This is the wrong approach - simply ask what level of wage is needed to prevent a worker having to claim state benefits. Anything else is subsidising the employer
The teenager at home trying to get some spending cash or save for college doesn't need to support a family. Every job doesn't need to support a family.
So, you will ring fence certain jobs as only for people without families? Perhaps like paper rounds? But if a job is available to a teenager it is available to the fifty year old who just got laid off and unless it's working in a strip bar, is likely to be a better worker all round.
Right and so the teenager is left with no options to get a job because adults are working extremely low skill jobs. The adult has little incentive to quickly move to a higher paying job because the minimum wage has flattened out the slope of lower end jobs meaning that the manager at the McDonalds isn't making that much more than the burger flipper... so why would the adult bother making the effort?
Meanwhile, the teen gets no experience at just getting up and doing something simple like flipping burgers so wastes his time watching TV or worse. When the teen gets to be an adult, he has zero work experience so what are the only jobs he is qualified for? Minimum wage entry jobs.
The minimum wage is a vicious lie that causes inflation hurting those at the bottom end of the economic ladder while destroying entry level positions for new workers and creating inefficiencies in the trade of money for value.
Earning a check (and the required things that go on with this).
Showing up on time or getting fired (can't get fired from school, only in trouble). Also on the same note, time management and working with others (hey boss, I need off friday, I talked to jon who would take my place without causing him any overtime).
I think you highly overrate what high school teaches students these days.
It saddens me that someone with access to a computer who reads HN like yourself either doesn't understand the value of some young adult's first job or is just being utterly obtuse.
Either way, what's the point of having a conversation when basic fundamentals of life aren't even agreed upon? It's like babbling away in our own separate languages.
"So, you will ring fence certain jobs as only for people without families? Perhaps like paper rounds?"
No, what the heck did you read that gave you that idea about what I said? Employers decide everyday how much experience they need.
"But if a job is available to a teenager it is available to the fifty year old who just got laid off and unless it's working in a strip bar, is likely to be a better worker all round."
That is the problem with the upping of the minimum wage. Young workers get kicked out of entry jobs since the "lower wage / less experience" rate is pushed closer to "medium wage / experience" rate. So, employers aren't given a choice of setting the rate to something where part-time teenager is cost effective.
The heck was " every job does not need to support a family" - but my contention is that unemployment is now structural - so every job will be contended for by someone who does need to support a family, and will be presumably more experienced, better qualified etc, than the student.
In which case the student, or working mum, or immigrant family will usually lose out to the better qualified candidate.
I agree that minimum wages rises cost jobs.
But The jobs are going anyway - software is eating the jobs as well as the world.
There will not be enough jobs to go round. And as jobs are the current way to spread wealth creation, we need to Find ways other than jobs to distribute wealth.
How to do that I do not know - but we have to get out of a cycle of thinking full employment is the answer.
My suggestion is that raisng the minimum wage hard will sweep away the jobs at the margin, clear out the weaker companies and business models that depend on subsidised labour and force us to deal with the problems head on, a situation that usually leads to cleaner and more effective solutions.
But that is a political decision for each country - Sweden will take a different approach to the problem than Dubai or USA. But we all face the same problem.
> But The jobs are going anyway - software is eating the jobs as well as the world
This sounds very familiar, it reminds me of the arguments from the technocrats back during the industrial revolution who made the argument that that machines and factories, by making people more efficient would cost people their jobs and would lead to massive unemployment as human jobs would be replaced by machine jobs.
With hindsight its not hard to see that they were obviously wrong, the jobs that the machines and factories may have destroyed in the short term were more than made up by the jobs and economic growth that came with it in the long term.
What do you think makes your argument different then those of the technocrats?
but my contention is that unemployment is now structural
Funny how now unemployment is structural, thus nothing politicians can do anything about. When the other party was running things during the last recovery, sustained unemployment around 8% would not have been called structural, it would have been called evidence of lousy economic policy.
Second, your solution is to kill all the jobs and then think of some new solution? All those small businesses that are getting buy will be killed and then so will everything else. Software dies when no one is around who can pay for it.
The fact is only 0.66% of overall workforce get minimum wage, but 22.8% of working teens get minimum wage or lower [1]. Most of the people on minimum wage would be either teens or people just entering the workforce. Of course, there are point exceptions, but numbers say fifty years old working at min wage is a very uncommon occurrence, both among fifty-year-olds and among minimum wage earners.
not true and way too simplistic. If they can't get employed at all because the minimum wage is too high, the entire burden falls on those same state benefits.
That assumes that a business would be willing to rage quit. It either needs employees, or it doesn't. How many businesses do you think are carrying an excess of employees at the moment just because the wages are cheap? How many are supplying customers who woulld no longer decide they want the product/service because a small percentage of the total cost of delivery has increased my a relatively small amount, increasing prices very slightly? It is only those jobs that can be offshored at little or no (overall) cost that would be affected, barring ideology-over-sense zealots out to prove a point.
No, it assumes that in a flexible labor environment in the medium term, a business will adjust to the value of the worker. If the minimum wage goes up to $20 tomorrow, I may not let go of a lot of my temp employees today, but I will certainly do so in time. This isn't rocket science - this is economics 101. And I say this as someone who supports a gradual rise in the minimum wage (ie, a legislative solution that would link it to the CPI seems like the best way to take it out out of the hands of future legislators who want to play politics) - but the idea that there is no cost to increasing the minimum wage is silly.
Also, the "small percent of the total cost of delivery" is is a red herring; labor cost as a portion of total delivery cost varies greatly according to industry. To use a silly example, if the minimum wage was increased to $30 tomorrow, you don't think McDonald's starts firing employees?
>How many businesses do you think are carrying an excess of employees at the moment just because the wages are cheap?
More then you think. Increased insurance costs has done more to get rid of excess employees then minimum wage will.
>It is only those jobs that can be offshored
No, not only. Now that costs increase it makes more sense for the employer to take a harder look at replacing parts of the employment chain with software or automation. Where at one point employes kept people around for their flexibility it tips more in favor of machines (software or hardware) for there efficiency.
But it is clear. Not this muddy twilight zone of part working part benefits.
Anyway, this is not about the specific wage level, but that wages are the current means of transferring wealth generated from corporations and governments to the populace in an equitable fashion. There are other means of achieving the same end. Let's take the back-to-1950s approach - minimum wage too low? Fine, raise it to 30 bucks an hour and get all married women to stop working - their husbands can now bring home a sufficient wage, and the rise in unemployment is offset by the drop unpeople seeking work.
Why is full employment an achievable goal when it's main purpose is to spread the wealth. How donwe spread the wealth - answer that and unemployment stops being a problem.
I believe my point was that, as wages change, so does that number. Isn't that part of the whole "cost of living" differences from one place to the next? People make different amounts of money, therefore they can spend different amounts of money on things they need, and the supply/demand curve adjusts accordingly?
See: price of an apartment in Washington vs Texas
Long complaint short: It's broken. How do we fix it?
