This is the only substantive response you made to anything I said and it is, surprise surprise, wrong. The average American today has it worse than in the past. I could link to the different metrics showing how people earn less, how today's generation is worse off than its parents, how saving for retirement is a near impossibility for many, and how working extra jobs doesn't actually fix anything. I could link to the growing divide between laborers and those who own the means of production to show that while some Americans live in a time of prosperity, many more live in a time where the race is already run. But I'm guessing you don't care because you think the market is an omniscient, agnostic actor and its demonstrably anything but.

If most anti-welfare people had their way, poor people wouldn't have families. It's eugenics by another name.

The minimum wage has a marginal impact on the cost of living increase. People who advocate for no minimum wage does not understand the impact it would have. First off people should never be competing lower on wages. The wages should have a floor or people will end up competing on wages to the bottom. The market does not always set a good market. If it did then people in many expensive cities would make more than some cheaper markets. But it is not always the case and there are businesses that still pay the minimum wage in those cities that are abnormally expensive.

But think of it this way that businesses that are in business might not be in business if the wages kept up with the cost of living. Cheap labor has enabled businesses that probably should not be in the market. They might have tried a different business that does not rely on cheap labor. But with cheap labor in supply, there is no reason to even try for a different business model.

Because Laffer is a charlatan. He's the guy in the white coat in an infomercial touting the virtues of some homeopathic cure for cancer. If you quote someone to support your argument, you're tying your credibility to the credibility of someone you're quoting.

So you are telling me that if I offered you the chance to be an average working person in America in 2015 or in x year you would choose x? What is x?

I agree that in the perfect world there would be 0% unemployment, everyone would make at least a billion dollars a year and the price of goods and services would go do 3% a year, there wouldn't be any murders, nobody every died from house fires, there is no such thing as rape and no sports team ever lost. However, none of that is realistic. You can't just say silly things like people shouldn't compete for wages.

Companies that are able to compete because of cheap labor are more and more finding technology to decrease the amount of labor they need. An increase in MW will not help this issue.

Dude is a genius.

If you're a white man, at pretty much any other time, you would have more money and enjoyed greater life security. If you're a minority, well, it's pretty bad, but I guess it's been worse.

EDIT: Since you're only going to focus on the minority thing -- is it better than it was? Sure, but it's not hard for it to be better than literally having people bomb your house, assault you with hot tar, etc.

Maybe in politics or personal enrichment, but certainly not in economics.

What I am saying is there is a minimum wage to prevent people from competing to the bottom. If there was no minimum wage, there would be people desperate enough to take a job at $3/hr or $4/hr. Then if enough people are willing to work for these low wages, more people would be forced to accept these wages or not work.

A bit more humane though, no?

This is almost certainly an artifact of underlying cognitive ability, which not only correlates strongly with future income potential but is also strongly heritable, particularly in the case of two cognitively gifted parents where regression to the mean IQ is expected to be dampened.

The whole minimum wage debate seems to frequently ignore the 800 pound sloth bear drooling in the adjacent chair - the technocracies a comin and it ain't got an ounce of equal opportunity blood running through its icy veins.

Time will come when no one but the cognitive elite has any function at all to play, every other means of employment will be make-work at best and transparent handouts at worst. The debate is going to inevitably shift not to what constitutes a subsidy, minimum wage itself or half of Walmart Inc on welfare, but who is going to pay for it. Who is going to keep the hoards at bay? How long will this be tolerated before it descends into some form of terminal collapse?

Where is your evidence that people would work for $3-4/hr? I can't imagine the market rate for unskilled labor being that low.

Eventually Silicon Valley is going to take over the world. These minimum wage jobs will be taken by robots/automated machines. Then you will have 1 or 2 people just to make sure things run smoothly. What will happen to these McDonalds workers when that happens?

My grocery store had automated machines but then decided to remove them. So now instead of checking out in 2 minutes, it takes me 5-10. Sounds minuscule but it is actually frustrating.

Those 3-8 minutes must be very important to you.

If the minimum wage was never raised from 5.15, I am certain there would still be people at 5.15 an hour today. There are people who never get raises unless the minimum wage gets raised. It really depends on the area on what the market would be willing to pay but if enough businesses saw people would work for low wages they would do it. There are a ton of people who would take any job just to have one to earn money. Maybe $4 is to low but I can see $5 an hour.

The cost of living has raised dramatically but wages have stayed stagnant. Wages are lagging awfully behind the average cost. It's the reason wage hikes are being considered and slowly happening.

This is the reason why I actually support a raise in the minimum wage. Maybe not to the extent of $15 per hour but something in the range of $11 - $14 given generally the cost of living in America.

Now, what some people may say is that it will costs jobs. This is true in the short term. But there will have to be a restructuring of the economy and the market will naurally adapt to cover for this increased wage through efficiences found elsewhere or even taking a bite into their capital which some might argue is long overdue.

I don't think there will be the flow on effects whereby there will be that much more cash in the economy to allow for a restructuring without sackings because people who get a raise in the minimum wage are likely to just pay down their debts with it than go out spending for those that are responsible.

I thought your guess for what unskilled workers would work for if we didn't have a MW was $3-4/hr. Either way, my point was that you have no evidence to say that those unskilled workers would constantly turn down and threaten to sue other potential employers who were trying to lure them into working for them with incentives like more money. We also have no reason to doubt that would take place if there were people working for $3/hr.

Of course it will costs jobs, but what leads you to believe we will only lose jobs short term?

I agree there will be a restructuring of the economy. There will be a lot more automated services because a machine will be able to do a job a lot cheaper than a person. There will also be a lot more jobs shipped overseas. The balance of the scale of cheaper foreign labor plus shipping will tilt further away from US labor.

Consumer debt, like corporate debt, has been coming down for some time now so don't let that play too much into your thinking.