The minimum wage should be abolished

Agreed Christen,

Minimum wage is by definition a restriction on the liberty of employee and employer alike, because it only limits the opportunities that can be made available.

To Truth!
-logicae

Thanks for the vote. I did not mean to insult those who have no job, instead I meant that a large percentage of those who can't work struggle to hold a job because of addiction. I should have linked stats.

What I say in a debate in order to win may be different than what I actually believe. These comments more closely reflect my actual opinion over the debate. I would debate further but Ragnar had a fair point, if we are going to this much trouble we might as well make our own debate

Employers usually pay their workers within a certain range of money per hour. They usually don't pay too little or else they risk losing employees and going out of business, and they don't pay too high or else their profit margins will go down too too much. An employer with a profit margin for 8 dollars an hour for example means they can pay their employees between $0.00 and $7.99 so they have to figure out what the best amount to pay is from there. Raising the minimum wage, or even having one in the first place, means they have less flexibility.

The reason there are places with little job alternatives to begin with is because of minimum wages, and the minimum wage going up. Companies with large profit margins like Walmart love when you raise minimum wage because it drives out competing smaller businesses with smaller profit margins, thus contributing to this lack of job alternatives that you complain about so much.

Like if you and I have a fast food restaurant a few blocks away from each other or something, and I make a lot of money, but you make little money, and we have a minimum wage that you can't afford but I can afford, you risk not being able to pay your employees the minimum wage because you don't have that much money and would go out of business while I stay in business. This leads to less job alternatives as there are now less businesses due to the minimum wage messing up and/or destroying businesses.

Competition should be what drives wages up or down, not the government. It's hard to have lots of competition when you have minimum wages, and it's hard to justify minimum wages when you have lots of competition. Without minimum wage, new businesses can be created to compete with already-existing businesses to offer the best prices to attract employees without having to worry about government interfering with that.

Also, I just noticed something else: in this debate you said "There are more available jobs than people to fill them in the US" but now, here in comments, you admit that not everyone has job alternatives, which contradicts your claim that there are available jobs for everyone to begin with, which actually makes it harder to justify minimum wage since that would lead to even less competition, less new businesses, and less job alternatives.

You two have already gone more in depth on this than the debate. You should probably have a formal debate on it.

That does not make sense. If a company mass produces mud pies, then is my wage based on how much a single mud pie is worth? Clearly not. Apple does not pay all their factory workers 500 dollars an hour despite their phones being worth upwards of $1000 each. Wages are not determined by how much a single product is worth, it is determined based on how companies can maximize profit while managing to keep enough employees. Supply and demand does not determine wages as much as living cost and profit. In that sense, a lower wage would be useless to most companies. Too few workers would be willing to work for that. But there are places in which there are little job alternatives, especially for unskilled, minority laborers. This hurts them and brings no net benefit to the rest of the country.

That is not to say that supply and demand does not have a role. Again, I believe virtually any employee is able to produce minimum wages' worth. If jobs need to be filled for less value, then minimum wage actually serves a positive role in technological innovation. Companies would be forced to innovate new robotic production lines rather than have minority slave armies.

How much your labor is worth depends on what exactly you do with your labor.

If you work for, let's say, a car company and your job is to build cars for people to use for getting around faster, your labor is going to be far more valuable than if you invest your labor into creating mud pies that have little to no value.

If mud pies are worth only 1 or 2 dollars, and we have a minimum wage of let's say 3 dollars, then it's not fair to the employer to pay you that much for such cheap service.

If you work at like a fast food restaurant and a hamburger is only worth 4 to 5 dollars, and the minimum wage goes to 6 dollars, then it's going to cost too much to the owner of the restaurant, and they will have to cut costs somewhere or raise prices.

But with minimum wage going to 6, 7, 10, 15, or whatever dollars you think it should go to, you assume that all goods and services are worth that much, and you artificially make all goods and services worth that much, often ignoring supply and demand, which is the main factor that determines prices and costs.

Anytime!

Thanks for taking the time to vote Speed!

As I said, there is virtually no one incapable of producing above minimum wage labor.

What do you mean by taking "advantage of workers who have no alternatives"?

If an employer pays you less than what you think you deserve, how can you prove that they are being malicious and taking advantage of you? What if they have to pay you that low not because they are evil or something but simply because costs are too high for them and they just can't afford to pay you that high?

So the government steps in and forces an employer whose costs are already high to pay you more even though your work isn't really worth that much, thus increasing their costs, which would now mean that you are taking advantage of them, wouldn't it?

Thanks for the vote!

If you guys have the time, a quick vote would be appreciated.

Note:
This debate was clearly not that the minimum wage should be raised to $15. Rather, it was that it should be lowered to $0.

You again miss the fact that employers will inevitably take advantage of workers who have no alternatives.

If most people already produce more than 5 dollars an hour, then there is no need to have or enforce a minimum wage of 5 dollars an hour, since they will already be paid at least that amount regardless.

If you have no minimum wage and you aren't being paid at least 5 dollars an hour it means your work or productivity wasn't found to be worth at least that much.

If you think your work is worth at least 5 dollars an hour and your employer disagrees, it becomes a matter of who is right and who is wrong. If you think you should be paid 15 dollars an hour (the amount of money that today's politicians want to raise the minimum wage to) for flipping burgers or scrubbing toilets all day, and your employer disagrees, see if any employer out there is willing to pay you that much to do that. If there isn't then it's probably not worth that much.

Minimium wage assumes that you the worker are right and the employer is wrong no matter what. Pro points out that the worker isn't always right and the employer isn't always wrong: "This also ties into college. If you didn't go to college for whatever reason, you're value as a employee is very low, most of the time even lower than the minimum wage. But, without the minimum wage, you can sell your labour no matter what. And this becomes very apparent when people with a form of college degree earn $0.8 million more in their lifetime than ones without."

If employers pay workers less than the workers deserve, the employer risks losing workers and going out of business, so employers will have to pay workers a certain minimum amount regardless of a minimum wage law.

It's an issue of how much employer is willing to pay you vs how much pay you're willing to accept, and both you and the employer have to come to an agreement on that, as Pro pointed out: "You can now start at the bottom, making $3/h, and work your way up! In fact, the average number of jobs a person will have is 12, so people can easily work their way up. But, if there was a minimum wage, then some people don't even have a place to start!"

I see what your reasoning is. Your weighing would make sense if I had not responded to his first point:

"There is virtually no one that is unable to produce minimum wage dollars worth of services to start off working. 90% of Americans over 25 years have finished high school, and the generations that haven't are dying off. In 2016, people with high school degrees earned an average of $35,615 per year."

This directly refutes the idea that any substantial amount of people can't produce more than 5 dollars an hour. Even if a thousand people are the exception, we must weigh in my favor since there are many more being hurt than helped.

Instead of bringing in completely new reasoning, what I instead did was weigh your strongest argument against DynamicSquid's strongest argument.

I determined that minimum wage does more harm than good because with minimum wage, people risk having no job and no money, whereas with no minimum wage, people can at least have a job and some money, even if it's less.

DynamicSquid pointed out: "If you can only produce $5/h worth of services, but the minimum wage is $10/h, then no one's going to hire you!"

So I weighed having less money vs having no money and determined that some money was still better than nothing.

Then you argued that "Removing minimum wage decreases employment overall as many employees will leave seeking higher pay."

I also weighed this against having no minimum wage, and determined that even if you leave seeking higher pay, at least it was your choice to stop earning money temporarily, whereas with minimum wage, you risk losing your job if the employer can't pay you, and you are forced to stop earning money, as Pro pointed out.

Being forced to stop earning money is worse than choosing to stop earning money.

Quote: "1. Many employees won't be willing to stay if the minimum wage is lowered. But some will. If companies can maintain some amount of employees and lower wages, they will. This hurts mainly immigrants, minorities and non-skilled workers who will be more willing to stay for lower pay because they have never had any alternatives."

This proves 2 things:

a. Removing minimum wage decreases employment overall as many employees will leave seeking higher pay.
b. Those who stay are disproportionately disadvantaged and will simply be hurt further.

Neither of these ideas were challenged properly.
Therefore, my main issue with your vote is that you can not bring in completely new reasoning to refute my arguments, because they simply were not challenged in the debate.

Okay, answer me this then: What do you think was your strongest argument for minimum wage, in this debate?

I don't think your vote weighs the content or assesses my arguments fairly, but I thank you for the effort anyhow.

Thanks. Nothing personal.

Ah.. I see. Cool

I have edited and re-posted my Reason For Decision (RFD) so that it only considers information within the discussion, and within the sources of the debaters.
http://archive.ph/VuDov

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>Reported Vote: Christen // Mod action: [Removed]

>Points Awarded: 7 points to Pro

>Reason for Decision: http://archive.ph/DB6l5

>Reason for Mod Action: Pursuant to the CoC, this vote must be removed for considering outside information in the overall decision. For example:
"Con does not consider that, even though more Americans finish high school, not only is the value of a high school diploma going down because of this, but also that this is mainly due to lots of grade inflation going on, where schools will artificially make it easier for their students to get higher grades so that it's easier for them to be accepted into colleges."
Grade inflation, the devaluation of the high-school diploma, and the additional sources used to justify this claim are never brought up in the debate. The voter's objection to comparing the US to India is also rejected for the same reason; No one brought it up. The Voting Policy is clear on this:
"The voter must assess the content of the debate and only the debate, any reasoning based on arguments made or information given outside of the debate rounds is unacceptable. "
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It's a link to my Reason For Decision RFD. I use it to make my RFD when it would normally exceed the character limit on debate art.

I am so confused...

1. What is that link?
2. Why is that link?
3. Why not write your reason here?
4. How is that link?

Is it like an online platform for storing snapshots of the internet? How does it work?

Oh yeah, good debate!

However, I don't really fell like making a bigger one. You could make one and debate someone else if you want to

Thanks for the nice mini-debate! I had fun

I'm just seeing how this would play out first. If I think that this could be an actual debate, then yes, I would expand the word limit.

I agree.

I'm not sure the basics of this could be fit into the 1K limit...