> Make the minimum wage livable, then any industry you want to keep onshore for strategic reasons you help out
This is a model for shit labour productivity à la the Soviet Union or Argentina. Much better to have no minimum wage and a UBI, to avoid distorting your industry through your wage policy.
Why? Subsidy is saying: you know you can only compete with China if you pay $5 an hour, so pay $10 and we will pay the rest because having a steel manufacturing industry is important to the government. Maybe the sub is based on productivity rather than wage. $ per tonne.
> Subsidy is saying: you know you can only compete with China if you pay $5 an hour, so pay $10 and we will pay the rest because having a steel manufacturing industry is important to the government
I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying everyone who has tried something like this wound up with a sclerotic industry. At a certain point, you wind up with the subsidy grantor deciding who can and cannot participate in the industry. Those already in don't want competition. The rest follows quite simply. (Moreover, your export market gets constrained because foreign countries will overcorrect undoing your subsidy with tariffs.)
We do this sort of thing in America. It's why we have booming shipbuilding and steelmaking industries.
This is a model for shit labour productivity à la the Soviet Union or Argentina. Much better to have no minimum wage and a UBI, to avoid distorting your industry through your wage policy.