No one is saying $15 is a perfect number, just that it is better than $7.25.

Again, you are parroting right-wing talking points man. The point of minimum wage laws isn't to find some magical optimal number, it's to ensure that people working full-time in the richest country on earth can afford an acceptable standard of living.

I think an actual economist (not sure?) might have just posted here and said $15 is joke. But I'm for whatever economic experiments you guys want to try.

FWIW I have an econ degree, but of course one economist or one study doesn't prove anything. If you actually cared about facts or research you would know that there have been hundreds of studies on this topic, and the results are generally all over the place.

I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that things don't happen without a reason and that the ruling class isn't going to institute economic policies that hurt the ruling class.
Like I said--let's make it 15 and let's keep raising it yearly and let's really put the squeeze on those inefficient firms.
"Communism leads to the gulags, fascism to the gas chambers, and neoliberalism to the soup kitchens". Seems fitting here.

1) Big business has historically been against minimum wage laws. Only very recently has this been starting to change a tiny bit.

2) If your take always boils down to, any policy that's enacted was "allowed" to happen and is therefore bad, well that's an impossible doctrine to argue against. It also doesn't make sense. What are your thoughts on child labor laws and the 40-hour workweek?

3) If a company can't afford to pay its employees a living wage, it getting squeezed out of the market isn't some horrific outcome.

Hence the ruling class’ historic opposition minimum wage laws. With a little help from neo-cons like you.

Obviously it would be 100% sensible to raise the minimum each year slightly to keep up with inflation/COL.


How does increasing wages proportionally with the growth of the economy lead to soup kitchens exactly?

Can I get a cite on the "big business has been historically opposed" claim?

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.ph...nt_Association

Ok. Well I'm not an economist so I retract my claim.

The chief neolib chimes in on identity politics

Ahh yes...the wonderful wisdom of blaming all cultural/racial conflict on Republicans since the 1960s and apparently treating the democrats as if they are party for the poor people.
And you wonder why he's a neoliberal shill.

I personally believe the perfect MW number is $0. However, I'd be interested in learning why you are confident $15/hr>$7.25.

How do you know $7.25 isn't optimal? What about $8.74/hr being optimal and $12/hr (and therefore $15/hr) being way worse than $7.25?

Repeating myself but the purpose is to provide a decent wage for workers. We don't need to prove it's optimal or even good for the economy because that's not it's purpose.

We would be deterred if there was good reason to believe it was very bad for the economy but absent that (and it is very absent), we're doing it for decent wage reasons.

i.e.

- Support decent living standard minimum wage unless strong economic argument against
- There is no strong economic argument against
Therefore support decent living standard minimum wage.

Because people making $7.25 are barely living above the poverty line.

This is if they are single and completely healthy.

There are plenty of countries that give solid evidence that a minimum wage > no minimum wage. The UK had that exact debate during the 90s, with conservatives and business groups arguing it would lead to increased unemployment. Within 7 years of the legislation it was agreed by senior conservatives that it had been a success and the negative predictions hadn't been borne out. Another 11 years later and the same conservative party was scoring political points by making a larger raise to the minimum wage than the labour party had been advocating for.

What is not so clear is exactly how much it should be. It is certainly hard to argue that the same number is appropriate for the whole of the US. I would be very confident in predicting that a raise to $15 for any major urban area is not going to cause any sort of significant employment issues and would be a net-positive but I would not be so confident for rural areas with much lower mean/median wages and costs of living.

Okay, you can forgot about what is good or bad for the economy (I think that is stupid, but we can come back to that later). Have you given any thought to people un-able to work, currently temporarily out of work or retired people and how the tax-payer assistance programs, SS and pensions they are currently on will become less effective? Think about the poor ol' grandmas out there living off of a small pension and SS now facing the price of nearly everything they buy going up.

I love the optimism that everyone working at below $15/hr is going to be working at $15/hr or more if we increase MW to $15/hr and the idea that we can hand wave inflation, but unfortunately I can't join in your optimism.

Personally (and I seem to recall chez saying something similar in the past) I think the minimum wage is not a particularly good way of trying to ensure a decent standard of living, but without significant increase and/or reform of existing welfare systems it's significantly preferable to not having one. My ideal solution would be a UBI that ensures a decent standard of living, at which point a minimum wage shouldn't be required at all.

If the minimum wage is "not particularly good" at helping people and if it seems to help larger business (except those pesky ones like red lobster) then perhaps that's an argument for why it's pushed as a panacea to our economic problems.

Maybe instead of my optimism you can look at the numerous studies which show that moderate increases in minimum wage have little to no effect on employment.

Here is one: https://economics.harvard.edu/files/...es/ms28887.pdf

Who is pushing for it and who is pushing against it?

Apparently all the good people are for it and the bad people are against it. Do you disagree that it gets a lot of attention or just think most of it comes in the negative form from the right?

I'm not asking for a sarcastic comment on what you think liberals here are telling you. It's an honest question directed at someone who supposedly cares deeply about media narratives and agendas. It's just interesting, as Fly and others have repeatedly called you out on, that for someone that's anti-establishment and anti-elitist, you once again are taking the same side on policy as corporations and the ruling class, at the expense of workers and lower class people fighting for help.

It gets a lot of attention for the reason that kvnd mentioned, it's a simple concept that everyone can understand. That's part of what makes it a good, practical idea.

The democratic house passed a minimum wage bill which I assume you know so they are the people for it and we know it won't pass in the senate so the gop is against it. Your question was silly and deserved a sarcastic response.
Mostly it all proves my point that it's all neoliberal posturing not designed to help people. You're free to think what you want but if you think $15 dollars is so awesome there is ZERO reason for you to not think $16, or $20, or whatever wouldn't also be a tremendous help to poor people. And no doubt for some it would be. But lol @ thinking that someone can point this out without getting called an elitest.