Minimum wage

The minimum wage ought to be $0.00.  A minimum wage worker can and should find a better job that doesn't require a college degree.  There are hundreds of options that a poor person has instead of a minimum wage job.  This gives them a higher salary that they earned.

Remember: A minimum wage does NOT guarantee jobs. It guarantees ONLY that those who get jobs will be paid at least that minimum, and that leads to two bad outcomes: Unemployment and Higher Prices. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j01L69eXdI

In theory that makes sense.  Though I could see, for example, fast food restaurants getting together and making and agreement to not pay more than $1 per hour which will keep all of their costs low.   While they are in competition with each other they could specialize so to speak making the direct competition with each other not as aggressive.  That's what I would do anyway.

Actually, minimum wage most certainly means fewer jobs, especially starter jobs for inexperienced workers. Price controls never, ever work historically.

Rent control leads to fewer houses being constructed. Wage control leads to fewer jobs being offered.

That's what I said.

agree

Pretty open and shut case here, it seems. I agree, a minimum wage yields less jobs, less hours, and/or higher prices. If you need to provide for a family, don't work at McDonald's. If you work at McDonald's, don't start a family. Some people just can't get that.

I would also like to add that if you were to have a minimum wage, I could see supporting it at the state or city/county level. However, a national minimum wage is just incredibly stupid. Costs of living and available jobs differ WIDELY across the US, so a national minimum wage makes no sense. Any liberals out there disagree?

Minimum wage does protect against mass immigration since a key reason why mass immigrants come is that if there's no minimum wage they'll come in and take native worker's jobs for a lower salary. Thus destroying the native wages.

For someone who is a conservative who's an economic nationalist, you should be pro minimum wage as it protects the native workforce.

If you want a more in dept analysis of this concept by chance I've explained it poorly, here's a good article done on the matter.

I haven't worked minimum wage since my first job.  Apparently I was producing service valuable enough to earn my wages by the age of 16.

I am for lowering immigration quotas, if that helps. Also, of those people allowed in the country, there would be educational requirements. I don't intend on letting in too much unskilled labor, so undercutting wouldn't be too big of an issue.

But good point. I do support the national workforce. I just also recognize that a minimum wage causes a lot of inefficiencies. For instance, a $15 minimum wage would screw over restaurants royally. They have tiny profit margins as is.

if there wasn't a federal minimum, states could and would compete for workers more than they do by offering higher pay etc, we wouldn't want that to happen now would we.

Hey man, that is capitalist propaganda. Competition = bad.

DOUBLING the federal minimum wage is said to be viewed favorably by the majority today.

I understand that, but that doesn't make it a good idea. 

Yeah, but I don't think that DC is really worth emulating to be fair. My point was that popular ideas aren't always the best ones. 

Just like gun laws, they only hurt legal workers.

wages and benefits are probably the highest cost for a business which directly affects what they have to charge for their goods and services, why that's so difficult for people to understand I'll never know.

And they wonder why businesses are choosing to automate everything....

As a more economic nationalist myself I would have to agree. 

Even as a socialist I still consider myself against a federal minimum wage as I believe a minimum wage would best be negotiated by unions as seen in the Scandinavian model. 

Although I'd have to ask you if you're huge on the free market than why're you trying to restrict it? 

A minimum wedge will only result in companies raising their prices. Which will result in other companies raising their salaries, and so on and so on. Eventually, the prices will become high enough that workers on the minimum wage would earn the same as they did before the minimum wedge. 

That may be true, but in the many years that it takes for the market to correct itself to the price fixes so that the minimum wage can once again be at an entry-level job value, entry-level jobs will not be available to the people who need it the most, namely poor people with low job skills.

Why would you want to fuck over poor people over that period? If you want to give poor people welfare, give them welfare, but don't destroy opportunities for entry-level employment. It's almost like the government doesn't want poor people to work or have a chance to get ahead learning new job skills and competing with the status quo...

I remember when it was $4.15, and people at some jobs that you would consider entry level were making $10.00 an hour.  Even babysitting your next door neighbor got more than the minimum wage, planting shrubs for a nursery got you paid more.  In that period,  minimum wage was not an issue, if you got paid minimum wage, your boss sucked and you went somewhere else.  

Plus, right now you can't go to a fast food joint and not spend $10 or more.  It used to be $5, and once this passes, it will be $15.00.  At that point might as well go to a regular restaurant, sit down, and pay a tip.  Waiters are still going to get a lower rate than min wage.  If they don't, then the tipping norms should go way down.

saying inflation will just make a new minimum wage the same as it started out as, is a stupid argument. that would only happen if you increased everyone's wages. if you only increased the bottom, there would be some inflation, but overall the people earning minimum would still have a larger proportion. 

having a minimum wage stimulates the economy more than if we didn't have one. employers only pay the least the have to, and if large majorities are paying two dollars an hour, jobs will suffer, and the economy. that's not to mention that people have a right to a bare minimum wage. 

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I am pretty pro free-market. However, I do not believe that it is perfect. There are some times I believe it fails us, I just draw that line at a different place than you. I think that 100% free market is a bad idea. I believe in protectionism, for instance. I don't believe shipping out jobs is worth the slightly cheaper crap from China.

If employers only paid the minimum, then why would a company like Amazon put a company-wide minimum wage of $15 in place? They didn't have to. I can understand why restaurants want to pay the minimum: their average profit margin is 3-5%. So, either they will increase the price of goods substantially, which gets us at the same place, or they go out of business. 

You mentioned a lot of brazen claims without substantiation. 

However, you commit a large fallacy about how economics works. You mention a minimum wage stimulates the economy. Where does that money come from? Well, the company would have either invested it in creating more jobs, it would go in a bank, or it would be invested in other companies. In a bank, it is loaned out so people can buy houses, start businesses, etc. 

Also, all this does is hurt the poor. It makes it unprofitable to hire anyone who has no experience or education, which are generally poor people or teenagers who want job experience. Someone who has never held a job before likely cannot make a restaurant more than they need to be paid by law.

Companies also cut benefits, so there is that. Minimum wages are really stupid, my good sir.

Profit Margin Statistic