# Should the Minimum Wage Be Increased to $15? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 28, 2021, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945 "2021-02-28T14:26:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/181 "2021-03-04T23:31:35Z")
Everybody seems to also be missing that **octopus** also supports UBI, along with removal of minimum wage. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/182 "2021-03-04T23:32:13Z")
How is it that when a set of ideas are proposed all of them become invisible but one? ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/183 "2021-03-04T23:32:24Z")
Robert’s Rules of Order, and you have yet to get a single, solitary Second for that (expanded social programs). Ignoring for the moment that you just accomplished little more than honoring your ideology _and_ redistributing money upward. I think we’ve had enough – of the latter, at least; maybe of the former, too 😉 ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/184 "2021-03-04T23:34:00Z")
I think I get that. But that seems like the last puzzle piece in privatizing profit and socializing loss. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/185 "2021-03-04T23:35:42Z")
Money is mostly irrelevant. Productivity and distribution of resources are what’s relevant. Money is lubricant for trade and nominally a store of value. If you want standards of living to increase you need to increase the output of goods and services. Wage floors don’t accomplish that. They only shift labor to other jurisdictions or to grey/black markets. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/186 "2021-03-04T23:37:12Z")
How so? Most working folks, in the US, make more than MW anyways. That isn’t going change. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/187 "2021-03-04T23:37:39Z")
I find his position on this absolutely logical: give everybody a UBI, enough to survive, and the ACTUAL wage floor will be set by the market. If fast food restaurants, garbage services, etc need labor, they will have to set a wage that tempts workers to come forward; employees will no longer be forced to work at crap wages under the thumb of exploitative employers just to have a roof over their heads; they will choose to work to better their situation if the wages are tempting enough. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/188 "2021-03-04T23:40:50Z")
Okay, the velocity is ramping up here, and I’m struggling to keep up. But there’s far more evidence that a phased-in increase in wage floors is a big net positive than that it’s a material net negative. No end of sources. Just one that came up in a quick Google (pretty sure I posted a scholarly piece upthread that debunks the idea of runaway inflation from a schedule MW hike, too): > **[Gradually raising the minimum wage to $15 would be good for workers, good for...](https://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-testimony-feb-2019/)** > > On February 7, 2019, EPI economist Ben Zipperer testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor in support of the Raise the Wage Act of 2019. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/189 "2021-03-04T23:44:10Z")
The fact that, AFAICT, nobody in the world does UBI is daunting. But a number of other countries have a MW, and one that’s higher than ours (is currently). I may have to take some time to look into UBI. It may be too important a puzzle piece in the context of this discussion for me to be so ignorant about it. ---
**Author:** ![Mallard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Mallard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mallard)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/190 "2021-03-05T01:16:56Z")
Eliminating or lowering minimum wage is the second stupidest idea going. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/191 "2021-03-05T03:01:41Z")
> [@Kron](#): > > If fast food restaurants, garbage services, etc need labor, they will have to set a wage that tempts workers to come forward; employees will no longer be forced to work at crap wages under the thumb of exploitative employers just to have a roof over their heads; they will choose to work to better their situation if the wages are tempting enough. Where have you been the last 40 years? There will be more tax cuts for the rich, pressure on the budget, and cutting UBI is the perfect place to save money. Because the people you mention who won’t get exploitive jobs are just freeloaders and cutting UBI will encourage them to work. After all, high unemployment has not been a reason for Republicans to call the unemployed lazy and undeserving of support. There was an oped in the Times a few days ago opposing the Romney/Biden UBI for children because only people making money and paying taxes deserve it. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/192 "2021-03-05T03:08:01Z")
lol, and I guess it ain’t that cheap after all. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/193 "2021-03-05T03:09:37Z")
I think he supports a universal minimum income, not so much a universal income - I could be wrong. That’s actually what I support: means-tested guaranteed income. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/194 "2021-03-05T05:06:19Z")
There is a logical problem with a means-tested guaranteed income; it is just another name for minimum wage. After all, if your minimum income is X, then the income of the lowest paid job would have to be (essentially) X + Y to be tempting enough to coax folks out of “unemployment” to do the work. However, if EVERYBODY is guaranteed to have the same income, and ESPECIALLY if paired with UHC, then the labor market would be 100% free. Workers would be free to work where they actually want; employers would have to coax laborers by actually providing them pay commensurate with what is being asked, and not look for every possible excuse to pay them the mandated minimum wage. Basic income is literally “everybody wins”. Workers have freedom to work where they want; employers have freedom to set wages without ANY mandates from the government. I can foresee the next “those with money wanting to screw those without” schemes would be ALL about housing; those that have property will look to suck every bit they can out of the most marginalized (such is life). ---
**Author:** ![etasyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9f8e36/32.png) [@etasyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etasyde)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/195 "2021-03-05T05:35:31Z")
> [@Kron](#): > > I can foresee the next “those with money wanting to screw those without” schemes would be ALL about housing; those that have property will look to suck every bit they can out of the most marginalized (such is life). At the risk of being slightly off topic, this is why I agree with [Singapore’s take on housing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UIs2ScUiXk). It’s a shockingly brilliant solution. As for the rest of the minimum wage vs UBI argument, I think you framed the idea well and have given me some food for thought. Still, could you imagine a society with Singapore style housing, a universal basic income, a revamped education system (from K-College) and publicly funded healthcare? How much potential talent would be captured from the populace, how much productivity, how much wellbeing? Art? It’s damn near utopian and doesn’t rely on any wonky disregard for human nature… Anyway, that fantasy aside, back to lurking this thread… ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/196 "2021-03-05T12:40:35Z")
> [@etasyde](#): > > As for the rest of the minimum wage vs UBI argument, I think you framed the idea well and have given me some food for thought. Me, too. And I don’t think I _did_ recognize/know/remember that @octopus was in favor of a UBI. I slept on it, and read one overview UBI article, but it really is a hugely complex proposition, and the fact that it seems to be done just about nowhere makes it even more so. But I’m thinking about the economics of it. If you raise the MW, then you have to pay _anybody whose position is MW-eligible_ at least that amount. To the extent you don’t, you’re violating the law. Now, if you enact a UBI and leave the lower-skilled positions’ wages to the venerable free market, you’ve inherently started the bidding at $0.00 per hour for labor. But – to the noble aim _of_ the UBI – you don’t have a lot of takers at that price. They may not be cold. They may not lack health care (not addressed. Surely, they still do). They may not be hungry (see my last). But before the market gets wages to a place where the buyers start jumping in, the capitalists have lobbied to eliminate enforcement of any laws regarding the hiring and exploitation of illegal immigrants. Because paying somebody $0.75/hour to process dead animals into packaged meat goods is no longer a crime. It’s just market forces at work. It’s part of the current problem, to be sure, but I think UBI makes it worse. In terms of ‘tendencies,’ immigration tends not to get reformed in a serious way because: - Democrats like the supply of potential new voters - Republicans like the endless supply of exploitable, low-wage labor - EVERY administration counts on the GDP bump that low-wage labor provides. If showing up at the job meant that you had to pay them X, then there would be a clearer law that employers would be breaking than the whole “forged papers,” “no reason to question Jose’s immigration status” rigmarole we currently get (and barely ever enforce). No matter what we do with laws, Wall Street finds a way to loot the country without being in flagrant violation of existing laws. They’re always ahead of us. We’re always reacting. Capitalists in the US (not only in the US, to be sure) will start indirectly advocating for renewed Bracero programs if a UBI initiative comes to pass, in _part_ because stepwise MW increases don’t seem to have significant deleterious effects, but a switch to UBI, almost by definition, has to be something of a light switch, no ? It’s a rather radical change in our economic framework that may be very difficult to phase in with as clear a stepwise approach as a MW can be increased. If you raised the Alaskan oil dividend substantially, rather than goosing the free market to increase wages at the low end, what you’d actually do in Alaska is create businesses that bus Latinos from the Texas border states to The Last Frontier (AK). I think the broad strokes of UBI are fascinating. I think the avaricious capitalists will destroy its utility, and that it probably (has zero political will in support of it) won’t do what people would hope it would do. MW increases, phased in, won’t stop the desire to outsource/automate every single job that can be outsourced or automated, but it is something business can plan for and that gives workers some prima facie wage protections. UBI, OTOH, IMHO, tends to create a larger need for the lowest wage workers in a big, big way. Maybe some industries _can_ open their shuttered factories again _if_ they can get the Russian mob to staff the sweat shops with illegal labor from the poorest countries on earth who will happily live in villages of ocean going 40’ cargo containers and live on Wonder Bread. Removing any possibility of planning labor costs of a business also creates an uncertainty that hurts businesses _and_ capital markets. Aside from the pure greed aspect, this is another reason why the next Cornelius Vanderbilt will be laying railroad tracks from Central America into the US. Thoughts ? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/197 "2021-03-05T23:25:31Z")
Any UBI of significant size is going to subsidize businesses with the need for lower cost / lower skilled workers. (It won’t affect Facebook and Intel hardly at all.) That means that inefficient businesses, who would go under paying employees any sort of decent market wage, will keep open, hogging capital, real estate and workers. I’m just a nasty left wing capitalist, but I don’t think that’s good for the economy. Do we really want a bunch of zombie companies open? When we get to the point where automation has created a group of workers who won’t ever get decent employment, then UBI makes tons of sense. The pre-pandemic employment levels shows that we aren’t there yet. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/198 "2021-03-05T23:37:10Z")
If the businesses are inefficient and labor is tight then wages will go up at the more efficient businesses and the problem will sort itself out. The problem right now is that people deny reality in economics, biology, complex systems like climate, etc when it contradicts ideology. The fact is we are a global economy with nations that can only pass laws, in general, that impact entities within their borders. The US has a bit more reach and power due to military and dollar hegemony. But that’s an exception and the US is not powerful enough to regulate the internal affairs of other nations with regards to labor. Therefore, wage floors just shift the location of low cost labor. They do not eliminate it. So from a moral perspective nothing is gained. From a national interest perspective nothing is gained. Even from a consumer/voter perspective nothing is changed. People, in general, still shop based strongly on price and buy the products and services of the low cost labor they so strongly vote against. When I go to the store now, at least 20% of the time I’m checking myself out. When I go to a restaurant it’s more and more common to order at a kiosk. It’s bizarre that this is the world people want when people need jobs. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2021, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/199 "2021-03-06T21:16:10Z")
Here is an article from the Times about the impact of Amazon raising its minimum to $15. > **[When Amazon Raises Its Minimum Wage, Local Companies Follow Suit (Published...](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/business/economy/amazon-wage-effect.html)** > > New research suggests that when big companies increase wages, they drive up pay in the places where they operate — without a notable loss in jobs. There is an upward thrust of wages, since people working for say $10 can easily move to Amazon if they don’t get a raise. The impact on employment is less than other studies have predicted. The article also discusses some of the factors that cause workers to not chase higher wages as simplistic economic theories predict. The impact is clearly greater in low wage states. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2021, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945/200 "2021-03-06T21:52:16Z")
Great article. Thanks for linking it. This part particularly stuck out to me: > A mounting body of research in recent years suggests that labor markets don’t work in practice the way they do in some economic models. Employees often have less information about their worth than employers, or face greater risks to changing jobs, or can’t readily move between employers the way a pure market assumes. These “frictions,” in economic jargon, often benefit employers over employees, pushing down wages below where supply and demand suggest they should be. > But that leaves room for other forces — in the form of political pressure, organized bargaining or a minimum wage — to push wages up. > “In a very simple supply-and-demand, competitive market, firms are just paying the market wage,” said Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts economist who has studied the minimum wage. In reality, he said, wages “are shaped by market forces but also by norms, pressure as well as policies.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-minimum-wage-be-increased-to-15/933945.md?page=11)