If they took a dollar out of every mw worker at McDonald's how many employees could they hire?

Same for if they skimmed 14% off the highest paid exec salaries

It's not at all clear that min. wage is having any effect on our current economy. Nor is it clear that raising min. wage in the past has hampered the economy in the slightest. Like everything else designed to help the worker, the republicans railed against raising the min. wage in the early 90s, said it was going to wreck the economy. Well that obviously didn't happen. But hey I realize you know in your mind it's hurting the economy, and that's all that matters. Thought experiments ftw.

Yeah this isn't an emotional issue at all. Just based on raw empirical evidence, and by that I mean whatever economic theory you decide fits your worldview.

Do you have any evidence that it actually does cause long-term harm? I have plenty of evidence that the sky-is-falling warnings of the opponents of raising the min. wage never came to pass.

This is a dumb argument. The lowering of MW as a way to increase low level employment is not a position anyone advances in a vacuum but rather as a response to MW's position about the opportunities for poor people. It isn't the greatest rebuttal of that position but the position itself is pretty bad -- in no way does any of it have any application to executive pay except in a very tangential way that the argument suffers from the same logical errors as the original MW position.

If you raise MW enough it is going to be very harmful. If you have no MW the harm-- if any-- is negligible. Given the type of people who support MW the risk / reward of allowing a foothold is too high.

Considering implementation of MW in the US has coincided with the greatest economic boom civilization has ever known (over protests it would destroy the economy every time it was raised) - forgive me if I take the anti-MW side with a grain of salt.

The historical data on MW increases says that, about half the time, employment goes up after the MW is raised.

This suggests two things:

1. The market is structured in such a way that the MW is lower than the actual value of the worker to the company, so raising the MW within a relatively small range (a few dollars) doesn't actually influence demand much, if at all.

2. The price elasticity of demand for low end labor is very low. E.g., low end labor is so cheap that companies hire people when they need them, regardless of MW.

To do some basic math:

1. MW and sub-MW workers make up 6% of all jobs.

2. MW is about 1/3 of the mean average salary, so about 2% of all salarys, except...

3. MW jobs are much more likely to be part-time than higher wage jobs, so drop that to 1.5% of total salaries.

4. MW jobs typically have a very small benefit/salary ratio compared to other job, so 1% of total salary + benefits

5. Salaried jobs account for less than 60% of income, so 0.6% of all income.

Now, we consider cutting the MW by a whopping 17% (from $7.50 to $6.50):

This appears to save a total of approximately 1/10th of 1% of total national income except...

MW jobs have a management cost associated with them, so it actually doesn't save 17%, since the management cost remains. Plus, the income figures don't account for the underground cash economy where MW doesn't matter, so it probably saves more like 1/20th of 1% of total national income.

Assuming that all companies will immediately slash the wages of current MW workers to take advantage of the new MW (which won't happen), and that they'll reinvest it in MW jobs at the new rate (which also, won't happen), that would increase the number of MW jobs by about 10%, for no net effect on national income, and for virtually no net effect on overall national job productivity.

Of course, now that you'd be paying people less than a survival wage, those jobs are going to be taken by the same people who are already working MW jobs but can't afford to have their total income drop.

E.g., the effect is nearly non-existent, and it hugely harms MW workers for a tiny increase in corporate income.

The net effect is so trivially small that we can, in essence, allow ourselves to make a moral choice: 1) pay working people enough to squeak by, or 2) pay them less than that to assuage some knee-jerk, faith-based, "free market" "theory" with no ties to actual reality.

The historical importance of MW is not something I'll deny. It was very important in the past but the value has been diminishing to the point where I would not say it is completely unnecessary now but the harm from abolishing it would be negligible. That doesn't mean there is any reason to abolish it since it also causes no harm. The harm from MW is all potential harm but that potential harm becomes quite threatening when you have MW supporters taking positions like McNasty and Montreal. If MW supporters muzzled those types the MW side would not get as much resistance but as is usual with any debate the most radical get the most attention which in turn radicalizes the other side.

those are possible explanations, yes. but another is that we tend to raise the MW in boom times, when employment is going up anyway

lol where did i ever ask to raise the MW?

cite me please ?

u argue it aint necessary and i argue it is necessary, thats about it.

anyway with bias thinking u have on me and canadians i let u go.....

Montreal I am Canadian so I'm not bias as much as well informed. Canada and especially Quebec is exactly the problem.

Most people can be convinced to endorse a minimum wage that would protect against actual exploitation. More importantly arguments that a minimum wage designed to prevent exploitation can be made and supported by public reasons which is what is required for something to be legitimate.

The reason I'm against MW is because I see it as a serpent's egg problem. I've seen the minimum wage increase by ~50% in less than six years and if the economy had not started to fail it would have doubled in eight years. We have lefties pushing for a $13.50/hr minimum wage in a country with socialized medicine.

When you look at the arguments lefties make they are not so much arguments as just crying and demanding that other people endorse their conception of the good. In this regard they are no better than social conservatives who do the exact same thing. I am sure there are some lefties in universities writing well thought out papers but they are not the face of the group. When you look at who is out there presenting themselves as the leaders of the group all you get from them is wouaaa wouaaa wouaaaaaaaaaa. Allowing people like that to gain any foothold is dangerous.

This results in two conflicting positions -- having a non-exploitative MW is legitimate and beneficial vs the risk of allowing a destructive element to gain an advantage position. Given the limited benefit of a MW the choice here is pretty easy. Thing is there is no reason to ever get to this standoff if people on the left would actually form positions properly rather than simply based on their desire to impose their conception of the good on others. Given the friction between lefties and social conservatives you'd think that was something that would come naturally to lefties but it doesn't.

A banker, a right winger and a welfare claimant are sat round a table, there are 10 biscuits on the table. The banker takes 9 biscuits, leans over to the right winger and angrily whispers 'I bet that welfare claimant is going to take your biscuit'

Typical, you're so afraid a $2 raise in the minimum wage will cause a communist takeover you're willing to sacrifice free speech. If you had logical rebuttals to my arguments instead of just "lolz commie" there wouldn't be a need to "muzzle" anyone.

the number of possible biscuits is unlimited. there is no fixed sized pie. as the banker creates and takes more, it does not leave less for others, in fact it's the opposite- it helps their ability to make more.

note though that this is not true with fixed resources like land and oil. as the banker takes more of those things, it actually does leave less for the others. by this route of thought i think some amount of compensating "welfare" is justified.

We don't have unlimited land to build our bakeries, unlimited grains, or unlimited metals to build ovens. They're all under someone's control.