Increasing unemployment is no way to try to help the poor.

What empirical evidence do I need besides applying common sense. It is the goal of making millions that leads entrepreneurs to take risks. If you decrease the reward you decrease the amount of people that are going to risk it all to create a new company. If you are on a deserted island with 10 people and there is a law that no matter how many fish you catch everyone splits the daily fish caught there is no reason to invent the fishing net or boat to try to catch more. With no law like that someone would invent those things and then pay some other guy more than he was catching to stop fishing and build more of the product.

If it was cheap labour that drove the economy and not entrepreneurs China's economy would dwarf the US economy.

Your source shows that the 16–19 unemployment rate for most of this year was what it was in 2005 before the first minimum wage increase represented on your chart.

So...

I wouldn't trust any stat on youth unemployment because

A) Teens shouldn't have to work in the first place. Creating a 'teen unemployment' statistic is like creating a 'babies who play racquetball' stat, it's pointless and doesn't tell me anything about the real world

B) As is evidenced by BLS' definition of unemployment, it's just not a reliably quantifiable statistic, due in part to what is said in my point A, and because any definition stringent enough to produce a meaningful conclusion would be prohibitively difficult to sample for.

K, dude. You need to learn more about argumentation and rhetoric before you convince anyone. You might very well have good ideas but you convey them so poorly that it's very hard to understand what you're asserting, let alone refute it.

People view the economy wrong it's not a fixed pie...the whole point is to use resources more effectively. The guy who is making 20 million building cars may have found a way to build cars more efficiently (not discussing human labor) or he may have built a way better product they people want.

History has shown when people don't have a monetary incentive to innovate they don't..just compare communist systems and free market systems.

Seizing rich people assets and giving it to the poor is a horrible idea for most people's long term success.

No one is suggesting that rich people have all their money taken away. All the people on my side of the argument want is for the wage gap to come back into balance. Wages on the top end are higher because, like you said they sometimes do amazing and innovative things. But that just isn't reflected by the actual state of the current economy. Rich people have inflated their own earnings far beyond what they should be by being allowed to buy the legislators who are supposed to be in place to protect the majority. It's to the extent that all the people who could be driving the economy with their ideas, entrepreneurial spirit and hard work are too impoverished to accomplish anything. There is no argument against this, it's very obvious and very obviously a bad thing for everyone.

I bet even 20,000 years ago the guy that spent all day just picking berries felt he was entitled to a share of the hunting parties Mastodon meat. The hunters had to risk death to reap the rewards of meat. Today the modern business owner must risk having no income at all and burning through his savings, just to make more than minimum wage. Socialists seek to create a world without risk. A world full of prissy litte berry pickers that would never dream of hunting something so dangerous as a Mastodon for a chance, just one chance, at that precious meat.

You seem to forget that you would be speaking German if i wasn't for us.

You paint a pretty picture, but I'm pretty sure you were trying to make an analogy. For that purpose, your words aren't quite so elegant.

Socialists seek to reduce variance, so you are in part correct.

What you are failing to realize is that the people who are viewed as rich capitalists who worked really hard to get what they have are, more often than not, just lucky, rather than more deserving of what they have than others because of extra skill or innovation.

In your analogy there are 3 types of people:

Socialists

Capitialists who got lucky

Capitalists who didn't get lucky

Sure, some capitalists walk away with mastadon meat, but the majority of them die trying.

Meanwhile, the socialists still get mastodon meat sometimes, without killing most everyone.

Lol. Maybe if everything you purchase is a service but that mostly impossible, unless you live in your parents basement.

Are you saying demand will shrivel up over night? The countries will the top global minimum wage all have far better economies than the usa.

I have a favorite TwoPlusTwo poster and it is 'bjsmith22'

The chart represents 16-19 unemployment versus the national average, not the outright stat, which as you mention are improving (ignore July, those stats are preliminary).

In June, the last month with final stats, it was 12.8% higher. That looks like the best month going through a few of them. That is worse than any month when min wage was $5.15. July official numbers won't post for another 20 days or so. The prelim puts it at 10.8%.

The stats are probably distorted some because of the recession. Adults took jobs teens would often take. You could also argue the higher min wage made the recovery harder on everyone so there is a wash, maybe. That period was so bizarre that nothing is certain, but there is certainly no evidence that raising min wage helped. The one fact we can draw is that teens were disproportionately affected and still are to this day.

But if you want to just go by the raw stats of 16-19 unemployment and not the stat the chart actually uses, you're still not reading it right.

Two of the seven months in 2015 were better than that month in 2005 so 2005 wins 5-2. In 2006-2008, 2015 posted worse stats in every month against all of those years.

It wasn't until April 2014 that a month was even under 20%, still 13.5% worse than the overall rate and a percentage point above any point when min wage was $5.15.

It is alarming that teens have an unemployment rate 3x that of adults. The recession certainly didn't help, but would it be that high if wages were lower? I'm not going to claim the answer is no, but $7.25 didn't give them more opportunities. There is no denying that. Maybe unemployment would still be the same regardless. Who knows?

Redistributive justice is a good thing.

Anyone who plays poker and states that they don't believe in capitalism is a hippocrite, and if you argue against me you're a liar too. That's a fact.

The fact this thread exists demonstrates what scum bags reg poker players are. Licking their lips over some poor suckers min wage increase.

Explain how USA#1 isn't number one.

This is just nonsense. The USA is by far the largest and best economy in the world. Its GDP is nearly double that of #2 China. If you add up the entire EU it only slightly edges out the US. The US GDP is more than four times larger than Germany(#4 in the world), the best of the EU.

Japan is #3. Its min wage is $6.30/hr. In #2 China it is set locally and hovers around $2/hr.

Oh ok. So the mighty USA can't afford a fair minimum wage while everyone else can?

Its strange though how so many other 1st world countries like France, Australia, Germany have been doing just fine with a minimum wage almost double (adjusted) of the USA for decades, in fact their economies have been far better.

The thing you folks fail to realise is that for many people this '1st rung' on the employment ladder is the only step they will ever climb, so they are stuck living basic poverty.

http://www.businessinsider.com/20-re...recover-2010-2

That was in 2010. Is the debt problem any better? No.

I am pretty sure that pure economic size is not the only measure for economic quality. China being a good example with so many working for peanuts. USA has high unemployment, massive debt and 10s of millions working yet living in near poverty. If that's your idea of the best economy you can keep it.

I don't know why I'm trying to have an econ discussion with people that use a BI article from the crater of the recession as a source or don't understand how strong the US economy is compared to the rest of the world. I give up.

Yeah, I was kind of wondering why I was responding when you never made a real response to my criticism of the data you used, but hey, why not?

We can afford a fair minimum wage. I just wish we didn't want it. Just like we could afford to give everyone their own jungle gym but I would hope politicians would recognize there are more pressing issues.

No economy is stronger than the US. Stop saying there is.

Increasing MW is making that first rung on the employment later taller and harder to get to.

The debt problem is better for consumers and corporations. In fact the only place it's still getting worse is government. Raising MW and increasing unemployment is going to make the situation worse.