Comments (14)

• Francisco Torres

• Their hearts will not bleed, since they can rationalize away the problem by saying "they were lousy jobs, anyway!"

  
  

• Published: April 5, 2005 3:30 PM

• Timothy

• Minimum wages also disproportionately benefit the middle-class teenagers who're employed in low-elasticity sorts of labor markets like 7-11 cashiering, grocery bagging, and such. How do you feel now, minimum wage hucksters? Tossing honest old people out of work so that Johnny Teenager can have extra pocket money for his nefarious teenagerly dealings*?

  
  * It should be noted that I personally endorse many nefarious teenagerly dealings and wish I'd had the opportunity to get up to more of them pursuant to "girls" when I was a teenager.

• Published: April 5, 2005 4:00 PM

• Ken Smith

• Because seniors have to work to supplement retirement income, they "don't need" a living wage?

  Who's calling who "icy"?

• Published: April 5, 2005 9:30 PM

• fancyleprachaun

• I never really cared for teenagerly dealings with double-quoted girls, I always preferred the real kind.

  Hey, as I see it, the worst aspect of the minimum wage is how it causes the employers not to have to figure out the cost of good basic laborers, and how basic laborers (or unwillinging to haggle) just take jobs at whatever the state sets as minimum wage, without figuring what laborers in the area are demanding for fair market wage.

  As always, the state continues to dumb down its dominion subjects.

• Published: April 5, 2005 9:36 PM

• Brian Radzinsky

• Oh no silly. See this is about compassion, not something as cold as ee-ko-naw-miks. Who cares that price floors artificially alter the demand of any good or service, leading to lower joint profits for competitors who then can't afford the costs of business?

  What do you *want* children everywhere to die? Oh wait, what? Jobs fall under costs of business? But the ch...

• Published: April 6, 2005 12:29 AM

• P.M.Lawrence

• KS, if you have other means of subsistence, whether in cash or in kind, you no longer need a full living wage, just a top up wage if those resources are insufficient. That's not the same thing as saying they don't need to live, just that the wage doesn't need to enough for that.

  I have a whole load more to say on this subject, but I will pull it together offline first.
  

• Published: April 6, 2005 2:14 AM

• arielb

• If you want a living wage, allow the market to produce the most competitive educational system so that workers will have the skills they need plus allow the market to produce the strongest possible economy so that they will have more money to spend on cheaper goods.

• Published: April 6, 2005 10:41 PM

• P.M.Lawrence

• Arielb, your suggestion has merit, but it also has two problems:-

  - a transitional problem, of what happens to people caught in the middle until the world changes to provide what you describe; and

  - the very real possibility that the end result will not lead to a market clearing wage, i.e. that survival will only be possible if people also have other resources over and above wage labour.

  The latter can also be achieved through market mechanisms, but it also needs a transition. It would have been far better not to have got into this bind in the first place, and the responsibility does sheet home to well meaning interference, but saying that does not make it a non-problem.
  

• Published: April 7, 2005 12:32 PM

• Francisco Torres

• Mr. Lawrence,

  There is no need for a transition from a government mandated minimum wage towards totally market-driven wages, since the former actually creates distorsion in consumer prices that the latter corrects.

  The problem with the minimum wage is that creates a false idea of a standard of living, that is, it rises the confort level for many people, thus taking away from them, psychologically, the need to improve themselves and search for greener pastures. A person that THINKS he or she is obtaining the best deal possible for the least amount of work will not have a good incentive for improvement.

  If you take away the minimum wage in an immediate way, the consequences will be mostly psychological, because some will feel their "safety net" has been removed; but it will make those people more careful and productive about their jobs or seek better employment. Even trapeze artists become extra-careful when working without a net :)

  
  

• Published: April 7, 2005 3:07 PM

• Tschäff

• What is interesting but not touched on is why businesses can be forced into choosing between minimum wage vs not hiring at all. How can we increse the levels of production and consumption?

  People living off minimum wage can't spend their income on anything except food and housing, these people can hardly stimulate the economy.

• Published: September 18, 2005 10:38 AM

• Bill Johnston

• The trouble is that the current wage is not a minimum wage. It is a subsistence wage

• Published: January 10, 2007 4:01 PM

• Sam

• Interesting. If the minimum wage is set too high (the main gripe) it'd cause mostly unemployment or some few may get a bit more for nothing. But as Bill Johnston seemed to complain the minimum wage is set too low and my question is: so what? Either the boss would be paying too little and workers would seek better employment or would pay more than the minimum wage as relave to a worker's high productivity. OR, it has been argued that if the worker works for a pittance and won't leave then the low pay must be correct in terms of their lacklustre productivity.

• Published: January 11, 2007 12:09 AM

• billwald

• The essay mentions that the workers are given a "free" campsite worth over $500/month. This is worth well over $3/hour of untaxed income, probably closer to $5/hour gross income. In other words, the campsite, alone, is worth close to a minimum wage payment.

• Published: January 11, 2007 11:11 AM

• Peter

• "Worth close to a minimum wage payment" to whom?

• Published: January 11, 2007 6:00 PM