to thank you for being open-minded enough to listen. If you have any questions, then just ask and I'll gladly answer. If you'd like to debate, then go right ahead, and I'll offer my counter-argument. I may not be able to reply immediately, because I am currently in the middle of my final exam week, and I've been fairly busy studying. It ends on the 13th, so I may be able to reply then, if not shortly afterwards. You're talking about how you want a fair wage, but at the same time you seem fairly concerned with unemployment, so I'm just going to explain the effects of the minimum wage for you.So the minimum wage is simply a price floor that is almost always set above the market equilibrium. If it was set at or below the equilibrium, then the policy would be useless. What this means is that the government is artificially placing a limit on the price of labor, which thereby creates a surplus of labor. (Unemployment) What it essentially does is deflate the demand for labor(cost increases, demand decreases), while simultaneously increasing the supply(because no one will want a large number of workers for a high price, people will be let go, thereby increasing the number of jobless workers). This creates a gap between the supply and demand curve, thus the surplus of labor is formed. The demand for low skilled workers will always be very elastic, due to the fact that low skilled labor is not scarce in the market, so an increase in the min wage will almost always hurt the working class. High demand elasticity simply means that as the price of a good or service increases, the demand will decrease at a larger rate than a good or service with a very low demand elasticity. So the demand for cashiers is very price elastic, and the demand for engineers is very price inelastic. This is due to the fact that engineers have a higher level of scarcity in the market, along with other factors such as the high level of education, intellect and skill it takes to be an engineer, so their labor is worth more. A business would be able to hire a cashier for $10, but they would never be able to employ an engineer for the same amount. So when the wage rate surpasses the marginal productive output(When the wage is worth more than a workers labor), which is amplified further by diminishing return, then companies will be forced to lay off workers that add less to the marginal value product. Not only this, but when you increase the minimum wage, you are also preventing those workers from gaining valuable skills and experience that is needed in order to attain a higher wage. In the hiring process, experience is one of the most important factors that employers look for. The more experience the individual has, the more efficient at that job they are going to be, and the more revenue they will bring in for that specific company. This is why internships are one of, if not the most important factor if you plan on getting a job outside of college. It is also a common claim that "If the minimum wage is increased, more people will have more money, and they'll spend more money, thereby stimulating the economy." This is a very common economic fallacy. The assertion that the minimum wage increases aggregate expenditures(money spend in an entire economy) is false because when you negate money from going to the capital fund(when you prevent money from being invested into businesses) to subsidize labor, then you are by default negating money from going to the purchase of other factors of production such as land and capital that is privately owned by firms. This decreases their revenue because you are basically subsidizing the consumer goods section of the economy by taking money away from the capital formation sectors. So you're not increasing the amount of wealth in the economy, you're simply reallocating it. There is no increase in aggregate expenditures, you are not increasing businesses revenues, and the economy is not better off. On top of all this, the minimum wage also gives more market power to corporations, because you are increasing the price of labor past the market equilibrium in which small businesses need to have in order to enter the market and compete with larger businesses and corporations. Because mom and pop shops cannot afford to stay in business due to the fact that they cannot afford to hire any extra workers, they are forced to close ans sell off their assets. Corporations, however, do not see this problem due to the fact that businesses with a large amount of revenue and capital can absorb the cost of an increase in the price of labor much more efficiently than small businesses. This is largely because corporations can also produce revenue from their stocks and bond options, which allow them to operate at a lower quantity of labor. This kind of market strategy can be seen in practice by Walmart, which has consistently pushed for a minimum wage increase in order to obtain a larger market share. If you have ever taken an econometrics or statistics class, you should know how easy it is to cherry pick data and "correlate" it to something that it has no relationship to. There are also times in which economists make mistakes and misinterpret data. One instance of this was a study headed by Paul Krugman, who sought to find the effects of a minimum wage hike on unemployment. When he was finished with the study, he found that the demand elasticity for low skilled labor was close to zero, which is false. What he failed to do was account for where the individuals lived(which would have factored in disparities, purchasing power, standard of living, etc.) based upon cross-regional data analysis. This means that Krugman measured the unemployment rate too broadly, and since unemployment caused by a minimum wage hike is more damaging in small towns as opposed to large cities where there is a higher cost of living, then this warped the data. After he placed the data sets on a two dimensional plane, the data set was very homogeneous, making it impossible to find a trend, which led him to declare the demand elasticity as zero. BUT if he had followed the procedures correctly, and accounted for where the individual lived on a much smaller scale, then the data set on the two dimensional plane would become increasingly more heterogeneous, thereby making it strongly evident that the demand for low skilled labor is strongly negatively inelastic. The reason why I am telling you this is to let you know that you never really know if the data set you are looking at is warped or not, and it's beneficial to understand how to gather and interpret data using your own knowledge of economics. Otherwise politicians, TV shows, talk show hosts, comedians, or whatever other media outlet you acquire your news from, can subconsciously feed you misinformation. What you need to do, is read and learn enough about the subject so that you can form your own educated opinion, and refuse to let someone else subconsciously dictate how you think. Here are a few papers about the minimum wage, both in favor and against, if you want to read about it. www.nber.org/papers/w18681 www.nber.org/papers/w20724 www.nber.org/papers/w20619 www.nber.org/papers/w21830 The first link is the paper I referred to about Paul Krugman Misinterpreting his data. All have a variety of different authors and extra sources. It only looks like the same website because its simply a database for research essays.
The fact of the matter is that the minimum wage does not effectively accomplish its function. Germany has no minimum wage, a low skilled worker is certainly not better off in France.
"How could they even consider that?" says Karen Kornbluh attempting to shame her opponents. How childish. Feel free to make an actual point at any time rather than these ad hominem attacks.
The minimum wage helps some low-skill workers at the expense of even-lower-skilled workers. There is a superficially positive glow to it, but thinking about it just a little should you really persuade you otherwise. It's unconscionable that this policy continues to stand and that there are advocates for its expansion. If you and I agree on a job and a wage, it's no one else's business to come meddle into.
To get good jobs in the beginning of my working life, I volunteered in the field I wanted to work in. I worked FOR FREE because it was illegal to pay me under min wage. I could have made $1 an hour and I would have been more wealthy. I could have incrementally gone from $1 to $3, to $5 and so on until I was beyond min wage. But thankfully, all it really takes in this world is 6 months to 1 year of experience and your wage skyrockets from there. The lowest fifth of wages sees exponential growth. Sure you may be making piddly in the beginning, but at least you have a job- at least YOU are profitable- and you will very quickly move up. The wage is not nearly as valuable as the free training they include in the package. There is a huge opportunity for charities here to get free labor because young people need training and skills. I cannot believe we live in a world where you have to volunteer because getting paid "too low" is illegal, and you PAY to get shitty training in schools when you could get it for free or even paid training via jobs.
The people arguing for the motion have this false notion that businesses and corporations will fairly compensate those low-skill workers over time if the government would get out of the way. Nonsense at every level. Businesses are profit making machines that want to pay workers the least they have to. With no pay floor, wages will plummet and poverty and crime will go up.
if you're a black person who is for minimum wage you just aren't thinking straight. apartheid in south africa was sought to be entrenched via minimum wage laws.
Yes. Also, in the USA, the KKK and racist labor unions sough the minimum wage. They didn't want blacks taking their inflated labor rates. This is just another example of rich city dwellers feeling sorry for the poor, " oh poor stupid people, let us help you make money.... because obviously you can't make it on your own" . It's patriarchal and demeaning - while appearing as caring.
@Le Québec d'abord WRONG! The statistics state that back in the 1990's MORE people worked more than one job than today. Less people work more than one job today than 20 years ago.
Want to see what no minimum wage looks like? Just go to Germany, the richest country in Europe, the 4th economy in the world, yet the average German struggles to make a living often having to work 2 jobs to make ends meet. I don't know about Japan or the US but 2 jobs is unheard of in western Europe, 3-5€/h is a common wage for unqualified workers.
At what amount should the minimum wage stop at? The minimum wage can't just keep increasing. At some point it has to stop. We can't have a $25 minimum wage. Too many jobs won't be worth that much.
Singapore has NO minimum wage. But Singapore has the highest per capita income and highest number of millionaires. And Singapore is a super strong economy with a strong buffer of reserve. And Singapore has NO minimum wage and Singapore has 80% middle class workers who pay little or no income tax.
Although I'm for the motion, I just don't think the "Pro" team gave a compelling argument. The "Anti" team kept playing on emotion and the "Pro" team just hit back with studies and research. The best way to argue the case is the moral case: The minimum wage is the same as price fixing because what is a wage but a price for labor. It's unethical for the government to interfere in business transactions between individuals. Suppose you see a great book (retail $15) on sale for $10, and the cashier says, "Oh I'd love to sell it to you but the government says we have to charge at least $25."
Yeah, but remember, Market Socialist--We're the 'regressives' despite the fact that they want to take us back to certain things that were inconvenient for disadvantaged/marginalized people. We're the bad guys here for trying to give them a hand. And since we're human and show any kind of emotion, we're wrong. But when they do it (as they grandstand in favor of "freedom"), it's okay. lol
teknoäijä Yes, it does mean you can pay whatever if there is no minimum wage, however the market would dictate the wage. So let's say I'm an absolute idiot with an iq of 60 and somehow own a business, do you really, I mean REALLY think I'm going to pay you $1 an hour? How long do you think I will last paying people that kind of wage? They will go to a business paying $4/hour, then the other place is paying $5, another is paying $7, the point is, the free market (if it was free) will compete for workers by paying for a wage appropriate to the current market conditions. So just because theoretically I could pay someone "$1" doesn't mean that will actually happen.
One group focuses on teen employment, the other focuses on the employment of a head of household. In my mind the prior is irrelevant as an employment concern since education and internships are generally more critical for that group.
+Danny Fisher If that is the claim, then the pro-minimum wage side is lying. It isn't even close. One may attempt (contrary to the views of the great majority of economists) that more "more reliable" studies favor the pro-minimum wage position (Doucouliagos & Stanley hilariously try to take that position) but in simple numerical terms, more than 80% of the studies show the minimum wage to be harmful and the three most comprehensive reviews of the research (by the US Minimum Wage Study Commission; Brown, Gilroy & Kohen; and Neumark & Wascher) all agree on the disemployment effects of the minimum wage. If you exclude certain studies debunked due to selection bias or poor methodology (Card & Krueger; John Schmitt, etc.) nearly all of the research shows that the minimum wage results in disemployment.
@@Shrdlu42 Your mistake is thinking that you've given me a challenge that can't be met. There are three ways you can see unequivocally that there are no valid studies showing that the minimum wage is anything but harmful. 1) You can look at the research itself. Here, as mentioned, are the most comperhensive reviews of the literature ever performed, a listing of relevant studies and their findings and examples of recent research: books.google.com/books/about/Report_of_the_Minimum_Wage_Study_Commiss.html?id=nSHtAAAAMAAJ www.nber.org/papers/w846 www.nber.org/papers/w12663.pdf www.nber.org/papers/w20724 www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c876c468-ffca-47ed-9468-7193d734bde9/50-years-of-research-on-the-minimum-wage---february-15-1995.pdf evans.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/files/w23532_0.pdf 2) You can ask actual competent economists (we overwhelmingly oppose raising it and nearly half of us would abolish it outright): people.uwec.edu/jamelsem/fte/fte/efl/teacher_stuff/articles/economists_agree.pdf 3) Use basic reasoning skills. The Law of Demand is simple - as the price goes up demand declines. As Nobel Laureate James Buchanan put it when the Card & Kreuger "study" was completely debunked: “The inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price is the core proposition in economic science, which embodies the presupposition that human choice behavior is sufficiently rational to allow predictions to be made. Just as no physicist would claim that “water runs uphill,” no self-respecting economist would claim that increases in the minimum wage increase employment. Such a claim, if seriously advanced, becomes equivalent to a denial that there is even minimal scientific content in economics, and that, in consequence, economists can do nothing but write as advocates for ideological interests. Fortunately, only a handful of economists are willing to throw over the teaching of two centuries; we have not yet become a bevy of camp-following whores.” It's quite simple. When the overwhelming majority of studies yield the same conclusion, and when those supposedly showing another conclusion do so in violation of basic scientific principles and are, nearly without exception, shown either to be methodologically unsound (as was Card & Kreuger - see link below) or of too small a sample size to yield material results and are, also nearly without exception, coming from sources that have been shown to be completely unreliable multiple times (Economic Policy Institute, ERLE, NELP, CEPR, etc.), pretty much anyone with an IQ greater than that of gravel can see which is the "better" set of studies. Do you have some problem with that? Promised link: www.epionline.org/wp-content/studies/epi_njfastfood_04-1996.pdf
1:14:00 The potential benefits are minimum If the exist at all. The potential harm however, could be quite Large. I find it hilarious how heavily the Pro Minimum Wage team used the argument, "The minimum wage MUST be good, POLITICIANS support it."
Derp. Both the benefits and harm of a minimum wage are complicated. In an industry where employee expense is 25% of total expenses, then a 50% minimum wage increase is only going to increase total costs by 12.5%. On the flip side, increasing minimum wage by 50% provides low wage earners with 50% more money to spend. This means that businesses that cater to low wage workers will have a potential increase in income of roughly 50%. So, 50% increase in income with an increase in costs of 12.5%. This is totally a bad deal for businesses everywhere. www.bluemaumau.org/sites/default/files/Janney-McDonalds%20Income%20Statement%20mock.pdf
FlyOverZone Definition: Demand is the willingness and ability to buy a certain quantity of goods at a certain price. Increasing wages by 50% will increase income for low wage workers by 50%. Increasing income by 50% will increase the total amount of money available by 50%. Increasing the total money available by 50% will increase the amount that can be spent by 50%. If people have 50% more to spend, then they will, potentially, be willing and able to spend 50% more money. This means that there is a potential increase in Demand of about 50%. This potential increase in Demand can lead to a comparable increase in revenues.
"Increasing income by 50% will increase the total amount of money available by 50%." LMFAO The minimum wage does NOT increase the amount of money in the economy. The minimum wage is a WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION PROGRAM. It TAKES money from one group of private citizens and TRANSFERS that money to another group of private citizens through Govt COERCION. What most people who are knowledgeable enough to understand THIS much, DON'T understand is that it does NOT take money from the 1%, The 1% simply raises the prices of their goods and services. No. The minimum wage takes money away from the middle class, who do NOT get an increase in income but have to pay the higher prices caused by the inflation caused by the higher minimum wage. Saying the minimum wage helps the economy is the equivalent of saying ARMED ROBBERY helps the economy. It's Laugh Out Loud HILARIOUSLY IGNORANT.
FlyOverZone Your entire wealth redistribution rant is crap. Firstly, the employee/employer relationship is an EXCHANGE, not a TRANSFER. The employee trades time and labor for monetary compensation. Which leads to the second problem: a business owner is entitled to all proceeds after all the obligations have been met. Relying on outside pressures(rent/mortgage payments, car notes, insurance...) to convince your employees into discounting your obligation to them is completely shameful and cowardly. It is shameful because the employees give their time and effort and the low wage employer is too wrapped up in his own ego to recognize what others are doing for him. It results in an uneven transactions in an uneven transaction where one side gives significantly less than it takes. It is cowardly because they don't have the balls to openly admit that they are knowingly and willingly taking advantage of a messed up situation. And before you try to pretend that this is not coercion, answer me this: why would somebody agree to work for less than what they need to survive if there weren't any kind of significant pressure? So, at the end of the day, if you are okay with profiting off of other people's pain, I am okay with the government playing referee. Your second paragraph assumes that situations are static. It assumes that the 1% are the business owners and everybody else are employees. Right now, getting loans to start up a business is fairly difficult because small businesses just don't earn enough to keep their doors open. However, price increases across the boards means revenue increases for all businesses. It also means higher projected revenues for potential businesses. Given sufficient potential revenue and a solid business plan, the middle class earner is no longer stuck working for the 1%. "Saying the minimum wage helps the economy is the equivalent of saying ARMED ROBBERY helps the economy." Your comfortable, I get that. But when your comfort comes at the expense of other people, YOU are the ROBBER.
I just love the arrogance in the following statement at 25:20: "The law increases the wage rate, but if you don't get a job your income is zero. That's what people don't understand." Don't understand? What's there to not understand? People understand the logic behind, that argument very much, but scientists and sceptics(and apparently normal people as well) prefer to look at reality, instead of some seemingly logical argument, that only looks at one variable, when hundreds of other variables actually exist in the real economy. Yeah, this guys superior intellect is really striking. It's impossible to understand highly scientific arguments like the story about the woman, who was fired from her job, because of the minimum wage.
The "against" side lost when Karen let it slip that there IS no DEBATE of ideas or facts in her world, just (politely, of course) resorts to character assassination of the members of the opposing team and any audience member who has a different belief to hers. As she clearly states TWICE, they are MORALLY WRONG. The primary premise of James Bernstein's argument seemed to be, that because the very idea of debating the motion was obviously so ridiculous, he didn't need to. His proposition that economists spend a few years as social workers has merit. A few years running a small business wouldn't be a bad idea either.
29:45 The woman said that abolishing the minimum wage disproportionately harms women as an argument, implying women have higher value than men. Imagine the outrage if this were said in reverse.
I'm kinda disappointed that they couldn't find better debtors for the In-Favor side. This is an Econ101 issue that should be easy for any freshman college student to defend. The straw man and ad hominem arguments were abundant from the Against side and these were almost never confronted by the In-Favor side. And at some points the in-favor debaters arguments they seem to actually concede or undermine their own side! Even the audience was biased on the matter. When ~%50 of the audience already supports one side, claps and cheers for that side, and nearly all questions from them seem to favor that side, undecided people in the audience will become biased. This hardly seems like a fair debate, and does not live up to the merit of the subject matter.
Minimum wage law does not give any additional control to low-wage employees. Quite to the contrary, it gives government additional control over unskilled employees, by preventing them from getting certain jobs. Without the minimum wage law, the employee has the choice of "take it or leave it". With the minimum wage law, it becomes just the "leave it". No choice.
They talk about corporate profits at all time highs but a lot of companies make profit overseas... not making all the profits in the US. Most companies move jobs overseas... those jobs would come back if we had no minimum wage. Also prices rise to pay for the raise. People want a raise if you ask them but what they don't know is some of them won't be needed if the their skills aren't worth the raise.
***** The point is most companies don't need the U.S. they make more money outside of it. The Chinese economy will be larger than the U.S. soon. You need to understand the world is competing and money will flow to where it is used best.
I'm 10 minutes in and I can already tell that the side for abolishing the minimum wage haven't worked a minimum wage job in at least 40 years, if at all. Completely out of touch with the realities of poverty.
If someone’s been participating in the labor market for 40yrs and are still working minimum wage jobs. I doubt their gonna have much advice that I’d want to hear.
mrvillTV If there is inflation, that is a sign that it is boosting the economy because people have more spending power therefore giving businesses more confidence to raise prices. Also, there are ways of decreasing inflation such as deliberately introducing fiscal drag.
if you are all about people businesses leave if you are all about businesses workers leave but libertarians strike a balance they give everyone freedom to choose.... why doesnt he do a poll and ask the entrepreneurs if they want the minimum wage at 0 they would say yes... so the truth is people want unlimited pay and business would love to pay zero... only the market can find a balance
Well there are alternatives to the minimum wage. I assume you would advocate for those, but if you did, you couldn't possibly be a Libertarian or Conservative. What do you propose we replace the minimum wage with? Because its pretty much a compromise with Conservatives and even then they still hate it.
MrOphachew Well thats an interesting idea. Heres what I found. Abolish the Minimum wage, implement Collective Bargaining into all of our nations businesses. Have employees negotiate for their wage as a group, rather than as individuals. Another idea is a Basic income. Say the Government writes everyone a $30,000 check to start the year out. You can then work for whatever wage a business wants to pay you and not live in destitute poverty (as opposed to capping the minimum wage now and keeping it at that rate for the next 100 years which would definitely leave some people in destitute poverty) Refundable Tax Credit. At the end of the year the lower classes have a tax burden of say -$30,000, so the government writes them a check and they can cash it to cover basic necessities. Again, they can work for any wage and not live in complete poverty. Then theres the Guaranteed Minimum Income thats been proposed. Its a policy that ALL citizens have a guaranteed income that is sufficient to live on. These are the proposals I have to replace the minimum wage and other Economists have proposed. Simply capping it and then letting the magics of the free-market work their magic is a recipe for poverty however. If a super low minimum wage was key to a successful country, than Ivory Coast wouldn't be a complete shit hole with its $.03 an hour minimum wage.
MrOphachew So then which industrialized nation has your economic ideas implemented right now? Why aren't the mixed economies of Scandinavia complete shit holes since they're like the complete opposite of what you seem to be advocating?
The reason for that is the artificial push for women into the work force that resulted in over supply of a work force which in turn lowered the wages. As a result a house hold with a single earner can not support the entire house hold.
There are two strong arguments the proponents of the motion have. The first one is a moral one and the second is one having to do with economic theory. I'll address the moral one first: Workers should be free to accept any wage offered by an employer because an agreement between individuals is a fundamental human right as long as there is no coercion. This is a compelling argument and one I agree with instinctually. However, upon closer scrutiny, this argument doesn't hold so well. Here's why in two arguments: One: While agreements made between individual parties with equal negotiating power may be rare, it is the ideal implied in the argument made above. When we agree to the terms of high interest rates on credit, for example, no one is coercing us to enter into such a contract. We make a cost-benefit analysis of the terms and decide the cost of the high interest rate is worth the benefit of having credit. However, just because we accept the terms of a contract where we have no negotiating means other than exit calls into question its validity, at least on moral grounds, which is what we're arguing. So, while the ability to enter into contracts as free agents is an ideal, so is entering into those contracts with as near equal footing as possible. How do we achieve better the ability to enter into more equal contracts? Depends on the contract. With labor, we used to do it through unions. Germany doesn't have a minimum wage but they have strong, pervasive labor unions. In Germany (and much of Europe) labor is represented in government. We don't have a labor party here in the US and so labor here needs the government to create the conditions allowing labor unions to negotiate on behalf of workers. Here we get the opposite. We have business lobbying government to create laws making it more difficult for labor unions to exist. We recently have created a bureaucracy that is supposed to ensure consumer protection against predatory business practices. We need government to try to even the playing field as much as is consistent with out values in regard to contracts. While we want to protect the right of the individual to free association and enter into contracts freely, we also have to see this issue as it plays out socially as well. Libertarians are unwavering defendants of the individual, which is fine, but what they fail to fully comprehend is that, although it seems like we may be individual actors, the ramifications of individual choice have consequences beyond the individual. In the anecdote supplied by James Dorn, a retail worker loses her job because the minimum wage increases. That is bad for her. We all feel bad that she can't just keep her job at her previous wage, because she would like to. However, allowing that, also allows all the business that can afford a higher minimum wage, not to pay one. So, one worker loses her job and, according to the proponent's statistics, ten do not, and as a result of the raise in wage, have a higher standard of living. This argument segueways into the economic argument. While proponents of the motion to abolish the minimum wage rightly cite the economic theory that the increased cost of labor means fewer jobs, that discreet theory has to be understood in the larger economic frame. So when the unfortunate retail worker loses her job as a result of increased minimum wage, is that a net loss of one? This is where economic research comes into play. So, to be fair, to cite one theory of economics that supports your ideological position and to omit another that may contradict it, is disingenuous. The other economic theory is one of supply and demand. The more money in the consumer economy means there is more demand and more demand means more jobs. So the millions of workers that keep their jobs when the min wage is increased spend more money in the consumer economy and create more demand for goods, services and thereby jobs. It is the objective of the studies to show whether there is a net gain in jobs that is a result of the min wage being raised. The Card and Krueger study showed it did, of course they studied just one sector of the economy. Other studies show slight gains or losses that, as Bernstein acknowledged, are near zero, so little effect on job loss. BUT greater effect on raising the standard of living of the workers who got a raise. So, the proponent's argument is actually rather ironic. Even if there is a net job loss due to raising the minimum, they're saying that the one person who loses their job measured against the however many that keep them (at least 1:10 ratio) and have their standard of living improved is morally the right choice. I believe that argument might have more credibility if we didn't live in a welfare state. That is to say, the few who lose their jobs are not put out on the streets. We never have 100% employment and so have to have a "safety net" of some kind for the unemployed. The lack of a minimum wage would create an even worse "race to the bottom" problem than we already have. If we had an actual "living wage" as a minimum (this would have to be calculated by city, not at the federal one size fits all level) then those who make this wage (and above) would be able to live comfortably, save, make economic choices not simply out of desperation. And those who aren't making it in the economy would have other options, preferably strong job training programs (subsidized by govt-employer partnerships) or, as a last resort, welfare. By eliminating the min wage, you simply allow businesses that can pay a living wage, not to because they don't have to. There is always a surplus of so-called unskilled labor and as a result wages are kept artificially down and are not necessarily tied to productivity increases. In fact, all the research I'm aware of shows an increase in worker productivity while wages have remained flat for more than 30 years. The GDP is growing, Wall Street profits are increasing and yet worker wages are not. If the US does not want to win the race to the bottom economically -- which it shouldn't-- then strategies to create higher paying jobs are needed. This is done mostly through an education system that prepares people to contribute to the economy with skilled labor. But when the cost of education and training is prohibitive then people cannot access it. What allows for accessible education is both and moral and economic argument. If we don't want the US to become a 3rd world economy, then we need to ensure, as our competitors do, that access to education and job training is readily available and that our internet speed is not lagging behind -- as it is. These things are something government needs to do while keeping consistent with our values of making the "American dream" a possibility for as many people as possible who want it. This means the kind of wealth redistribution (i.e. progressive taxation) that used to be taken for granted and that built the once biggest middle class in the world. It's the thinking and ideology of the proponents of this motion that is obstruction to this goal. They'd like to roll back the clock to the good old pre-New Deal robber baron era and let opportunity be arbitrary and controlled by capitalists alone. That is the true agenda of these people and unless you agree that the robber baron era was superior to the New Deal era, you understand that government has a role in ensuring opportunity for everyone that business alone simply can't provide.
I'm surprised I didn't hear anything about where the extra money people would earn, should the min wage go up. I thought that that would have been one of their central arguments, that people making the minimum would put virtually every extra penny right back into the economy. Bush gave the rich big tax breaks with the idea they would invest in business, but new jobs dropped to the lowest rate in 70 years, over the subsequent 10 years after the breaks were given. That was because business didn't have forecasts that warranted expansion. More money in the hands of the low & middle class always goes back into the economy, not into savings or the stock market.
One reason is savings is good for the economy. Savings is investment and coordinates production. Just putting money in the bank is money that gets lent out. Savings is necessary for a properly functioning economy. Spending is not what drives the economy over the long run. Productivity drives a rising standard of living. A minimum wage means fewer workers and thus lower productivity.
The problem with this debate audience was comfirmation bias. Most audience member that were undecided we're likely already leaning towards keeping the minimum. In order to get a real number you would have to have controls such as equal amount of supporters of both ideas along with a number of undecideds split down the middle. That being said the people against a minimum wage won.
Jesse Cannon Brandon Lyons Wow, no. Just wow. Ignorant of the issue. It isn't something they fucking choose. People want to be appreciated and compensated in kind. To say that unemployed people would purely vote in favor because they are out of work is ignorant too. Why would anyone, regardless of there employment stand want to work for less than they can make on welfare or other government subsidies. Like, fuck, the ignorance is overwhelming. People would make less money for actually putting effort across. We might as well just get rid of all workers rights. Look up china's labor laws, oh wait, you can't because they don't have any.
I remember as a kid I worked at Kroger as a bagger for $4.25 an hour when I was 16. Right now I have no clue what minimum wage is now, but at that time all I was looking for was a little of my own money. Now as I am an adult and I have my boys getting old enough to move into the teenage workforce, I don’t really care how much they make, but I do want them to be able to work so that they can gain experience in the real world.
I'm seriously surprised that the Pro side lost on this debate. I thought they did an excellent job explaining and refuting most points. Can anyone explain why they think the Cons took the debate? Honestly, I think their strongest point was the appeal to authority. Noting the EPI letter with signatures of over 600 economists (some of whom were Nobel Laureates) seemed pretty compelling. This isn't a weak point. In fact, it's a very good one to use. However, I don't think they properly argued against the logic of the Pro's or even addressed the moral argument of ruling out of the workforce people who aren't worth the minimum wage. My suspicion is at the ending speech, the Ms. Kornbluh starts talking about how the wage affects women, minorities, families, etc. Obviously this is true, but it was almost as if she just pulled the empathy card to ignore the entirety of the debate. My guess is that there were those who were convinced in the audience, but at the end thought "You know, women and children are at stake here so I guess it makes sense to go against the proposition." This is despite the fact that every other point worked in favor of the Pro side.
Akrylic An old saying is that when emotions go up logic goes down. That is the best weapon that those who support the min. wage have, emotions. Now does that make them right?
+Akrylic The pro side kept using anectodes from the very beginning. Those stories were an appeal to emotion, because obviously it does not matter what happens to a single person. Additionally they kept using seemingly logical, but simplistic arguments. It's vey clear, that economists can barely predict anything, therefore their models are likely to be flawed for whatever reason. But then they want to use those models/hypothesis, that fail to predict anything, to argue for the effects of something like the minimum wage. That's invalid. If your hypothesis isn't able to predict anything, then don't use the logic of those models to argue against something. The only thing, that matters in economics at this stage is what happens in the real world. The empiricial evidence is somewhat contradictory as mentioned, but they do agree on one thing. The effects are so minimal, that it's hard to even know whether it increases or decreases unemployement. What is for certain though, is that a lot more people will earn more, than lose a job. In other words, the positive effects are much bigger, than the negative effects. A lot of very smart people have a problem. They rely on their logic too often. What some don't realise though, is that science has always been about checking hypothesis on reality. Sometimes a lot of people just make the same logical mistake and aren't able to see it. That's why science has always relied on testing hypothesis by comparing it to the real world. Being smart is great, but without the an in depth understanding of the scientific method, you're just not going to become a realistic thinker. Don't get me wrong logic is important. It's essential in analyzing reality and coming up with correct hypothesis, but you still need to test those hypothesis. Additionally, i can give you a lot of reasons of what's wrong from a logical standpoint with the arguments, that they are using. A major reason, is that they look at one variable only and ignore other variables, that might have effects, that counteract that initial variable. In fact in the economy there are so many competing variables (psychology, supply/demand, costs, other employees etc.), that it doesn't even make sense to try and predict anything without doing math and even if you do the math, it doesn't mean, that your results will be correct.
+stau ffap I had actually read the Neumark paper they mentioned from NBER, and it's a pretty comprehensive and credible argument he makes. The pro side is unfortunately in the position of having to defend a non-existent statistic about unemployment. All they can argue is that there will be theoretical losers, but the against side can easily show how many people are earning the minimum wage currently and stand to benefit just by looking at Wikipedia statistics. Still, I don't think the against side makes it clear that there will be more winners than losers. For instance, unemployment might not rise, but prices might. Just by visiting San Francisco where they are already hiking up the minimum wage, a lot of restaurants put notices explaining that they need to raise prices on food. This effect just might make things worse for minimum wage earners if prices are more expensive on average. Or perhaps it's just an implicit tax on people who purchase from companies that hire minimum wage workers (these customers might not be minimum wage earners). Either way, we can walk away with the general assumption that money is not being created out of thin air here, but the costs and benefits seem to be ambiguous. For me at least, I'm convinced that it's not good public policy to give concentrated benefits to the few at the cost of those of lesser skill. If that risk is present, I can't see a reason for the against side to take the vote. But I think you identify a more interesting problem. There's actually a growing trend in economics that transitions away from traditional mathematics based theory and shifts into purely analyzing statistical trends. But is it really fair to make economic conclusions post hoc ergo propter hoc? In hard sciences, we can perform experiments hundreds if not thousands of times to rule out outliers. However, here are only so many case studies for minimum wage hikes we can work with. It's hard to say.
Akrylic Well yes, it's hard to figure out. If we knew the answer with any kind of reasonable certainty we'd probably be rich and earn a couple of nobel prices ;)
Please keep in mind that if your labor is not worth $15.00 you're out. $15.00 is a skilled wage not an unskilled wage, the people you're worried about will be unemployed. They will end up going head to head with skilled workers for the $15.00 hr. jobs and can't even apply for a lesser job because of the law.
+BulletSpoung Exactly. Also what about the people currently making $15/hr? Why shouldn't they get a raise to make up for the minimum being raised? I mean shouldn't everyone be getting proportionate raises? It's not like the minimum wage workers' jobs all of the sudden became more demanding and skill-based jobs.
If the minimum wage were increased to $15 an hour, prices at fast food restaurants would rise by an estimated 4.3 percent, according to a new study. That would mean a McDonald’s Big Mac, which currently goes for $3.99, would cost about 17 cents more, or $4.16.
Its not about 15 an hour. They want to pay people as little an hour as possible for corporate profit, so lets say lets human labor in America is only worth $2 an hour or less. You spoiled brats care nothing about your fellow human's!!!!!
89.8 percent of businesses are small businesses. Which employ 20 or less employees. You're under the impression all those people that get a pay raise will even have an employer at all. My business I have 3 people that work for me. 2 are paid interns getting 9 dollars an hour. Neither MAKE me ANY money, EVER. They are here to learn, and eventually I will pay them more once they are of a value to my company. When minimum wage is 15 dollars an hour, and I pay myself as the owner 500 dollars per week, how much would I have to pay myself in order to keep both of them?!? NOT ENOUGH to cover my bills. Not even close. Instead of making more money I chose to employ people. Make a gosh damned difference on the economy. But I won't be able to afford both of them, in fact, if they were getting 15 dollars an hour, I wouldn't keep either of them. Because in a skilled workplace, unskilled people at skilled pay, have no place being there.
Wouldn't a better more nuisanced solution to be let the state's and municipalities address their own economic needs and markets and react in a more agile manner than the federal government? Or let people unionize if they want or do some sort of collective bargaining, rather than take the heavy handed approach of big government? The cost of living varies widely over the country, therefore so should the minimum wage.
Increasing the minimum wage on the margin doesn't significantly affect unemployment. A better question is, "Who is paying for the increase?" In most cases, the minimum wage places downward pressure on the middle class. Minimum wage workers may see a 40% increase in thier wage, whereas middle income earners would see only a 15% increase in their wages. This effectively decreases the standard of living of the middle class. =/
Not necessarily. Change in standard of living = Change in wages - inflation. If, as assumed by you, wages for middle class earners change by 15%, then the middle class will see an increase in their standard of living if inflation is less than 15%.
Yes, but don't forget about opportunity costs. If middle class income is transferred to unskilled labor (minimum wage), then you are robbing the difference from the middle class. In our scenario, without a minimum wage increase, the middle class would see a 40% increase in their wages instead of 15%. Regardless of standard of living, which merits its own discussion, my main point was that a minimum wage increase is a transfer payment because it doesn't increase output. So the logical question is, "Who is paying for it?" In my business and in my experience, it is paid for with price increases, and middle class wages. =/ Thanks for the comment. =)
TheBalancedAmerican Your original premise was "Minimum wage workers may see a 40% increase in thier wage, whereas middle income earners would see only a 15% increase in their wages." Seeing as middle class income has remained fairly stagnant, I am assuming the 15% increase in middle class income is tied to the increase in minimum wage. But I could be wrong, I have never heard that statement as either an argument for or against raising the minimum wage. In my experience, an employer pays what they are going to pay. If an employer uses an increase in minimum wage as an excuse to depress middle income salaries, then that employer would have used any excuse to depress middle income workers salaries. Conversely, if the employer legitimately cares about the employees and values labor contributed, then they wouldn't hide behind some BS excuse to underpay employees.
MrTortillasoup "I am assuming the 15% increase in middle class income is tied to the increase in minimum wage." Wages have a relationship with inflation. While maintaining wage and price structures that correspond to inflation, if the minimum wage is increased, employers first respond by raising prices to offset the added expense. Although, the market can seldom handle a sharp increase in prices without losing customers. Increased price means decreased demand. Inflation is the "wiggle-room" that employers use to correct maladjustment over time. Wages too high? No problem, just raise prices. New Tax from Government? No Problem, just raise prices to offset the tax. Over time the adjustments made during inflation can essentially push any employee into any social economic quintile without them noticing how it even happened. In the case of the minimum wage increase (if advanced past general price inflation), inflation is used to offset the added expense by holding middle income employees at the same level for many years (or firing a middle income worker altogether). Over time, the effective result is that price inflation outpaces middle class wage inflation. The middle class gets squeezed because their discretionary income is being transferred away from them. "If an employer uses an increase in minimum wage as an excuse to depress middle income salaries" It is not an excuse, it is the reality of having to produce a profit. I'm a small business owner, the "profit" is my take-home pay. I make about 100K, and the minimum wage increase will cost my company about $80K. Which means i go bankrupt unless i make some decisions. I have already raised prices once, and expect to do so again this fall. But I can't raise prices by 40% or i have no customers. I have no choice but to squeeze my other employees, you see? =( "if the employer legitimately cares about the employees" Of course i care about my employees, but my decisions to suppress middle income wages, and fire one has nothing to with my compassion; it is math; i must pay my mortgage. =/ If you have an alternative choice i can make, to conjure the cash into existence, i'm an open-minded person. =)
TheBalancedAmerican "Which means i go bankrupt unless i make some decisions." Yes, as a business owner it is your responsibility to make decisions. "I have already raised prices once, and expect to do so again this fall. But I can't raise prices by 40% or i have no customers. I have no choice but to squeeze my other employees, you see? =(" That is self righteous bs. Your business isn't doing as well as it needs to and I am sorry about that, but your employees give you their time and their effort, and that sacrifice on their part deserves some kind of respect. At the end of the day the difficulties associated with your business are your responsibility not your employees' responsibility. Man up.
here is the bottom line. your employer cares about 1 thing and that is keeping more money than they pay out. You can be sure that if the employer is against it then it is probably better for them than it is for you. very simple. peace KOTT
sams club has less of a market share than walmart but they pay their employees 16 Dollars an hour and the ceo takes a pretty reasonable salary I think its somewhere around 300000 a year and that company runs fine
it is cheaper but you buy in bulk the real point of the issue is that Wal-Mart and the other big stores are more worried about stock price and share holders when they could put part of that money back into the employees instead it goes in their pocket
the stock price is based on how much money the company makes after paying for everything if they pay employees more that will affect the bottom line and shareholders won't make as much profit that's what this argument is about how much profit is enough and when do the employees see the fruits of their labor on a paycheck instead of bigger bonuses for the ceo's
Back in 1999, I got my first job at McDonalds, paying $5.15/hr. I had NO SKILLS, but they needed someone to serve their customers and they trained me to do it. I'm sure McDonalds would've loved to pay me 75 cents per hour, which was the 1955 minimum wage, but the government had already raised the minimum wage numerous times since then. My point is that the minimum wage does not hurt low skill workers. If demand is strong enough, companies will hire and train them.
Mainly anecdotal evidence on the side of abolishing the minimum wage. No one wants to hear about that one friend of yours who worked his way up, because the probability that other low skill workers can (w/o min wage) is astoundingly low.
With the minimum wage, you are essentially pricing the lower skilled workers out of a job. You are legally mandating unemployment. Some workers simply aren't worth the minimum. Just about everyone would have a job with no minimum wage laws. Think about how inane the argument really is... Why not make the minimum $27? $47? $107? Singapore has no minimum wage. They have the lowest unemployment in the world that is currently hovering around 2%. They also have a booming economy and high growth.
I don't get it. These people have no issue with internships which require that a person work for no money and yet they have a problem the current minimum wage? I know that internships allow for a person to gain experience but there's no reason that they can't gain experience while getting paid minimum wage. People need to support themselves, after all and internships do not put food on the table.
"If you're saying one person loses their job the minimum wage should be abolished." Yes. Because if they lost their job due to government intervention, they literally just paid the government to take their job. Tell me how that is fair at all
Minimum wages in competitive economies like the US are stupid, but in countries like Colombia where the economy is monopolistic in all sectors is a necessary evil
Chris Redding: 1) I'm with you Chris. Teenagers should not rely on an "allowance" but find and keep some kind of job to fund their personal needs (outside of food, shelter and "normal" clothing. My two boys always never had an allowance and never asked for one and somehow they survived, even during those days when they did not have a summer job... However, when you see an adult (especially one trying to raise a family), working at a "minimum wage" job... you know that that adult is not trying to deprive your child from making a few dollars in a "life lesson", but, and adult who is DESPERATE and has NO ALTERNATIVE. We have a WELFARE system to help those Adults that cannot (and there are some that don't want to) work, to not starve to death or live on the street or die from an illness... But, for an Adult who is able bodied and ready to work... there is no HUMANE reason why he/she should not be paid a "Living Wage" so they are not depedent on Society to survive... Some countries have set up a seperate MW Tiers... one for Young Adults and one for Adults... that could be an alternative to just ABOLISHING the MW.
what isn't discussed is that those poor families struggling with 2-3 jobs at minimum wage will lose their SNAP and Medicaid benefits with a raised income. That higher income will not be enough to replace the lose of those benefits, so the argument is invalid.
+ben hambley if more businesses can be created. Then there is more supply then the current state. This will lead to cheaper prices because of competition in the market place. So there will be more people with jobs and things will be cheaper. Idk how people get poorer from that?
russ15doinwork There will not be some great competition just a race to the bottom like there was before minimum wage was implemented. People worked for 12-16 hours a day for basically slave wages because that is what everyone offerred. businesses like Walmart and McDonalds etc are not going to pay their workers more because there is no min wage they will pay their workers garbage because that worker likely has no other choice. You do realize there was a time in America before FDR where there was no minimum wage and it was terrible for workers all around they all got screwed. We tried that once and it failed time to move on and accept it.
"Race to the bottom" is a saying that doesn't hold true. No business will survive "at the bottom". They will go out of business and be left with a loss. Competition drives prices down to a new equilibrium because of the new supply curve. This squeezes profits (diversity's wealth) and makes the consumer more "well-off" because they can afford more now because of the overall lower prices of goods. Whoever worked 12-16 hours a day for a slave wage is not very smart then. I wouldn't do that? Would you? They shouldn't just accept that and live there life out in that fashion. They need to do 1 of 2 things. Find a better paying job. And if they can't because they don't have the skill set or experience. Then they need to educate themselves, learn new skill-sets, get valuable experience, and overall better themselves to become more attractive as employees. Nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to work at McDonald's or Walmart. That is one's personal choice to do so. We all have to start off at the bottom unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth. The challenge of living in a free country though is to work hard to better yourself so you can move up the totem pole. To say that people have NO other choice is simply taking the easy way out and complaining instead of taking action. It has been experimented time and time again that the majority of people do the least amount to get by. It has also been experimented that the most successful people do the opposite. They do whatever they can in their power to better themselves. They set goals and are as persistent as one can be to achieve that goal. This is why so many people label poorer people as lazy. Which is wrong because not all poor people are lazy. Sure, some are but overall it's a hasty generalization. Overall, though there is a correlation between hard work and dedication and your own personal success. And finally yes, I do understand the history of the U.S. I understand there was time when there was no minimum wage. Times when people didn't have student loan debts, huge mortgages for homes that were underwater, massive credit card debt, car loans for cars that are overpriced. Yes, I have read about those times. I'm not saying times were better back then. But overall if people are persistent and work to better themselves they will reap what they sow. There is no such thing as a free lunch at the end of the day.
Raising the minimum wage isn't targeted toward 16-24 year olds or unskilled workers. It's targeted toward people who work full time trying to raise a family. When the minimum wage was created, someone who worked full time could raise a family of three. They could live comfortable lives. Not lavish, but comfortable.
You have welfare, Gov. housing and medic aid, for all of the families and people who can't survive on a "free wage market" and the level of welfare is also higher than the minimum wage in many US States. In effect. You are arguing for something superfluous which was never needed, and that is the essence of madness.
if you raise the minimum wage for people, want they have more money to spend or waste going to store's and paying for service like cable tv and other stuff, why would companys want to stop this if they themselves would be benefiting from such an increase in pay.
Burstein and Kornbluh kept harping on about empiricism, but completely ignored rationalism - the other side of the science coin. If anyone were ever to argue that the laws of physics apply to the Milky Way but not to the Andromeda galaxy, he or she would be subject to immense ridicule. Equally, if you agree that the law of supply and demand applies to the food market, you must also believe that it applies to the labor market. And if you believe that it applies to the labor market then you must also agree that while there are other factors affecting wages besides demand, the fact remains that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. In other words, that even if the trend of unemployment is downward following a minimum wage hike, you must nonetheless agree that unemployment would have decreased even further had the wage hike not occurred. A strong argument requires more than just evidence. It also requires reason. Another thing Burnstein and Kornbluh were doing throughout the whole debate that really got to me was focusing on groups, rather than individuals: "Abolishing the minimum wage will hurt parents! This will hurt single parents even more! This will hurt women more than men! [Really!?] This will hurt ~3 million people!" But what about those other ~3 million people? Why should one group be deprived of opportunity for the security of another? More importantly, why should one group's security outweigh one individual's opportunity? Are we to crucify them in the name of the liveable wage? Why doesn't it matter that Dorn's friend suffered as a result of the minimum wage? And who are they to decide these matters? Who is anyone to decide these matters? It's been said that the individual whose free speech is most in need of protection is the one who disagrees with everyone else, because that one person may have a good idea not yet discovered by the rest of the populace. Perhaps it is also true that the opportunity of the individual whose production is less than all others is in need of the most protection, because he or she has the most unrealized production to contribute to the world.
The biggest mistake we have made with the financial system is that over the last 30 years we have deregulated the profits while creating a safety net for the profits. Milton Friedman did not support that.
The instance where there is an increase in employment in an area, in which the state had just raised the minimum wage, is a historical anomaly. The fact that the one side uses this as "evidence" is just astonishing to me. The only worse argument than that I heard throughout the entire debate is that politicians support the minimum wage, so it must be a good thing. I simply cannot take that viewpoint seriously.
Seems a pretty easy choice: For. Okay, so economics isnt totally clear and in favor of FOR, but the against group really did not explain how workers are supposed to get into the work market, and gain the skills required to climb the income ladder. If there "a moral argument" is anywhere, its therefore on the side of For, since it both gives them choices and a chance to grow and gain. Against would just leave to many stuck in permanent poverty on the doll. I don't quite get Karens logic... she wants to raise the min. wage, so that the weakest loses their jobs, and then they should get education to help them jump high enough to jump the ladder... hmm
@20:45...so the lady (in his bs story) lost her job because her boss didn't want to pay out another dollar or so per day? republicans are sad human beings.
One of the best lessons a person can learn is what their skills are worth. It's a really important step to get to a level of experience where you can confidently say how much money your services are worth. When someone asks you why you should make $7.50 per hour, you should have a good answer. Tons of kids can't get any experience because they haven't worked and haven't gotten hired because they have no experience. I don't know who wouldn't take below minimum wage over an unpaid internship.
Am I shocked that the two arguing against this worked for the government? No.. not really. The government needs to just stop interfering in every single facet of our lives.
Wages are prices. Prices are dictated by supply and demand. You should be able to sell your goods and services to anyone that wishes to buy them at any price. It's immoral for those that disagree to make laws that force agreement.
As an former higher minimum wage supporter I came to conclusion that under current conditions there is no need for minimum wage since there are ways without regular jobs to make money and anyway no company owner likes to be forced to do something.
The problem with minimum wage debates is that they focus on the workers and not the companies and the location those companies operate in. it is obvious that big corporations like Walmart, Home Depot and McDonalds could easily afford a high minimum wage. The problem is that small mom and pop shops and even franchises in small town USA would get destroyed by a high minimum wage. As for abolishing the minimum wage, I think abolishing it would help entrepreneurs with new startups. The average failure rate for new startups, across all industries, is around 50%. If the minimum wage was abolished it might help new startup companies succeed. I'm sure regulations don't help either but if a new company weren't force to pay a minimum wage, that 50% failure rate might decrease. This is just a Theory!
Abolishing regulation helps the people. My personal circumstance. I have no education beyond grammar school. I have been outside the job market for 8 years, not even unemployed since I can't handle the stress at the unemployment office, thus I get zero welfare. I used to do gig work back when the words "gig work" didn't exist, such as taxi and delivery but atm. consider myself disabled and live off trading on the Internet and collecting garbage on the street. If the minimum wage disappeared ? I could apply for a job and work in my own ( relatively low ) pace without getting controlled "over the shoulder" to no end. As it stands. I won't apply for a job that carries a min wage of 15 or 20 USD. It's not worth my personal health and well being. I will never "get paid" more at 15 USD ( according to my own work plan ) even if the minimum wage is 15 USD. What happens is, I have to work my ass off and that will probably increase my illness ( severly ) in just a couple of months and that's not worth 15 USD and it's not worth 30 USD either. For me. It's a question of well being and a truly friendly environment. If this is lacking ? no money in the world is good.
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This is economics 101. Price floors cause surpluses while price ceilings cause shortages. Unemployment is a surplus of labor.
You don't need a PhD in economics to figure out whether a minimum wage causes unemployment.
***** Thats not how it goes. Workers are not a commodity.
GuyVelella What I described is a basic rule of supply and demand. Are you saying that the rules of supply and demand do not apply to "workers"?
Kevin McMahon only if the price floor or ceiling is binding of course
Low unemployment doesn't mean your economy is successful. The median income while excluding the extremes of a bell curve is the best way to see where your people are at.
@@52000rightwing People aren't numbers on a spreadsheet to be used as you please. We are not slaves and deserve more than just to be equated to another product.
The minimum wage was imposed to suppress black people during 1930's and it still does!
aramagoo no racist people do. By making black labor the same price as white labor how is that racism by law?
Gart, great question. It's because it limits the ability of uneducated and unskilled people to sell their labor at a price of their choosing. If you have no skills and no education, the only way you can get skills is by selling yourself short to get the skills that command a higher wage. If you have a price ceiling like the minimum wage they are not able to sell their labor as easily.
"Citation Needed" in my experience people sell their labor for whatever they can get without a minimum wage it's not difficult to see wage theft become more commonplace. Without a minimum wage what is to stop employers to adjust the wage on a whim, accounting software is more than capable of making those adjustments. A minimum wage would allow for racists to pay unskilled workers less for the same Labour as others solely on the basis of race.
The education system needs improvement in the case of unskilled labor as much of their jobs are being automated. Instead of delaying the inevitable why not increase OJT?
The mechanism that stops employers from adjusting wages are the employees themselves. If your pay constantly being adjusted and you were unhappy you would find another place of employment. Now, this brings up a good point on market failures. That is, if there is only, lets say, a single coal company in town that the majority of people work at and there are no other jobs to go to then that single company has monopoly and can be a price setter for wages. This is a bad outcome of unbalanced competition in the marketplace. The market failures in these situations are a strong argument FOR the minimum wage. However, with enough competition this line of reasoning becomes invalid. On the topic of race or any other form of bigotry including sexism. If an employer wishes to discriminate for whatever reason despite the person in question having the same skills as the white person, the employer then has to bear the cost of doing so. This is due to the fact that if he can hire a black person at with the same skills as a white person for less and does not do so because of prejudice, the employer has just imposed additional cost on themselves. What the minimum wage does in effect is reduce that cost to 0. Meaning now they do not pay a penalty for being prejudice.
"Citation Needed" so if I read you correctly having a minimum wage is bad because it makes the cost of discrimination 0. No actually because before the minimum wage discrimination was rampant. To be fair afterwards it was also rampant but it opened the door for equality in the workplace. There is also generally a lack of consequences for the discrimination. Look at the tech industry they get billions but have been found to discriminate
Workers need jobs more than employers do for example, when I was hired the wage was 15/hr to me that's great. However I later learned that the site a couple years before was paying 20+/hr despite the decline in pay we still had people lining up for the job.
The argument for minimum wage in this video entirely disregards the economic benefits that abolishing it could have. They assume that abolishing it automatically leads to a lower standard of living. It sounds sincere, but is actually a very shallow argument.
0:32 Debate Info & Rules
1:00 Debater Introductions
6:11 Russell Roberts
12:18 Jared Bernstein
19:01 James Dorn
25:45 Brutal cutoff
25:58 Karen Kornbluh
32:18 Round 2 - Q&A, Debaters address each other & questions
1:17:09 Round 2 ends; concluding remarks
1:26:08 Results
Note Bernstein from 15:04-15:42. His "common sense" argument is the following:
(1) The minimum wage has not been abolished in the 75 years since it was enacted.
(2) In fact, the minimum wage has been adopted and expanded by multiple states during this time.
(3) Therefore, the minimum wage is good and beneficial.
The conclusion simply does not follow from the premises. This is called the fallacy of appeal to the people (argumentum ad populum): if many people believe it, it is true. This is clearly false as a valid argument. Try this reasoning on another issue in American history:
(1) From the beginning of the slave trade to the American Colonies in 1619 until the abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the number of slaves increased continually, with more states and more and slave owners acquiring slaves.
(4) Pro-slavery advocates sought to expand slavery into the western territories in the mid 1800s.
(3) Up through the Civil War and even Reconstruction more and more southern slave owners, Congressmen, and even many religious leaders fiercely defended slavery as being beneficial to the slaves, the natural order of humanity, and even approved of by God.
(4) Therefore, slavery was good, beneficial, and true.
You can see the nonsensical nature of this logic. Just because many people adopt some policy, extend its influence, or believe a certain thing does not make it true. The same is true for the MW. Similar invalid arguments could be run for Nazi Germany and geocentrism to show that even if the vast majority of a population believe something that does not make it true. There must be solid economic, historical, and well-researched arguments on the MW and this is not one of them. This is just one example of many problems with Bernstein's and Kornbluh's arguments.
Are slaves robots or dogs?
Anti trust laws, corporate greed, monopolies, deceit, rat race.
If minimum wage is a good idea, why not raise it to $50 or $100 per hour? Sure that would be even better for everyone...
Minimum wage is what I call feelings-based economics. Price floors are dumb.
It's great to see the comments on the side of reason. It seems that you can tell which side of the left | right politics is right by which side uses the most facts and numbers.
limits in general skew the situation, in this case MW skewing the economy.
@ad altiora tendo evil pro voluntary interactions shill
here's the killer..... sure you are an employee at your job, but you are an employer to your plumber, landlord, mechanic, lawnmower, daycare, grocer, doctor, computer repair guy, dentist and and I could go on. If you want a minimum wage for your job, then why don't we set a minimum price for all those people YOU employ???
When will we learn to give up trying to control the choices other people make. if you're willing to take 7.24 instead of the 7.25 set minimum for a job, what's wrong with that?. and if a company is willing to pay you 3 million a year... let them.. why is everyone so bent on controlling the choices of others? are you not happy with welfare, ssi and obamacare? now you want to control how much I can pay people who work for me.. oh well, that's why I hire Filipinas overseas. That's like someone setting the minimum price of socks.. or setting a maximum price for cars... what is wrong with people... its all voluntary and all employees to one company are employers to dozens of other companies.
***** Price controls definitely have unintended consequences. But, your assertion that price controls lead to higher prices is putting the cart before the horse. Price controls were established because prices were already too high, and the markets were signalling a trend of increasing prices.
***** You're talking about San Francisco, which is a Mecca for IT companies. As IT companies move to and are started in San Francisco, they bring highly paid workers. This increases Demand, which increases prices.
Is it possible that price controls are actually driving up prices? Sure. But it is also possible that the influx of new workers is serving to drive up prices. It is possible that the increase in prices is due to a combination of jobs and price controls. Its also possible that the price controls are keeping the prices from increasing too quickly because they provide cheaper options.
"When will we learn to give up trying to control the choices other people make. if you're willing to take 7.24 instead of the 7.25 set minimum for a job, what's wrong with that?."
In economic terms it's called a race to the bottom.
"Lowering your own personal wage rate may be the only key to unlocking future opportunities for higher paying jobs"
That's exactly what the wealthy want you to believe, but it just isn't true. Raising the MW applies to everyone so it doesn't affect anyone's competitive advantage. Get rid of it, and every individual will be encouraged to lower their wages, lowering wages for everyone at the lower end of the scale, and increasing profits at the top.
SO unbelievably well put there Self Education Radio.
Minimum wage needs to be abolished as it hurts the poorest workers. What many people who like to tout studies that say increasing the minimum wage doesn't affect unemployment neglect to mention is that after 6 months of being unemployed you're no longer counted even if you still are unemployed. Think about it if you're a guy with a spotty job history no good references and possibly a criminal record due to poor choices you've made you're gonna have a lot harder of a time finding an employer willing to take a chance on you at $15 an hour since the employer has candidates without those negative aspects to choose from while at $7 an hour the employer is mostly dealing with applicants in the same boat as you. We see this scenario happening in real life. In NYC for example the young black male unemployment rate is damn near 50% for those reasons and no you can't say I'm racist for saying that because I'm a black male myself.
+Yewon2001 It's no accident that nearly ALL the cities were blacks are doing the best are in the south. With lower entry into the workforce barriers. www.forbes.com/pictures/edgl45gkhj/no-4-baltimore-md/
+Yewon2001
Who cares about minimum wage workers, they can't support the economy in anyway, they can't even support themselves. Minimum wage or not they will depend on someone, and the tax payers.
Its a waste of time to talk about people who would make even less money than minimum wage, those people will in fact be an expense to society the same as girls playing kitchen asking people for doe and silverware.
It hurts the poorest workers, raises standard of living, and brings the working class and middle class into the poverty class
Stop multiplying?
@@QueenofBluntTruth Government has good reasons for creating a minimum wage. Entrepreneurs don't like it because they are put on the spotlight to create a serious functional business and it prevents big business from exploiting people and extract wealth from the taxpayer. The reason is that most people are not good with math, maybe they will take a job for 25 cents p/h, for the employer these suckers are right to get scammed and exploited because they are fools, and they will make money while it will take employee at least a month to realize they spend more money going to work than what they make at work, and then there is always another victim to scam when they quit... So that is bad businesses but it also means that those people not making it on their own salary will have to take handouts from social programs which come from the taxpayer. Walmart did this tactic of paying at the edge of a minimum wage which was too low, offering full time jobs to many people that simply couldn't even afford food! so they had food stamps, thus technically the taxpayer was subsidizing Walmart workforce, which was very unfair for other competitors which to compete had to also lower wages and get their workers on the food stamps as well...
It's a fantasy that business left alone only benefit people, they don't, business are productive and effective as long there is an arbiter that prevents abuse, just like in any other part of life.
"90% of workers on minimum wage support raising minimum wage"
Why is this even an argument? Of course people will gladly vote to give themselves a raise if they can. Thinking they're voting on purely political grounds is nonsense.
+audiorage82407 100% of prisoners support amnesty.
Classy
I'm sure you graduated top of your class in the Navy Seals and have over 300 confirmed kills.
audiorage82407 i am in politics
No argument from me on that front
My opinion is that "for abolishing" had better arguments, but the "against abolishing" made more appeals to the audience which lead to their victory. I also notice Dorn and Roberts didn't criticize their opponents as much as Bernstein and Kornbluh did.
yes. and Bernstein could TALK REALLY LOUD and get the audience clappping. Another loss for reason and win for hyperbolic emotions.
My opinion would be that the 'pros' had arguments based on verifiable facts and the 'cons' had arguments based in emotion. Clearly the audience likes to feel warm and fuzzy in lala land instead on being in fact based reality.
Lala land: paying employees survival wages for decades without opposition
Two economists explaining sound, proven economic theory, and two politicians peddling an emotional argument with no merit.
+Logan S. Exactly. I was going to comment on the unrelenting pandering to emotion but you've already done it more succinctly than I would have.
+Logan S. Yeah. Emotional points about 'freedom' have no place in this debate. Everyone deserves the freedom to work for slave wages, wooo!
+Josh White Ok? I'm not really sure you can equate freedom as an emotion, but as they explained, raising the minimum wage is just a price floor which won't raise earnings of those working entry level jobs, it's much more likely they just won't find employment. Also, if you want to throw out such an unsupported argument such as the minimum wage price floor keeps people out of "slave" wages, then why do the vast majority of Americans earn more than the minimum wage? Surely all those greedy companies want to pay all their employees no more than they have to.
"why do the vast majority of Americans earn more than the minimum wage" -citation needed. Many areas have minimum wages above the federal, so of course very few will be at the federal minimum.
If we lower or remove the minimum, then presumably there'd be an increase in supply of sub-prime labor, and who knows what the market minimum would be, so I don't even see how your point of what people make now is more supported than my point.
"not really sure you can equate freedom as an emotion"
I said emotional points about freedom. Stories about some random poor guys that can't get their first job because they don't have the freedom to work for less is an appeal to emotion.
+Josh White
I'm actually having a debate with the user "bdpride" a few comments below this one. I don't feel the need to re-word my argument in order to fit your specific case, so I'm simply going to copy and paste what I have said. If you read all of it, then I would like to thank you for being open-minded enough to listen. If you have any questions, then just ask and I'll gladly answer. If you'd like to debate, then go right ahead, and I'll offer my counter-argument.
I may not be able to reply immediately, because I am currently in the middle of my final exam week, and I've been fairly busy studying. It ends on the 13th, so I may be able to reply then, if not shortly afterwards.
You're talking about how you want a fair wage, but at the same time you seem fairly concerned with unemployment, so I'm just going to explain the effects of the minimum wage for you.So the minimum wage is simply a price floor that is almost always set above the market equilibrium. If it was set at or below the equilibrium, then the policy would be useless. What this means is that the government is artificially placing a limit on the price of labor, which thereby creates a surplus of labor. (Unemployment) What it essentially does is deflate the demand for labor(cost increases, demand decreases), while simultaneously increasing the supply(because no one will want a large number of workers for a high price, people will be let go, thereby increasing the number of jobless workers). This creates a gap between the supply and demand curve, thus the surplus of labor is formed.
The demand for low skilled workers will always be very elastic, due to the fact that low skilled labor is not scarce in the market, so an increase in the min wage will almost always hurt the working class. High demand elasticity simply means that as the price of a good or service increases, the demand will decrease at a larger rate than a good or service with a very low demand elasticity. So the demand for cashiers is very price elastic, and the demand for engineers is very price inelastic. This is due to the fact that engineers have a higher level of scarcity in the market, along with other factors such as the high level of education, intellect and skill it takes to be an engineer, so their labor is worth more. A business would be able to hire a cashier for $10, but they would never be able to employ an engineer for the same amount. So when the wage rate surpasses the marginal productive output(When the wage is worth more than a workers labor), which is amplified further by diminishing return, then companies will be forced to lay off workers that add less to the marginal value product.
Not only this, but when you increase the minimum wage, you are also preventing those workers from gaining valuable skills and experience that is needed in order to attain a higher wage. In the hiring process, experience is one of the most important factors that employers look for. The more experience the individual has, the more efficient at that job they are going to be, and the more revenue they will bring in for that specific company. This is why internships are one of, if not the most important factor if you plan on getting a job outside of college.
It is also a common claim that "If the minimum wage is increased, more people will have more money, and they'll spend more money, thereby stimulating the economy." This is a very common economic fallacy. The assertion that the minimum wage increases aggregate expenditures(money spend in an entire economy) is false because when you negate money from going to the capital fund(when you prevent money from being invested into businesses) to subsidize labor, then you are by default negating money from going to the purchase of other factors of production such as land and capital that is privately owned by firms. This decreases their revenue because you are basically subsidizing the consumer goods section of the economy by taking money away from the capital formation sectors. So you're not increasing the amount of wealth in the economy, you're simply reallocating it. There is no increase in aggregate expenditures, you are not increasing businesses revenues, and the economy is not better off.
On top of all this, the minimum wage also gives more market power to corporations, because you are increasing the price of labor past the market equilibrium in which small businesses need to have in order to enter the market and compete with larger businesses and corporations. Because mom and pop shops cannot afford to stay in business due to the fact that they cannot afford to hire any extra workers, they are forced to close ans sell off their assets. Corporations, however, do not see this problem due to the fact that businesses with a large amount of revenue and capital can absorb the cost of an increase in the price of labor much more efficiently than small businesses. This is largely because corporations can also produce revenue from their stocks and bond options, which allow them to operate at a lower quantity of labor. This kind of market strategy can be seen in practice by Walmart, which has consistently pushed for a minimum wage increase in order to obtain a larger market share.
If you have ever taken an econometrics or statistics class, you should know how easy it is to cherry pick data and "correlate" it to something that it has no relationship to. There are also times in which economists make mistakes and misinterpret data. One instance of this was a study headed by Paul Krugman, who sought to find the effects of a minimum wage hike on unemployment. When he was finished with the study, he found that the demand elasticity for low skilled labor was close to zero, which is false. What he failed to do was account for where the individuals lived(which would have factored in disparities, purchasing power, standard of living, etc.) based upon cross-regional data analysis. This means that Krugman measured the unemployment rate too broadly, and since unemployment caused by a minimum wage hike is more damaging in small towns as opposed to large cities where there is a higher cost of living, then this warped the data.
After he placed the data sets on a two dimensional plane, the data set was very homogeneous, making it impossible to find a trend, which led him to declare the demand elasticity as zero. BUT if he had followed the procedures correctly, and accounted for where the individual lived on a much smaller scale, then the data set on the two dimensional plane would become increasingly more heterogeneous, thereby making it strongly evident that the demand for low skilled labor is strongly negatively inelastic.
The reason why I am telling you this is to let you know that you never really know if the data set you are looking at is warped or not, and it's beneficial to understand how to gather and interpret data using your own knowledge of economics. Otherwise politicians, TV shows, talk show hosts, comedians, or whatever other media outlet you acquire your news from, can subconsciously feed you misinformation. What you need to do, is read and learn enough about the subject so that you can form your own educated opinion, and refuse to let someone else subconsciously dictate how you think.
Here are a few papers about the minimum wage, both in favor and against, if you want to read about it.
www.nber.org/papers/w18681
www.nber.org/papers/w20724
www.nber.org/papers/w20619
www.nber.org/papers/w21830
The first link is the paper I referred to about Paul Krugman Misinterpreting his data. All have a variety of different authors and extra sources. It only looks like the same website because its simply a database for research essays.
You notice no one wants to abolish greed.
The fact of the matter is that the minimum wage does not effectively accomplish its function. Germany has no minimum wage, a low skilled worker is certainly not better off in France.
"How could they even consider that?" says Karen Kornbluh attempting to shame her opponents. How childish. Feel free to make an actual point at any time rather than these ad hominem attacks.
The minimum wage helps some low-skill workers at the expense of even-lower-skilled workers. There is a superficially positive glow to it, but thinking about it just a little should you really persuade you otherwise.
It's unconscionable that this policy continues to stand and that there are advocates for its expansion.
If you and I agree on a job and a wage, it's no one else's business to come meddle into.
Unchecked Capitalism leads to Unequal wealth distribution. Monopolies, anti trust laws, inequality, class divide.
@@sha9543 You replied to my comment by mistake
And a low minimum wage or no minimum wage helps small businesses(and others) at the expense of the taxpayer.
@@soberanisfam1323 You're suggesting taxpayers shouldn't support low income earners?
@@grantcivyt isnt that socialism?
To get good jobs in the beginning of my working life, I volunteered in the field I wanted to work in. I worked FOR FREE because it was illegal to pay me under min wage. I could have made $1 an hour and I would have been more wealthy. I could have incrementally gone from $1 to $3, to $5 and so on until I was beyond min wage. But thankfully, all it really takes in this world is 6 months to 1 year of experience and your wage skyrockets from there. The lowest fifth of wages sees exponential growth. Sure you may be making piddly in the beginning, but at least you have a job- at least YOU are profitable- and you will very quickly move up. The wage is not nearly as valuable as the free training they include in the package. There is a huge opportunity for charities here to get free labor because young people need training and skills. I cannot believe we live in a world where you have to volunteer because getting paid "too low" is illegal, and you PAY to get shitty training in schools when you could get it for free or even paid training via jobs.
"They're going to be paying our social security", yeah that's something else we should abolish 😂
True.. Feel sad for those low skilled workers who are unemployed. They will remain unemployed for a long time to come...
The people arguing for the motion have this false notion that businesses and corporations will fairly compensate those low-skill workers over time if the government would get out of the way. Nonsense at every level. Businesses are profit making machines that want to pay workers the least they have to. With no pay floor, wages will plummet and poverty and crime will go up.
We just outsource manufacturing to countries with much lower minimum wages, like Bangladesh.
if you're a black person who is for minimum wage you just aren't thinking straight. apartheid in south africa was sought to be entrenched via minimum wage laws.
Yes. Also, in the USA, the KKK and racist labor unions sough the minimum wage. They didn't want blacks taking their inflated labor rates.
This is just another example of rich city dwellers feeling sorry for the poor, " oh poor stupid people, let us help you make money.... because obviously you can't make it on your own" . It's patriarchal and demeaning - while appearing as caring.
Unemployment was like 1.2% during the roaring 20's without a minimum wage. Never been that low again.
@Le Québec d'abord WRONG! The statistics state that back in the 1990's MORE people worked more than one job than today. Less people work more than one job today than 20 years ago.
Want to see what no minimum wage looks like? Just go to Germany, the richest country in Europe, the 4th economy in the world, yet the average German struggles to make a living often having to work 2 jobs to make ends meet. I don't know about Japan or the US but 2 jobs is unheard of in western Europe, 3-5€/h is a common wage for unqualified workers.
At what amount should the minimum wage stop at?
The minimum wage can't just keep increasing. At some point it has to stop. We can't have a $25 minimum wage. Too many jobs won't be worth that much.
Singapore has NO minimum wage. But Singapore has the highest per capita income and highest number of millionaires. And Singapore is a super strong economy with a strong buffer of reserve. And Singapore has NO minimum wage and Singapore has 80% middle class workers who pay little or no income tax.
Just try it in one state
Although I'm for the motion, I just don't think the "Pro" team gave a compelling argument. The "Anti" team kept playing on emotion and the "Pro" team just hit back with studies and research. The best way to argue the case is the moral case: The minimum wage is the same as price fixing because what is a wage but a price for labor. It's unethical for the government to interfere in business transactions between individuals. Suppose you see a great book (retail $15) on sale for $10, and the cashier says, "Oh I'd love to sell it to you but the government says we have to charge at least $25."
If they repealed all minimum wage laws, that would be a dream come true. I hope one day they will abolish it.
Yeah, but remember, Market Socialist--We're the 'regressives' despite the fact that they want to take us back to certain things that were inconvenient for disadvantaged/marginalized people. We're the bad guys here for trying to give them a hand. And since we're human and show any kind of emotion, we're wrong. But when they do it (as they grandstand in favor of "freedom"), it's okay. lol
*****
(singing) Nailed it. lol
i m stupid.doesn t that mean you can pay whatever you choose if there s no minimum?
teknoäijä Yes, it does mean you can pay whatever if there is no minimum wage, however the market would dictate the wage. So let's say I'm an absolute idiot with an iq of 60 and somehow own a business, do you really, I mean REALLY think I'm going to pay you $1 an hour? How long do you think I will last paying people that kind of wage? They will go to a business paying $4/hour, then the other place is paying $5, another is paying $7, the point is, the free market (if it was free) will compete for workers by paying for a wage appropriate to the current market conditions.
So just because theoretically I could pay someone "$1" doesn't mean that will actually happen.
*****
Yeah.....but "free market." So your argument is invalid. (sarcasm) lol
"And I worked my way... To whatever it is I'm doing now" - In support of the minimum wage
Both sides are claiming that the majority of studies back their claim, who is lying?
One group focuses on teen employment, the other focuses on the employment of a head of household. In my mind the prior is irrelevant as an employment concern since education and internships are generally more critical for that group.
+Danny Fisher If that is the claim, then the pro-minimum wage side is lying. It isn't even close. One may attempt (contrary to the views of the great majority of economists) that more "more reliable" studies favor the pro-minimum wage position (Doucouliagos & Stanley hilariously try to take that position) but in simple numerical terms, more than 80% of the studies show the minimum wage to be harmful and the three most comprehensive reviews of the research (by the US Minimum Wage Study Commission; Brown, Gilroy & Kohen; and Neumark & Wascher) all agree on the disemployment effects of the minimum wage. If you exclude certain studies debunked due to selection bias or poor methodology (Card & Krueger; John Schmitt, etc.) nearly all of the research shows that the minimum wage results in disemployment.
Damn son now those are some sources thanks!
Dear @@FletchforFreedom:
Of course, we "must" take your word for it as to which is the "better" set of studies.
@@Shrdlu42 Your mistake is thinking that you've given me a challenge that can't be met. There are three ways you can see unequivocally that there are no valid studies showing that the minimum wage is anything but harmful.
1) You can look at the research itself. Here, as mentioned, are the most comperhensive reviews of the literature ever performed, a listing of relevant studies and their findings and examples of recent research:
books.google.com/books/about/Report_of_the_Minimum_Wage_Study_Commiss.html?id=nSHtAAAAMAAJ
www.nber.org/papers/w846
www.nber.org/papers/w12663.pdf
www.nber.org/papers/w20724
www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c876c468-ffca-47ed-9468-7193d734bde9/50-years-of-research-on-the-minimum-wage---february-15-1995.pdf
evans.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/files/w23532_0.pdf
2) You can ask actual competent economists (we overwhelmingly oppose raising it and nearly half of us would abolish it outright):
people.uwec.edu/jamelsem/fte/fte/efl/teacher_stuff/articles/economists_agree.pdf
3) Use basic reasoning skills. The Law of Demand is simple - as the price goes up demand declines. As Nobel Laureate James Buchanan put it when the Card & Kreuger "study" was completely debunked:
“The inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price is the core proposition in economic science, which embodies the presupposition that human choice behavior is sufficiently rational to allow predictions to be made. Just as no physicist would claim that “water runs uphill,” no self-respecting economist would claim that increases in the minimum wage increase employment. Such a claim, if seriously advanced, becomes equivalent to a denial that there is even minimal scientific content in economics, and that, in consequence, economists can do nothing but write as advocates for ideological interests. Fortunately, only a handful of economists are willing to throw over the teaching of two centuries; we have not yet become a bevy of camp-following whores.”
It's quite simple. When the overwhelming majority of studies yield the same conclusion, and when those supposedly showing another conclusion do so in violation of basic scientific principles and are, nearly without exception, shown either to be methodologically unsound (as was Card & Kreuger - see link below) or of too small a sample size to yield material results and are, also nearly without exception, coming from sources that have been shown to be completely unreliable multiple times (Economic Policy Institute, ERLE, NELP, CEPR, etc.), pretty much anyone with an IQ greater than that of gravel can see which is the "better" set of studies. Do you have some problem with that?
Promised link:
www.epionline.org/wp-content/studies/epi_njfastfood_04-1996.pdf
simple. The minimum wage is force. Force is wrong.
1:14:00 The potential benefits are minimum If the exist at all. The potential harm however, could be quite Large.
I find it hilarious how heavily the Pro Minimum Wage team used the argument, "The minimum wage MUST be good, POLITICIANS support it."
Derp.
Both the benefits and harm of a minimum wage are complicated.
In an industry where employee expense is 25% of total expenses, then a 50% minimum wage increase is only going to increase total costs by 12.5%.
On the flip side, increasing minimum wage by 50% provides low wage earners with 50% more money to spend. This means that businesses that cater to low wage workers will have a potential increase in income of roughly 50%.
So, 50% increase in income with an increase in costs of 12.5%.
This is totally a bad deal for businesses everywhere.
www.bluemaumau.org/sites/default/files/Janney-McDonalds%20Income%20Statement%20mock.pdf
MrTortillasoup
LMFAO
I got to know. Where did you get the figure that raising the minimum wage would increase revenue by 'roughly 50%'?
FlyOverZone
Definition: Demand is the willingness and ability to buy a certain quantity of goods at a certain price.
Increasing wages by 50% will increase income for low wage workers by 50%.
Increasing income by 50% will increase the total amount of money available by 50%.
Increasing the total money available by 50% will increase the amount that can be spent by 50%.
If people have 50% more to spend, then they will, potentially, be willing and able to spend 50% more money.
This means that there is a potential increase in Demand of about 50%.
This potential increase in Demand can lead to a comparable increase in revenues.
"Increasing income by 50% will increase the total amount of money available by 50%."
LMFAO
The minimum wage does NOT increase the amount of money in the economy. The minimum wage is a WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION PROGRAM. It TAKES money from one group of private citizens and TRANSFERS that money to another group of private citizens through Govt COERCION.
What most people who are knowledgeable enough to understand THIS much, DON'T understand is that it does NOT take money from the 1%, The 1% simply raises the prices of their goods and services. No. The minimum wage takes money away from the middle class, who do NOT get an increase in income but have to pay the higher prices caused by the inflation caused by the higher minimum wage.
Saying the minimum wage helps the economy is the equivalent of saying ARMED ROBBERY helps the economy. It's Laugh Out Loud HILARIOUSLY IGNORANT.
FlyOverZone Your entire wealth redistribution rant is crap. Firstly, the employee/employer relationship is an EXCHANGE, not a TRANSFER. The employee trades time and labor for monetary compensation. Which leads to the second problem: a business owner is entitled to all proceeds after all the obligations have been met. Relying on outside pressures(rent/mortgage payments, car notes, insurance...) to convince your employees into discounting your obligation to them is completely shameful and cowardly. It is shameful because the employees give their time and effort and the low wage employer is too wrapped up in his own ego to recognize what others are doing for him. It results in an uneven transactions in an uneven transaction where one side gives significantly less than it takes. It is cowardly because they don't have the balls to openly admit that they are knowingly and willingly taking advantage of a messed up situation. And before you try to pretend that this is not coercion, answer me this: why would somebody agree to work for less than what they need to survive if there weren't any kind of significant pressure? So, at the end of the day, if you are okay with profiting off of other people's pain, I am okay with the government playing referee.
Your second paragraph assumes that situations are static. It assumes that the 1% are the business owners and everybody else are employees. Right now, getting loans to start up a business is fairly difficult because small businesses just don't earn enough to keep their doors open. However, price increases across the boards means revenue increases for all businesses. It also means higher projected revenues for potential businesses. Given sufficient potential revenue and a solid business plan, the middle class earner is no longer stuck working for the 1%.
"Saying the minimum wage helps the economy is the equivalent of saying ARMED ROBBERY helps the economy." Your comfortable, I get that. But when your comfort comes at the expense of other people, YOU are the ROBBER.
I just love the arrogance in the following statement at 25:20:
"The law increases the wage rate, but if you don't get a job your income is zero. That's what people don't understand."
Don't understand? What's there to not understand? People understand the logic behind, that argument very much, but scientists and sceptics(and apparently normal people as well) prefer to look at reality, instead of some seemingly logical argument, that only looks at one variable, when hundreds of other variables actually exist in the real economy.
Yeah, this guys superior intellect is really striking. It's impossible to understand highly scientific arguments like the story about the woman, who was fired from her job, because of the minimum wage.
The "against" side lost when Karen let it slip that there IS no DEBATE of ideas or facts in her world, just (politely, of course) resorts to character assassination of the members of the opposing team and any audience member who has a different belief to hers. As she clearly states TWICE, they are MORALLY WRONG. The primary premise of James Bernstein's argument seemed to be, that because the very idea of debating the motion was obviously so ridiculous, he didn't need to. His proposition that economists spend a few years as social workers has merit. A few years running a small business wouldn't be a bad idea either.
29:45 The woman said that abolishing the minimum wage disproportionately harms women as an argument, implying women have higher value than men. Imagine the outrage if this were said in reverse.
I'm kinda disappointed that they couldn't find better debtors for the In-Favor side. This is an Econ101 issue that should be easy for any freshman college student to defend. The straw man and ad hominem arguments were abundant from the Against side and these were almost never confronted by the In-Favor side. And at some points the in-favor debaters arguments they seem to actually concede or undermine their own side! Even the audience was biased on the matter. When ~%50 of the audience already supports one side, claps and cheers for that side, and nearly all questions from them seem to favor that side, undecided people in the audience will become biased. This hardly seems like a fair debate, and does not live up to the merit of the subject matter.
Pay has to start somewhere and people need to pay bills to live.
Yeah they totally weren't going to reduce labor costs with new technology anyway.
Minimum wage law does not give any additional control to low-wage employees.
Quite to the contrary, it gives government additional control over unskilled employees, by preventing them from getting certain jobs.
Without the minimum wage law, the employee has the choice of "take it or leave it".
With the minimum wage law, it becomes just the "leave it". No choice.
They talk about corporate profits at all time highs but a lot of companies make profit overseas... not making all the profits in the US. Most companies move jobs overseas... those jobs would come back if we had no minimum wage. Also prices rise to pay for the raise. People want a raise if you ask them but what they don't know is some of them won't be needed if the their skills aren't worth the raise.
***** The point is most companies don't need the U.S. they make more money outside of it. The Chinese economy will be larger than the U.S. soon. You need to understand the world is competing and money will flow to where it is used best.
I'm 10 minutes in and I can already tell that the side for abolishing the minimum wage haven't worked a minimum wage job in at least 40 years, if at all. Completely out of touch with the realities of poverty.
If someone’s been participating in the labor market for 40yrs and are still working minimum wage jobs. I doubt their gonna have much advice that I’d want to hear.
if we raise the minimum wage we get INFLATION this is the least productive idea that could possibly be floating around. period.
mrvillTV If there is inflation, that is a sign that it is boosting the economy because people have more spending power therefore giving businesses more confidence to raise prices. Also, there are ways of decreasing inflation such as deliberately introducing fiscal drag.
mrvillTV There will still be inflation with or without the minimum wage. The two have nothing to do with each other.
The Pro side should have focused more on how inflation serves to mitigate the damage inflicted by small increases in the minimum wage.
Min wage advocate: why would the government keep doing a thing if it's bad?
Me: smh
if you are all about people businesses leave if you are all about businesses workers leave but libertarians strike a balance they give everyone freedom to choose.... why doesnt he do a poll and ask the entrepreneurs if they want the minimum wage at 0 they would say yes... so the truth is people want unlimited pay and business would love to pay zero... only the market can find a balance
Bingo
Abolish? For God sake please don't raise it anymore it causes more problems than it solves.
Well there are alternatives to the minimum wage. I assume you would advocate for those, but if you did, you couldn't possibly be a Libertarian or Conservative. What do you propose we replace the minimum wage with? Because its pretty much a compromise with Conservatives and even then they still hate it.
sirscrotum
I propose capping it. www.minimumwage.com/myths/
MrOphachew Well thats an interesting idea.
Heres what I found. Abolish the Minimum wage, implement Collective Bargaining into all of our nations businesses. Have employees negotiate for their wage as a group, rather than as individuals.
Another idea is a Basic income. Say the Government writes everyone a $30,000 check to start the year out. You can then work for whatever wage a business wants to pay you and not live in destitute poverty (as opposed to capping the minimum wage now and keeping it at that rate for the next 100 years which would definitely leave some people in destitute poverty)
Refundable Tax Credit. At the end of the year the lower classes have a tax burden of say -$30,000, so the government writes them a check and they can cash it to cover basic necessities. Again, they can work for any wage and not live in complete poverty.
Then theres the Guaranteed Minimum Income thats been proposed. Its a policy that ALL citizens have a guaranteed income that is sufficient to live on.
These are the proposals I have to replace the minimum wage and other Economists have proposed.
Simply capping it and then letting the magics of the free-market work their magic is a recipe for poverty however. If a super low minimum wage was key to a successful country, than Ivory Coast wouldn't be a complete shit hole with its $.03 an hour minimum wage.
sirscrotum Ivory coast isn't an industrialized nation. More Government dependency is definite disaster. www.minimumwage.com/myths/
MrOphachew So then which industrialized nation has your economic ideas implemented right now?
Why aren't the mixed economies of Scandinavia complete shit holes since they're like the complete opposite of what you seem to be advocating?
The reason for that is the artificial push for women into the work force that resulted in over supply of a work force which in turn lowered the wages.
As a result a house hold with a single earner can not support the entire house hold.
There are two strong arguments the proponents of the motion have. The first one is a moral one and the second is one having to do with economic theory. I'll address the moral one first: Workers should be free to accept any wage offered by an employer because an agreement between individuals is a fundamental human right as long as there is no coercion. This is a compelling argument and one I agree with instinctually. However, upon closer scrutiny, this argument doesn't hold so well. Here's why in two arguments:
One: While agreements made between individual parties with equal negotiating power may be rare, it is the ideal implied in the argument made above. When we agree to the terms of high interest rates on credit, for example, no one is coercing us to enter into such a contract. We make a cost-benefit analysis of the terms and decide the cost of the high interest rate is worth the benefit of having credit. However, just because we accept the terms of a contract where we have no negotiating means other than exit calls into question its validity, at least on moral grounds, which is what we're arguing. So, while the ability to enter into contracts as free agents is an ideal, so is entering into those contracts with as near equal footing as possible.
How do we achieve better the ability to enter into more equal contracts? Depends on the contract. With labor, we used to do it through unions. Germany doesn't have a minimum wage but they have strong, pervasive labor unions. In Germany (and much of Europe) labor is represented in government. We don't have a labor party here in the US and so labor here needs the government to create the conditions allowing labor unions to negotiate on behalf of workers. Here we get the opposite. We have business lobbying government to create laws making it more difficult for labor unions to exist. We recently have created a bureaucracy that is supposed to ensure consumer protection against predatory business practices. We need government to try to even the playing field as much as is consistent with out values in regard to contracts.
While we want to protect the right of the individual to free association and enter into contracts freely, we also have to see this issue as it plays out socially as well. Libertarians are unwavering defendants of the individual, which is fine, but what they fail to fully comprehend is that, although it seems like we may be individual actors, the ramifications of individual choice have consequences beyond the individual. In the anecdote supplied by James Dorn, a retail worker loses her job because the minimum wage increases. That is bad for her. We all feel bad that she can't just keep her job at her previous wage, because she would like to. However, allowing that, also allows all the business that can afford a higher minimum wage, not to pay one. So, one worker loses her job and, according to the proponent's statistics, ten do not, and as a result of the raise in wage, have a higher standard of living. This argument segueways into the economic argument.
While proponents of the motion to abolish the minimum wage rightly cite the economic theory that the increased cost of labor means fewer jobs, that discreet theory has to be understood in the larger economic frame. So when the unfortunate retail worker loses her job as a result of increased minimum wage, is that a net loss of one? This is where economic research comes into play. So, to be fair, to cite one theory of economics that supports your ideological position and to omit another that may contradict it, is disingenuous. The other economic theory is one of supply and demand. The more money in the consumer economy means there is more demand and more demand means more jobs. So the millions of workers that keep their jobs when the min wage is increased spend more money in the consumer economy and create more demand for goods, services and thereby jobs. It is the objective of the studies to show whether there is a net gain in jobs that is a result of the min wage being raised. The Card and Krueger study showed it did, of course they studied just one sector of the economy. Other studies show slight gains or losses that, as Bernstein acknowledged, are near zero, so little effect on job loss. BUT greater effect on raising the standard of living of the workers who got a raise.
So, the proponent's argument is actually rather ironic. Even if there is a net job loss due to raising the minimum, they're saying that the one person who loses their job measured against the however many that keep them (at least 1:10 ratio) and have their standard of living improved is morally the right choice. I believe that argument might have more credibility if we didn't live in a welfare state. That is to say, the few who lose their jobs are not put out on the streets. We never have 100% employment and so have to have a "safety net" of some kind for the unemployed.
The lack of a minimum wage would create an even worse "race to the bottom" problem than we already have. If we had an actual "living wage" as a minimum (this would have to be calculated by city, not at the federal one size fits all level) then those who make this wage (and above) would be able to live comfortably, save, make economic choices not simply out of desperation. And those who aren't making it in the economy would have other options, preferably strong job training programs (subsidized by govt-employer partnerships) or, as a last resort, welfare.
By eliminating the min wage, you simply allow businesses that can pay a living wage, not to because they don't have to. There is always a surplus of so-called unskilled labor and as a result wages are kept artificially down and are not necessarily tied to productivity increases. In fact, all the research I'm aware of shows an increase in worker productivity while wages have remained flat for more than 30 years. The GDP is growing, Wall Street profits are increasing and yet worker wages are not.
If the US does not want to win the race to the bottom economically -- which it shouldn't-- then strategies to create higher paying jobs are needed. This is done mostly through an education system that prepares people to contribute to the economy with skilled labor. But when the cost of education and training is prohibitive then people cannot access it. What allows for accessible education is both and moral and economic argument. If we don't want the US to become a 3rd world economy, then we need to ensure, as our competitors do, that access to education and job training is readily available and that our internet speed is not lagging behind -- as it is.
These things are something government needs to do while keeping consistent with our values of making the "American dream" a possibility for as many people as possible who want it. This means the kind of wealth redistribution (i.e. progressive taxation) that used to be taken for granted and that built the once biggest middle class in the world. It's the thinking and ideology of the proponents of this motion that is obstruction to this goal. They'd like to roll back the clock to the good old pre-New Deal robber baron era and let opportunity be arbitrary and controlled by capitalists alone. That is the true agenda of these people and unless you agree that the robber baron era was superior to the New Deal era, you understand that government has a role in ensuring opportunity for everyone that business alone simply can't provide.
Why not raise the minimum wage to $1000 per hour?
Your answer is also true at $10 per hour.
I'm surprised I didn't hear anything about where the extra money people would earn, should the min wage go up. I thought that that would have been one of their central arguments, that people making the minimum would put virtually every extra penny right back into the economy. Bush gave the rich big tax breaks with the idea they would invest in business, but new jobs dropped to the lowest rate in 70 years, over the subsequent 10 years after the breaks were given. That was because business didn't have forecasts that warranted expansion. More money in the hands of the low & middle class always goes back into the economy, not into savings or the stock market.
One reason is savings is good for the economy. Savings is investment and coordinates production. Just putting money in the bank is money that gets lent out. Savings is necessary for a properly functioning economy.
Spending is not what drives the economy over the long run. Productivity drives a rising standard of living. A minimum wage means fewer workers and thus lower productivity.
if your labor does not justify a 15 dollar a hour wage pay then you prob wont keep your job after the minimum wage hike, let alone spending anything.
Why cant we have a maximum wadge? That a ceo cant make more than 250 times than their lowest paid worker?
or maybe 200, or 100 times more
The problem with this debate audience was comfirmation bias. Most audience member that were undecided we're likely already leaning towards keeping the minimum. In order to get a real number you would have to have controls such as equal amount of supporters of both ideas along with a number of undecideds split down the middle. That being said the people against a minimum wage won.
***** Yeah, probably right. Unemployed people are eager to sell their labor for pennies on the dollar, like they do in China /s/
Jesse Cannon Brandon Lyons Wow, no. Just wow. Ignorant of the issue. It isn't something they fucking choose. People want to be appreciated and compensated in kind. To say that unemployed people would purely vote in favor because they are out of work is ignorant too. Why would anyone, regardless of there employment stand want to work for less than they can make on welfare or other government subsidies. Like, fuck, the ignorance is overwhelming. People would make less money for actually putting effort across. We might as well just get rid of all workers rights. Look up china's labor laws, oh wait, you can't because they don't have any.
BattleWalrus you are pointing out the problems with our welfare state, which is largely caused by our economics policy ie minimum wage laws.
over half of those who earn the minimum wage are women....
well over half of the people in the country are women
I remember as a kid I worked at Kroger as a bagger for $4.25 an hour when I was 16. Right now I have no clue what minimum wage is now, but at that time all I was looking for was a little of my own money. Now as I am an adult and I have my boys getting old enough to move into the teenage workforce, I don’t really care how much they make, but I do want them to be able to work so that they can gain experience in the real world.
I'm seriously surprised that the Pro side lost on this debate. I thought they did an excellent job explaining and refuting most points. Can anyone explain why they think the Cons took the debate?
Honestly, I think their strongest point was the appeal to authority. Noting the EPI letter with signatures of over 600 economists (some of whom were Nobel Laureates) seemed pretty compelling. This isn't a weak point. In fact, it's a very good one to use. However, I don't think they properly argued against the logic of the Pro's or even addressed the moral argument of ruling out of the workforce people who aren't worth the minimum wage. My suspicion is at the ending speech, the Ms. Kornbluh starts talking about how the wage affects women, minorities, families, etc. Obviously this is true, but it was almost as if she just pulled the empathy card to ignore the entirety of the debate. My guess is that there were those who were convinced in the audience, but at the end thought "You know, women and children are at stake here so I guess it makes sense to go against the proposition." This is despite the fact that every other point worked in favor of the Pro side.
Akrylic An old saying is that when emotions go up logic goes down. That is the best weapon that those who support the min. wage have, emotions. Now does that make them right?
+Akrylic
The pro side kept using anectodes from the very beginning. Those stories were an appeal to emotion, because obviously it does not matter what happens to a single person. Additionally they kept using seemingly logical, but simplistic arguments. It's vey clear, that economists can barely predict anything, therefore their models are likely to be flawed for whatever reason. But then they want to use those models/hypothesis, that fail to predict anything, to argue for the effects of something like the minimum wage. That's invalid. If your hypothesis isn't able to predict anything, then don't use the logic of those models to argue against something.
The only thing, that matters in economics at this stage is what happens in the real world. The empiricial evidence is somewhat contradictory as mentioned, but they do agree on one thing. The effects are so minimal, that it's hard to even know whether it increases or decreases unemployement.
What is for certain though, is that a lot more people will earn more, than lose a job. In other words, the positive effects are much bigger, than the negative effects.
A lot of very smart people have a problem. They rely on their logic too often. What some don't realise though, is that science has always been about checking hypothesis on reality. Sometimes a lot of people just make the same logical mistake and aren't able to see it. That's why science has always relied on testing hypothesis by comparing it to the real world. Being smart is great, but without the an in depth understanding of the scientific method, you're just not going to become a realistic thinker.
Don't get me wrong logic is important. It's essential in analyzing reality and coming up with correct hypothesis, but you still need to test those hypothesis.
Additionally, i can give you a lot of reasons of what's wrong from a logical standpoint with the arguments, that they are using. A major reason, is that they look at one variable only and ignore other variables, that might have effects, that counteract that initial variable. In fact in the economy there are so many competing variables (psychology, supply/demand, costs, other employees etc.), that it doesn't even make sense to try and predict anything without doing math and even if you do the math, it doesn't mean, that your results will be correct.
+stau ffap
I had actually read the Neumark paper they mentioned from NBER, and it's a pretty comprehensive and credible argument he makes. The pro side is unfortunately in the position of having to defend a non-existent statistic about unemployment. All they can argue is that there will be theoretical losers, but the against side can easily show how many people are earning the minimum wage currently and stand to benefit just by looking at Wikipedia statistics.
Still, I don't think the against side makes it clear that there will be more winners than losers. For instance, unemployment might not rise, but prices might. Just by visiting San Francisco where they are already hiking up the minimum wage, a lot of restaurants put notices explaining that they need to raise prices on food. This effect just might make things worse for minimum wage earners if prices are more expensive on average. Or perhaps it's just an implicit tax on people who purchase from companies that hire minimum wage workers (these customers might not be minimum wage earners). Either way, we can walk away with the general assumption that money is not being created out of thin air here, but the costs and benefits seem to be ambiguous. For me at least, I'm convinced that it's not good public policy to give concentrated benefits to the few at the cost of those of lesser skill. If that risk is present, I can't see a reason for the against side to take the vote.
But I think you identify a more interesting problem. There's actually a growing trend in economics that transitions away from traditional mathematics based theory and shifts into purely analyzing statistical trends. But is it really fair to make economic conclusions post hoc ergo propter hoc? In hard sciences, we can perform experiments hundreds if not thousands of times to rule out outliers. However, here are only so many case studies for minimum wage hikes we can work with. It's hard to say.
Akrylic
Well yes, it's hard to figure out. If we knew the answer with any kind of reasonable certainty we'd probably be rich and earn a couple of nobel prices ;)
Please keep in mind that if your labor is not worth $15.00 you're out. $15.00 is a skilled wage not an unskilled wage, the people you're worried about will be unemployed. They will end up going head to head with skilled workers for the $15.00 hr. jobs and can't even apply for a lesser job because of the law.
+BulletSpoung Exactly. Also what about the people currently making $15/hr? Why shouldn't they get a raise to make up for the minimum being raised? I mean shouldn't everyone be getting proportionate raises? It's not like the minimum wage workers' jobs all of the sudden became more demanding and skill-based jobs.
If the minimum wage were increased to $15 an hour, prices at fast food restaurants would rise by an estimated 4.3 percent,
according to a new study. That would mean a McDonald’s Big Mac, which
currently goes for $3.99, would cost about 17 cents more, or $4.16.
Its not about 15 an hour.
They want to pay people as little an hour as possible for corporate profit, so lets say lets human labor in America is only worth $2 an hour or less.
You spoiled brats care nothing about your fellow human's!!!!!
commidore plays and when prices go up, less people buy.
commidore plays if raising the cost of burgers by 17 cents would net them more money, why havent the companies taken advantage of this.....🤔
Since when are low skilled workers economists?
Im a pro-free market Conservative and all but I must admit, we need a minimum wage.
Its not worth it. Let the worker and buissness owner negotiate a price
Thomas Sowell would destroy Jared Bernstein...
89.8 percent of businesses are small businesses. Which employ 20 or less employees. You're under the impression all those people that get a pay raise will even have an employer at all. My business I have 3 people that work for me. 2 are paid interns getting 9 dollars an hour. Neither MAKE me ANY money, EVER. They are here to learn, and eventually I will pay them more once they are of a value to my company. When minimum wage is 15 dollars an hour, and I pay myself as the owner 500 dollars per week, how much would I have to pay myself in order to keep both of them?!? NOT ENOUGH to cover my bills. Not even close. Instead of making more money I chose to employ people. Make a gosh damned difference on the economy. But I won't be able to afford both of them, in fact, if they were getting 15 dollars an hour, I wouldn't keep either of them. Because in a skilled workplace, unskilled people at skilled pay, have no place being there.
abolish the wage
Wouldn't a better more nuisanced solution to be let the state's and municipalities address their own economic needs and markets and react in a more agile manner than the federal government? Or let people unionize if they want or do some sort of collective bargaining, rather than take the heavy handed approach of big government? The cost of living varies widely over the country, therefore so should the minimum wage.
Increasing the minimum wage on the margin doesn't significantly affect unemployment. A better question is, "Who is paying for the increase?" In most cases, the minimum wage places downward pressure on the middle class. Minimum wage workers may see a 40% increase in thier wage, whereas middle income earners would see only a 15% increase in their wages. This effectively decreases the standard of living of the middle class. =/
Not necessarily.
Change in standard of living = Change in wages - inflation.
If, as assumed by you, wages for middle class earners change by 15%, then the middle class will see an increase in their standard of living if inflation is less than 15%.
Yes, but don't forget about opportunity costs. If middle class income is transferred to unskilled labor (minimum wage), then you are robbing the difference from the middle class.
In our scenario, without a minimum wage increase, the middle class would see a 40% increase in their wages instead of 15%.
Regardless of standard of living, which merits its own discussion, my main point was that a minimum wage increase is a transfer payment because it doesn't increase output. So the logical question is, "Who is paying for it?"
In my business and in my experience, it is paid for with price increases, and middle class wages. =/
Thanks for the comment. =)
TheBalancedAmerican Your original premise was "Minimum wage workers may see a 40% increase in thier wage, whereas middle income earners would see only a 15% increase in their wages." Seeing as middle class income has remained fairly stagnant, I am assuming the 15% increase in middle class income is tied to the increase in minimum wage. But I could be wrong, I have never heard that statement as either an argument for or against raising the minimum wage.
In my experience, an employer pays what they are going to pay. If an employer uses an increase in minimum wage as an excuse to depress middle income salaries, then that employer would have used any excuse to depress middle income workers salaries. Conversely, if the employer legitimately cares about the employees and values labor contributed, then they wouldn't hide behind some BS excuse to underpay employees.
MrTortillasoup
"I am assuming the 15% increase in middle class income is tied to the increase in minimum wage."
Wages have a relationship with inflation. While maintaining wage and price structures that correspond to inflation, if the minimum wage is increased, employers first respond by raising prices to offset the added expense. Although, the market can seldom handle a sharp increase in prices without losing customers. Increased price means decreased demand.
Inflation is the "wiggle-room" that employers use to correct maladjustment over time. Wages too high? No problem, just raise prices. New Tax from Government? No Problem, just raise prices to offset the tax. Over time the adjustments made during inflation can essentially push any employee into any social economic quintile without them noticing how it even happened.
In the case of the minimum wage increase (if advanced past general price inflation), inflation is used to offset the added expense by holding middle income employees at the same level for many years (or firing a middle income worker altogether). Over time, the effective result is that price inflation outpaces middle class wage inflation. The middle class gets squeezed because their discretionary income is being transferred away from them.
"If an employer uses an increase in minimum wage as an excuse to depress middle income salaries"
It is not an excuse, it is the reality of having to produce a profit. I'm a small business owner, the "profit" is my take-home pay. I make about 100K, and the minimum wage increase will cost my company about $80K. Which means i go bankrupt unless i make some decisions.
I have already raised prices once, and expect to do so again this fall. But I can't raise prices by 40% or i have no customers. I have no choice but to squeeze my other employees, you see? =(
"if the employer legitimately cares about the employees"
Of course i care about my employees, but my decisions to suppress middle income wages, and fire one has nothing to with my compassion; it is math; i must pay my mortgage. =/
If you have an alternative choice i can make, to conjure the cash into existence, i'm an open-minded person. =)
TheBalancedAmerican "Which means i go bankrupt unless i make some decisions." Yes, as a business owner it is your responsibility to make decisions.
"I have already raised prices once, and expect to do so again this fall. But I can't raise prices by 40% or i have no customers. I have no choice but to squeeze my other employees, you see? =(" That is self righteous bs. Your business isn't doing as well as it needs to and I am sorry about that, but your employees give you their time and their effort, and that sacrifice on their part deserves some kind of respect. At the end of the day the difficulties associated with your business are your responsibility not your employees' responsibility. Man up.
here is the bottom line. your employer cares about 1 thing and that is keeping more money than they pay out. You can be sure that if the employer is against it then it is probably better for them than it is for you.
very simple.
peace
KOTT
sams club has less of a market share than walmart but they pay their employees 16 Dollars an hour and the ceo takes a pretty reasonable salary I think its somewhere around 300000 a year and that company runs fine
Is stuff there cheaper than walmart?
it is cheaper but you buy in bulk the real point of the issue is that Wal-Mart and the other big stores are more worried about stock price and share holders when they could put part of that money back into the employees instead it goes in their pocket
I would think that if the employees' were happier (being paid more), their happiness would be reflected in the stock price.
the stock price is based on how much money the company makes after paying for everything if they pay employees more that will affect the bottom line and shareholders won't make as much profit that's what this argument is about how much profit is enough and when do the employees see the fruits of their labor on a paycheck instead of bigger bonuses for the ceo's
I didn't actually watch the video lol. got no time
Back in 1999, I got my first job at McDonalds, paying $5.15/hr. I had NO SKILLS, but they needed someone to serve their customers and they trained me to do it. I'm sure McDonalds would've loved to pay me 75 cents per hour, which was the 1955 minimum wage, but the government had already raised the minimum wage numerous times since then.
My point is that the minimum wage does not hurt low skill workers. If demand is strong enough, companies will hire and train them.
"If the demand is strong enough" which is the precisely the point-a minimum wage artificially depresses the demand.
Mainly anecdotal evidence on the side of abolishing the minimum wage. No one wants to hear about that one friend of yours who worked his way up, because the probability that other low skill workers can (w/o min wage) is astoundingly low.
Would be awesome to bring these participants back now during the "Great Resignation" and this many years after this debate.
Bernstein says the other side needs empirical evidence, they provide it, then he says, no, its a social science.
With the minimum wage, you are essentially pricing the lower skilled workers out of a job. You are legally mandating unemployment. Some workers simply aren't worth the minimum. Just about everyone would have a job with no minimum wage laws. Think about how inane the argument really is... Why not make the minimum $27? $47? $107?
Singapore has no minimum wage. They have the lowest unemployment in the world that is currently hovering around 2%. They also have a booming economy and high growth.
Typical, claiming you've got the moral argument and then claiming victory. You don't have the moral argument.
Milton Friedman would've SCHOOL, the side arguing against the motion.
Must see video Minimum wage vs Honda Civic. Really makes it clear
1/29th? Accounting for inflation it is approximately $4.19.
I don't get it. These people have no issue with internships which require that a person work for no money and yet they have a problem the current minimum wage? I know that internships allow for a person to gain experience but there's no reason that they can't gain experience while getting paid minimum wage. People need to support themselves, after all and internships do not put food on the table.
We can't have a MW because it will destroy the elevator operator industry.
"If you're saying one person loses their job the minimum wage should be abolished." Yes. Because if they lost their job due to government intervention, they literally just paid the government to take their job. Tell me how that is fair at all
Minimum wages in competitive economies like the US are stupid, but in countries like Colombia where the economy is monopolistic in all sectors is a necessary evil
Chris Redding:
1) I'm with you Chris. Teenagers should not rely on an "allowance" but find and keep some kind of job to fund their personal needs (outside of food, shelter and "normal" clothing. My two boys always never had an allowance and never asked for one and somehow they survived, even during those days when they did not have a summer job... However, when you see an adult (especially one trying to raise a family), working at a "minimum wage" job... you know that that adult is not trying to deprive your child from making a few dollars in a "life lesson", but, and adult who is DESPERATE and has NO ALTERNATIVE. We have a WELFARE system to help those Adults that cannot (and there are some that don't want to) work, to not starve to death or live on the street or die from an illness... But, for an Adult who is able bodied and ready to work... there is no HUMANE reason why he/she should not be paid a "Living Wage" so they are not depedent on Society to survive... Some countries have set up a seperate MW Tiers... one for Young Adults and one for Adults... that could be an alternative to just ABOLISHING the MW.
what isn't discussed is that those poor families struggling with 2-3 jobs at minimum wage will lose their SNAP and Medicaid benefits with a raised income. That higher income will not be enough to replace the lose of those benefits, so the argument is invalid.
The logical thing is restructuring part of the system, but abolishing the minimum wage isn´t were to start
I would've liked to have Peter Schiff in this debate
Would abolishing the minimum allow for creation of more small businesses? Surprised no-one asked this
+LionelWitchieWardrob It probably would but the workers would be a lot poorer (see Haiti)
+ben hambley if more businesses can be created. Then there is more supply then the current state. This will lead to cheaper prices because of competition in the market place. So there will be more people with jobs and things will be cheaper. Idk how people get poorer from that?
russ15doinwork There will not be some great competition just a race to the bottom like there was before minimum wage was implemented. People worked for 12-16 hours a day for basically slave wages because that is what everyone offerred. businesses like Walmart and McDonalds etc are not going to pay their workers more because there is no min wage they will pay their workers garbage because that worker likely has no other choice. You do realize there was a time in America before FDR where there was no minimum wage and it was terrible for workers all around they all got screwed. We tried that once and it failed time to move on and accept it.
"Race to the bottom" is a saying that doesn't hold true. No business will survive "at the bottom". They will go out of business and be left with a loss. Competition drives prices down to a new equilibrium because of the new supply curve. This squeezes profits (diversity's wealth) and makes the consumer more "well-off" because they can afford more now because of the overall lower prices of goods. Whoever worked 12-16 hours a day for a slave wage is not very smart then. I wouldn't do that? Would you? They shouldn't just accept that and live there life out in that fashion. They need to do 1 of 2 things. Find a better paying job. And if they can't because they don't have the skill set or experience. Then they need to educate themselves, learn new skill-sets, get valuable experience, and overall better themselves to become more attractive as employees. Nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to work at McDonald's or Walmart. That is one's personal choice to do so. We all have to start off at the bottom unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth. The challenge of living in a free country though is to work hard to better yourself so you can move up the totem pole. To say that people have NO other choice is simply taking the easy way out and complaining instead of taking action. It has been experimented time and time again that the majority of people do the least amount to get by. It has also been experimented that the most successful people do the opposite. They do whatever they can in their power to better themselves. They set goals and are as persistent as one can be to achieve that goal. This is why so many people label poorer people as lazy. Which is wrong because not all poor people are lazy. Sure, some are but overall it's a hasty generalization. Overall, though there is a correlation between hard work and dedication and your own personal success. And finally yes, I do understand the history of the U.S. I understand there was time when there was no minimum wage. Times when people didn't have student loan debts, huge mortgages for homes that were underwater, massive credit card debt, car loans for cars that are overpriced. Yes, I have read about those times. I'm not saying times were better back then. But overall if people are persistent and work to better themselves they will reap what they sow. There is no such thing as a free lunch at the end of the day.
As a slaver, I like not paying my slaves anything. So I'm against the minimum wage.
Raising the minimum wage isn't targeted toward 16-24 year olds or unskilled workers. It's targeted toward people who work full time trying to raise a family. When the minimum wage was created, someone who worked full time could raise a family of three. They could live comfortable lives. Not lavish, but comfortable.
You have welfare, Gov. housing and medic aid, for all of the families and people who can't survive on a "free wage market" and the level of welfare is also higher than the minimum wage in many US States. In effect. You are arguing for something superfluous which was never needed, and that is the essence of madness.
Abolish the minimum wage. Let the market decide. Let true, unadulterated capitalism thrive.
if you raise the minimum wage for people, want they have more money to spend or waste going to store's and paying for service like cable tv and other stuff, why would companys want to stop this if they themselves would be benefiting from such an increase in pay.
Burstein and Kornbluh kept harping on about empiricism, but completely ignored rationalism - the other side of the science coin.
If anyone were ever to argue that the laws of physics apply to the Milky Way but not to the Andromeda galaxy, he or she would be subject to immense ridicule. Equally, if you agree that the law of supply and demand applies to the food market, you must also believe that it applies to the labor market. And if you believe that it applies to the labor market then you must also agree that while there are other factors affecting wages besides demand, the fact remains that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. In other words, that even if the trend of unemployment is downward following a minimum wage hike, you must nonetheless agree that unemployment would have decreased even further had the wage hike not occurred. A strong argument requires more than just evidence. It also requires reason.
Another thing Burnstein and Kornbluh were doing throughout the whole debate that really got to me was focusing on groups, rather than individuals: "Abolishing the minimum wage will hurt parents! This will hurt single parents even more! This will hurt women more than men! [Really!?] This will hurt ~3 million people!" But what about those other ~3 million people? Why should one group be deprived of opportunity for the security of another? More importantly, why should one group's security outweigh one individual's opportunity? Are we to crucify them in the name of the liveable wage? Why doesn't it matter that Dorn's friend suffered as a result of the minimum wage? And who are they to decide these matters? Who is anyone to decide these matters? It's been said that the individual whose free speech is most in need of protection is the one who disagrees with everyone else, because that one person may have a good idea not yet discovered by the rest of the populace. Perhaps it is also true that the opportunity of the individual whose production is less than all others is in need of the most protection, because he or she has the most unrealized production to contribute to the world.
The biggest mistake we have made with the financial system is that over the last 30 years we have deregulated the profits while creating a safety net for the profits. Milton Friedman did not support that.
The instance where there is an increase in employment in an area, in which the state had just raised the minimum wage, is a historical anomaly. The fact that the one side uses this as "evidence" is just astonishing to me.
The only worse argument than that I heard throughout the entire debate is that politicians support the minimum wage, so it must be a good thing. I simply cannot take that viewpoint seriously.
Seems a pretty easy choice: For.
Okay, so economics isnt totally clear and in favor of FOR, but the against group really did not explain how workers are supposed to get into the work market, and gain the skills required to climb the income ladder. If there "a moral argument" is anywhere, its therefore on the side of For, since it both gives them choices and a chance to grow and gain. Against would just leave to many stuck in permanent poverty on the doll.
I don't quite get Karens logic... she wants to raise the min. wage, so that the weakest loses their jobs, and then they should get education to help them jump high enough to jump the ladder... hmm
@20:45...so the lady (in his bs story) lost her job because her boss didn't want to pay out another dollar or so per day? republicans are sad human beings.
One of the best lessons a person can learn is what their skills are worth. It's a really important step to get to a level of experience where you can confidently say how much money your services are worth. When someone asks you why you should make $7.50 per hour, you should have a good answer. Tons of kids can't get any experience because they haven't worked and haven't gotten hired because they have no experience. I don't know who wouldn't take below minimum wage over an unpaid internship.
Am I shocked that the two arguing against this worked for the government? No.. not really. The government needs to just stop interfering in every single facet of our lives.
Wages are prices. Prices are dictated by supply and demand.
You should be able to sell your goods and services to anyone that wishes to buy them at any price.
It's immoral for those that disagree to make laws that force agreement.
Did she seriously just bring up deficit spending? As if that isn't what progressive democrats and republicans both are responsible for?
If the minimum wage is abolished, would it guarantee that workers are paid wages that adjust for inflation/productivity?
As an former higher minimum wage supporter I came to conclusion that under current conditions there is no need for minimum wage since there are ways without regular jobs to make money and anyway no company owner likes to be forced to do something.
Muh empathy wins!
The problem with minimum wage debates is that they focus on the workers and not the companies and the location those companies operate in. it is obvious that big corporations like Walmart, Home Depot and McDonalds could easily afford a high minimum wage. The problem is that small mom and pop shops and even franchises in small town USA would get destroyed by a high minimum wage. As for abolishing the minimum wage, I think abolishing it would help entrepreneurs with new startups. The average failure rate for new startups, across all industries, is around 50%. If the minimum wage was abolished it might help new startup companies succeed. I'm sure regulations don't help either but if a new company weren't force to pay a minimum wage, that 50% failure rate might decrease. This is just a Theory!
Abolishing regulation helps the people. My personal circumstance. I have no education beyond grammar school. I have been outside the job market for 8 years, not even unemployed since I can't handle the stress at the unemployment office, thus I get zero welfare. I used to do gig work back when the words "gig work" didn't exist, such as taxi and delivery but atm. consider myself disabled and live off trading on the Internet and collecting garbage on the street. If the minimum wage disappeared ? I could apply for a job and work in my own ( relatively low ) pace without getting controlled "over the shoulder" to no end. As it stands. I won't apply for a job that carries a min wage of 15 or 20 USD. It's not worth my personal health and well being. I will never "get paid" more at 15 USD ( according to my own work plan ) even if the minimum wage is 15 USD. What happens is, I have to work my ass off and that will probably increase my illness ( severly ) in just a couple of months and that's not worth 15 USD and it's not worth 30 USD either. For me. It's a question of well being and a truly friendly environment. If this is lacking ? no money in the world is good.