? I'm not disputing any of this. Given everything you've posted I'm very confused as to why it's so hard for you to say, yes, you would support decreasing the minimum wage. All of the arguments you've posted lead to that point.

Here.

I don't care. I don't support or oppose. It's irrelevant. The left is going to hate the idea, why create an issue by supporting/opposing a policy that has no relevance on anything?

If a gun was held to my head I would oppose it becasue it would undoubtedly create political acrimony for no reason at all.

Okay, so in at least some cases you're okay with opposing what your arguments suggest is the more economically sound policy in favor of political goals. That's something.

This make no sense. Lowering the minimum wage will have little to no impact on wages. Opposing such a policy does not oppose my arguments. Supporting a policy that lowers the minimum wage will create political acrimony over a policy that won't change anything. I thought you understood that.

There's an often missed problem with minimum wage. It's fine for the likes of starter jobs or student jobs but as automation takes over it can increasingly become the norm to have a working life on the bottom rung. That's a serious problem that caused immense discontent and fuels populism/extremism even if in some objective sense people are doing ok financially

I don't see any solution but some combination of UBI/socialism if we want democracy to continue

Actually, it sounds like I didn't understand your position correctly.

You think lowering the minimum wage would not change anything. Got it. At what point would raising the minimum wage start to change things for the worse, then? If lowering the minimum wage from $7.25 to $4 doesn't change anything iyo, then surely raising it from $7.25 to $7.26 similarly changes nothing. But you've argued strenuously against raising it to $15, because economic effects.

So where's the line? I mean you don't have to be exact, but if lowering it changes nothing then clearly there's a point where we can raise it while also changing nothing, while benefiting the people who currently make that minimum wage.

It's already optimal and impervious to fluctuation.

it goes up or it goes down. Atlas and Co. adjust everything to maintain maximization of profit. the public has just enough purchase power and just too little commitment to revolution, and the coffers continually grow.

The market decides and it's almost impossible to tell what the equilibrium is, and it's different based on profession, and current economic circumstances. This is true in a socialist economy as well.

The reason why these cities stagger the increase up to $15 is so the impact is harder to tell, and isn't as dramatic. What the left doesn't understand, imo, is the market will adapt, and not the way you intend it to.

We're not smart enough to establish a price control on labor, so any price you establish is going to be arbitrary and not as a result of market forces, and instead create market forces that you didn't intend. This is true for socialism or capitalism.

We can't know the equilibrium, except you're definitely sure it's greater than or equal to $7.25 since lowering it to $4 would do nothing per your previous posts?

Let me ask you a question... Why do you think it's 7.25? Most likely that's what the current economic situation (i.e. market) indicated the wage was for the least qualified folks in the economy.

"Current" is an odd choice of words since it was last increased 11 years ago, during the first year of Barack Obama's presidency and the second-to-last year that Democrats most recently had control of all three branches. I'm gonna guess that has a lot more to do with why the federal minimum wage is 7.25 than any economic factors.

Like that literally makes no sense, the federal minimum wage is not determined by market forces, it's determined by a small group of people in Washington DC based on political ****.

Yeah they raised the floor that was irrelevant to another floor that was irrelevant, and comically spiked the football.

IHIV, earlier: raising the minimum wage has bad economic effects and we shouldn't do it
IHIV, now: actually raising the minimum wage is irrelevant and does nothing, look at these dumb Dems acting like they accomplished something

lol

No... Raising the minimum wage below what the least qualified people are already making doesn't change anything. Raising the minimum wage above the equilibrium, which we know $15 is above that equilibrium, will have an adverse economic impact.

So where is it? I mean:

Great, maybe they could raise it another $3 to an irrelevant floor of $10.25 and comically spike the football; meanwhile, these

people get a non-trivial 40% raise that's probably pretty relevant to them?

Why not do that, if the MW is an irrelevant floor? Seems like you're presented a pretty good argument there's no reason not to!

I'm not going to repeat myself most of that's already been discussed.

Cool. We can't know the equilibrium, except we know it's above $7.25 since Dems "comically spiked the football" over the "irrelevant" raise to $7.25 in 2009 (so irrelevant that apparently 12% of workers still get paid that?), but any further raises are DANGEROUS because they might upset Der Markt's equilibrium, and also we've been over all of this so there's no more questions left unanswered here.

Good talk, as always.

The problem is you've missed a lot, and it's much more nuanced than that. Your attempt to simplify is admirable but doesn't quite fit the bill.

As an example, I don't deny that a minimum wage increase would help some people, but it's going to hurt the wrong people, and much more of them. The wrong people are the people you think you care about more than I do.

Sorry but this is directly contradicted by this guy over here who said the last MW raise was "irrelevant".

If it hurt a bunch of people I imagine that guy would have said so. But he didn't say that, he called it "irrelevant".

You should read the entire conversation again.

I did make a mistake, it's not 12%. Further, 80% of those folks are not primary breadwinners. In a macroeconomic sense, the current floor is irrelevant, and was irrelevant when it was raised.

Why? More people would have less jobs, canceling out any positive impacts for the people who got the wage increases... It didn't change anything, from a macro perspective. That's because the vast majority of people were already making more than the current minimum wage.

There's so much angst about raising the MW.

We must not desecrate precious......the market is sacred in it's purity......lol.

Good thing the government never interferes with the market to give capitalists a hand up.