First, yay! Being immersed in liberal dogma via most of my friends, I always like seeing someone willing to take a stand against it. Bravo! (This is not to say that I'm not mostly liberal myself, but I also just like to see things challenged because that's a healthy thing to do.)
Second, I've always linked minimum wage increases to inflation. So, I thought you might throw that in, but you didn't. Now I'm wondering if there's no link.
Third, your post was rather long and full of words and such. I think this gets at the problem of how few seem to understand why raising the minimum wage is a bad idea. It's a little complicated and perhaps counter-intuitive. Thus, it seems, we may be doomed to live with it. What is needed is some sort of sound bite or spin-wording (e.g. "death tax") that sums up the problem or at least wraps it in a negative-sounding phrase. Perhaps, we could call it, "Minimum Jobs".
Thus, here I am, once again, feeling depressed over the way in which democracy (representative republic, whatever) fails to do the right thing. And the problem being, once again, that voters cannot be relied on to make good choices.
Fourthly, stuff like this also gets me questioning the whole notion of redistribution of wealth. Are we just chasing our tails? Someone has to do those low-paying jobs, right? I did my share of them when I was young and untrained. Don't the people who work hard to educate themselves deserve more compensation? Doesn't such compensation serve as a critical societal motivator for people to excel and thus for our culture to grow and innovate? I think it sucks that there are poor people, but I'm not convinced we have any solution to that problem that actually works.
Fifthly, I also tend to link the existence of minimum wage to illegal immigration. I don't have a very firm understanding of all the issues. But, I think migrant workers tend to get paid less than minimum wage. Thus, this seems relevant (and oh so topical). Many US employers violate the minimum wage laws by hiring illegal workers. They do this, because it's the only way for them to be profitable and to compete. The government is lax in enforcing laws against hiring illegals because it a political minefield and likely would hurt the economy. So, they spend billions on building a wall that everyone knows wont work instead.
Sixthly, it seems like the (mostly small) companies who are affected by minimum wage hikes should form a lobbyist group; buy some TV commercials and start a campaign to educate folks about their side of this. Also, they should start to bribe government officials. Since Walmart would be part of this group, it seems like they would have plenty of money. Actually, I wonder if they already have a group. Perhaps Walmart's bad press has thwarted them.
Finally, I wonder if it's reasonable to consider eliminating the minimum wage. I suppose there's just way too much political pressure against it. But, what if that changed and public support for eliminating it grew. Doing it all at once might be to chaotic, but lowering it slowly seems kind of nutty too. Some states have their own minimum wage laws, as well, though. So, it could be pretty interesting. I wish we had a detailed computer model for the country that we could just tweak to see what happened. I suppose another name for that is a crystal ball.
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winterfish
no subject
Date: 2007-02-15 03:16 pm (UTC)Second, I've always linked minimum wage increases to inflation. So, I thought you might throw that in, but you didn't. Now I'm wondering if there's no link.
Third, your post was rather long and full of words and such. I think this gets at the problem of how few seem to understand why raising the minimum wage is a bad idea. It's a little complicated and perhaps counter-intuitive. Thus, it seems, we may be doomed to live with it. What is needed is some sort of sound bite or spin-wording (e.g. "death tax") that sums up the problem or at least wraps it in a negative-sounding phrase. Perhaps, we could call it, "Minimum Jobs".
Thus, here I am, once again, feeling depressed over the way in which democracy (representative republic, whatever) fails to do the right thing. And the problem being, once again, that voters cannot be relied on to make good choices.
Fourthly, stuff like this also gets me questioning the whole notion of redistribution of wealth. Are we just chasing our tails? Someone has to do those low-paying jobs, right? I did my share of them when I was young and untrained. Don't the people who work hard to educate themselves deserve more compensation? Doesn't such compensation serve as a critical societal motivator for people to excel and thus for our culture to grow and innovate? I think it sucks that there are poor people, but I'm not convinced we have any solution to that problem that actually works.
Fifthly, I also tend to link the existence of minimum wage to illegal immigration. I don't have a very firm understanding of all the issues. But, I think migrant workers tend to get paid less than minimum wage. Thus, this seems relevant (and oh so topical). Many US employers violate the minimum wage laws by hiring illegal workers. They do this, because it's the only way for them to be profitable and to compete. The government is lax in enforcing laws against hiring illegals because it a political minefield and likely would hurt the economy. So, they spend billions on building a wall that everyone knows wont work instead.
Sixthly, it seems like the (mostly small) companies who are affected by minimum wage hikes should form a lobbyist group; buy some TV commercials and start a campaign to educate folks about their side of this. Also, they should start to bribe government officials. Since Walmart would be part of this group, it seems like they would have plenty of money. Actually, I wonder if they already have a group. Perhaps Walmart's bad press has thwarted them.
Finally, I wonder if it's reasonable to consider eliminating the minimum wage. I suppose there's just way too much political pressure against it. But, what if that changed and public support for eliminating it grew. Doing it all at once might be to chaotic, but lowering it slowly seems kind of nutty too. Some states have their own minimum wage laws, as well, though. So, it could be pretty interesting. I wish we had a detailed computer model for the country that we could just tweak to see what happened. I suppose another name for that is a crystal ball.