How’d I miss that on preview? sigh
And I’ll bet that 99% of the 90% who support the minimum wage don’t understand the economics behind price controls. If they lose their job, they probably wouldn’t know that the minimum wage may have had a hand in it.
I don’t buy this for a second. Free market fundamentalism dictates that costs must be slashed to the bone and beyond. If the minimum wage was halved, would you expect a company to double the number of minimum wage workers it has? I think the savings will be pocketed and the market will reward the CEO as a triumphant sort of capitalist hero or genius. If somebody is employed at a company, it’s because management deems them to be essential. If they lose their job at $7 an hour, they’d have lost it at $4 too.
Ahh, Kluge just reminded me of Nixon’s price and wage controls. My experience with that had to do with trying to purchase goods at the controlled price. Either you couldn’t buy anything or you received inferior products. Thank heaven it didn’t last long. That’s why I voted for McGovern. 
sigh Every doper who has not taken college level economics courses should seriously consider doing so. Then come back and post an informed opinion (for once).
Rhetoric does not an informed opinion make…
But here you are applying the zero sum philosophy to an unusual extreme. It simply is not true that there are a fixed number of jobs and companies decide to hire or not. The fact is that entrepenuers need things all the time. If they can get them at a profit, they will. If not they won’t. If movie theaters need ushers to provide a service to their customers, they migh hire people to do that. If they are forced to pay more than they feel such services are worth, however, they will not. The cost of labor has a direct result on how many people are hired. Not, perhaps, in a particular company, (I’m sure there are places where minimum wage changes will be irrelevant to the number of people hired). But in the economy as a whole, the minimum wage has a very measurable effect on those jobs which are at, under, or near it.
In which case somebody must surely have measured it. Anybody know what the outcome was?
It does? Can you define “beyond the bone”?
Strawman. No one says the relationship would be linear. It might be, it might not be, depending on a whole host of circustances.
You think? What if the workers were paid nothing? How about if they were paid $.01 per hour? Clearly there is a cut off point at which they would not be let go. In some industries it might be $5, in some it might be $1. Your analysis is emotional, not rational.
Cite?
Well hell. Why don’t we just make minimum wage $20 an hour?
I didn’t read most of the thread, but does anyone have any figures as to how many people actually work full-time in permanent minimum wage positions?
I’d guess the numbers are smaller than we might think.
How many minimum wage earners are High School/College Students with part-time jobs that don’t need a “living” from their wage because their lives are already subsidized by parental gifts or loans (from private lenders or FAFSA?)
How many minimum wage earners are old people like the greeter’s at Wal-Mart who don’t need to earn a “living” because they mostly just work to keep themselves entertained, and already have a a decent wage from their pensions?
When trying to find the number of people actually trying to get by on minimum wage we should subtract:
High School or College Students with part-time or full-time extracurricular jobs
Retired persons with non-essential employment
People in the service industry who make more than minimum wage with tips factored in (I’d hope any studies into minimum wage would have already done this)
Honestly I can’t think of many jobs that really pay minimum wage on the long term to full time employees. I used to work in a shithole supermarket when I was in High School, the owner was a bastard and management sucked horribly but all the full time workers were earning at least $1 over minimum wage.
Is it much? No, but I think if we can determine that the number of people in permanent full-time essential occupations earning minimum wage is very small then we would see the system is mostly useless since the market has already created wages higher than that.
Good point, although the principle is still the same. Why does the government have to require that Tiffany and Biff Howell IV be paid at some level above what an employer wants to pay them?
Why?
I still don’t understand why rich teenage kids need a federal program to inflate their earnings. Fighting poverty is one thing, but lets fight it directly.
It’s been over a decade since I’ve made minimum wage. I thought it was $5.25. I stand corrected.
Basically minimum wage laws make it impossible for American businesses to compete with each other by lowering the wages for the bottom tier of their employees. If there was no minimum wage, Company A could easily decide to cut costs by lowering all wages five cents an hour (management wages would naturally be exempt). Then to stay competitive, Company B would reduce their employee wages by ten cents. Company A would drop theirs another eight cents and we’re off to the races. The theoretical endpoint is employees get apid so little nobody works and both companies collapse. More likely, both companies will collude on an agreed low wage. In an enviroment like that companies will find themselves with no customer prospects because people have no money to spend.
Minimum wage laws basically set a bottom floor for all businesses. Then because all businesses are dealing with the same wage minimums that particular aspect is a level playing field. Companies can factor these expenses into their cost of doing business while knowing their competitors are facing the same expenses. So businesses can compete on things like better management or providing better service. You know - the way capitalism is supposed to work.
Li’l Nemo: So, you are saying that the government is simply doing this for the good of business? That businesses just don’t know how to run a payroll and to make trade offs between cutting costs and having workers that actually give a shit about their jobs? Where oh where would these poor, ignorant business people be without the government to tell them how to run things? 
Can you explain to me how you reconcile the idea that Tiffany and Biff are rich teenage kids with the fact they are working $4.25 hour jobs at Burger World?
You are correct in thinking rich people don’t need the protection of minimum wage laws. But the fact the rich don’t benefit from a law doesn’t automatically make it unnecessary. Some laws are designed to help people who aren’t rich. The minimum wage law for example was designed to help the working poor and it does so.
Your post relys on this assumption, so I’m going to ask about it.
What do you mean by easy? Do you really think it is easy to get workers to work for whatever wage an employer wants to pay? I think the word “easy” does not mean what you think it means.
I forgot this last bit. If your assumptions are correct, Little Nemo, why havn’t all wages reverted to minimum (excepting management, of course :rolleyes: )? Since there is no law providing for the payment of 10s of 1000s of dollars to doctors, for instance, why are they not paid minimum wage?
Fair enough. Cite?
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I don’t see anything in there about “taking care of business”, “ensuring profits” or “creating a friendly environment for corporations”. Too bad you weren’t present at the creation.
The government was formed to serve the people not businesses.
I think places like China and Malaysia demonstrate it’s quite possible to get people to work for pocket change. Could you please site why you think it couldn’t happen here?
And a person who’s graduated from medical school is hardly a typical worker. Like I said, not everyone needs the protection of minimum wage laws. But that isn’t sufficient reason to deny its protection to those who do.