Just curious what you guys think

Assuming we change nothing else but minimum wage. If you like, you could say what combinations of things you would change. I've made a poll but I'd like to hear why you guys chose whatever number

I'd prefer you post an exact number instead of voting

Minimum wage is a silly construct that should not exist. People should be able to enter into voluntary contracts to work for whatever amount they wish to.

0 no price floor, polltard you should have had higher choices.

0 unless you hate poor people and want to punish them.

Around 6 sounds good. Less is simply exploitation by the holders of property, many of which have no particular right to it, but merely inherit it.

People who think a zero minimum wage is good for the poor don't have history on their side. The history of capitalism was (and is) is one of ruthless exploitation of the poor by the holders of property. It was only violent unions, child labor laws, safe workplace laws, and the increasing role of government that freed people from economic slavery and stabilized society.

But somehow you guys think that an unregulated labor market helps the poor and the stupid? Where do you get this from?

Minimum wage laws help (slightly) those already in low paid jobs (and unions, lobbyists lawyers and all the various hangers on) at great expense to those on the verge of employment who need to gain experience and skills who would take a job at less money if it were possible. It hurts the poorest of the poor and cuts them off entirely from the job market (you can prove yourself or build skills if you're out of work.) Obviously it's also a factor in increasing crime.

No, the thing that "freed people from economic slavery and stabilized society" was the end of the obscene amount of immigration of unskilled labor that happened around the turn of the century. The reason conditions were bad is that there were way more unskilled workers than the economy could handle. History is very much on the side of zero minimum wage in "normal" situations and even in that situation if there had been a minimum wage, you would have just had tons of people jobless, homeless and starving.

Minimum wage laws for the postal industry were passed recently in Germany. IIRC it's the second sector after construction that got MW laws. I was very sad when I heard this.
The MW laws in the postal sector are pretty interesting btw because postal services used to be a state monopoly and now it is argued that MW laws keeps competitors from competing with the privaticed Post AG.
Not surprisingly one of the competitors layed off lots of workers immediately and not surprisingly they were portraied as evil capitalist bastards (they did say this would happen if the laws would be passed).

I voted 0. MW laws are the most cruel legislation for the poor. Politicians that pass them are heartless (and I would never vote for them for moral reasons).

It is a truely amazing signal that is send to someone who is willing towork for X$ and who is told that he's a moron because he should get X+Y$. Then he's fired because noone wants to pay that to him. GG.

transfer of valuables under the threat of aggression is essentially theft. fairly presumptuous to assume a base worth of every worker is $x for every industry.

ff

Raise it to 9 or 10 Dollars and then index it to inflation.

Why do you hate poor people?

Why did votes get removed from the poll?
Pretty sure it was 16 for 0 and 6 for 6+ last time I checked. Maybe I'm imagining things though.

So, if you're against a minimum wage, which is the opposite of being for it, that means you hate rich people? Brillig!

Lol at that "logic". Being anti minimum wage means you don't hate anyone and want people to succeed as much on their merit as possible.

Yeah, he likes snakes so he hates puppies.

How about a level where the min wage+benefits = 1/2 a percent of the total compensation package of the CEO? Might as well address two issues with the same number.


And lol at the usual "why do you hate poor people" stuff from the AC crowd. While the issues raised with minimum wage by AC'ers are potentially relevant ones in some situations, statements like that assume it is already proven that such minimum wage laws harm the poor, and mostly seem to rely on either anecdotal evidence, or "theory". Show me some convincing empirical evidence of the case that the major economic effect on the functional working poor is that min wage harms the such poor *right now in the USA*. Or that the non-functional to the degree most jobs require constitute a very large portion of the poor, when such are properly defined.

This would devastate those that need a few extra dollars to get by. Believe it or not, not every person in a minimum wage job is using this sole job as a means to support 4 kids.

For every low-income family looking to add another odd job here or there to get by, you just made it difficult. For every young adult needing some income, you just made it difficult. For every older person supplementing social security by working a low-wage job a few days a week, they're likely out of a job now. And that's not even counting all the people who are in such jobs supporting kids who just got laid off. (And you also made it difficult for any non-large-corp to ever own their own business and hire people to get it going -- say bye-bye to small businesses started by the lower third of the income scale.)

If you want to help the poor guy who can't get by on a MW job and raise a family, there are other ways to do it (if you are pro-welfare state, such as welfare checks, tax credits, food stamps, etc.) without having to hurt every other MW earner and small business in the process.

It makes me cringe to hear the term "living wage" as if EVERYBODY must be able to live off EVERY possible job. What a completely narrow-minded and dangerous view. But it sells well to those who are hurt most by it and those who think they are compassionate.

I think I understood all the indicidual words here but I'm having trouble putting them all together into something coherent. You can't get empirical proof when you cant isolate variables and run repeated experiments with the same inputs. You have to use "theory" as you put it.

This is a very reasonable comment. Even though I support minimum wage laws, that doesn't mean just any level set is reasonable. Starter jobs are starter jobs and don't imply an ability to feed/cloth/house a family of X.

Efforts to address those "trapped" in a cycle where they do have such a family or financial needs that can't be met by a minimum wage, should be addressed by *temporary* (to the person) job training and assistance programs to give such persons better skills to get better jobs.

Of course extreme unionists whose only wish is for minimum wage laws to give them a specious argument for raising possibly already too high wages further up the ladder would disagree.

And thus AC's convenient rejection of empirical means due to their not being perfect is manifested again. Which of course is necessary to make their particular theory logically coherent. Convenient indeed.

yeah i could have sworn it changed too, dunno

btw what is minimum wage now?

Not an ACist, but the above is BS.

This seems a silly way to participate in a discussion. Reminds me of the "why do you hate women?" question for abortion. Both are rather lame attempts to attack people instead of ideas, imo.

ok, so my opinion:

I don't really have one, or rather, I'm not knowledgeable enough to have a meaningful one, hence the OP

I'm just gonna say exactly what I think and not try to be tricky: I've lived in the states, I live in Australia now. Minimum wage is significantly higher here (Like US $13 or something, in that neighborhood). Australia seems a better place for poor people than the US. Hence, my knee jerk reaction is to think min wage being higher is probably a good thing for poor people.

So my honest question to advocates of 0 min wage is why does Aus's system seemingly work better

You think I am simply mistaken, it doesn't work better for the poor?
You think it's at the expense of the middle class+, and unfair to them?

I'm going to admit in advance I'm too lazy to dig up whatever fundamental stats would be useful to compare between the countries if needed, it would be sweet if some one did that. So obv no worries if no one bothers to discuss