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Combined with the 15 or so states that already started raising their wages in the early-mid 2010s, this will start making the $7.25 states the outlier ones.
I'd like to see data on who actually gets paid $7.25.
A lot of nurse aides are paid 7.25. They primarily take care of the elderly in nursing homes. It is the lowest respected job position in America.
Respectfully, I must disagree. Let's NOT ignore lost jobs.
One of the things that governments are exceptionally good at is creating shortages. All the government needs to do to create a shortage, for example, is to set the maximum price of apples at an artificially low price such as 2 cents per pound and in short order there will be no apples for sale anywhere. Similarly, if the government were to set the minimum wage at $60,000 as in your hypothetical, then employers purchasing labor (hiring) in short order would stop purchasing and there would be massive layoffs and destruction of jobs. Wide swaths of American would be thrown into poverty. The economy would crater. The economic damage would be profound -- probably lethal. The underground economy would flourish, of course, where there is no minimum wage at all.
Inflation is an increase in the general price level of all goods and services, has sometimes been described as too many dollars chasing too few goods. In the case of the massive overnight unemployment caused by your hypothetical $60K minimum wage, the unemployed's ever-deteriorating financial circumstances could never be characterized as chasing those goods.
Inflation is almost exclusively a monetary phenomenon caused by, surprise, too many dollars chasing too few goods... coupled, of course, with some rational expectations about the general price level in the future.
Yea. I circled back and noted jobs.
And FWIIW I'm precisely the wrong guy to preach to about economics. The $60,000 thing was offered in attempts to force low information types to think about all this just a little.
A lot of nurse aides are paid 7.25. They primarily take care of the elderly in nursing homes. It is the lowest respected job position in America.
Really?
I confess I'm quite skeptical of this claim, but also admit I have no actual firsthand experience to lean on to back up by skepticism. There is wage info here: https://www.innerbody.com/careers-in...rses-aide.html
According to that source the median hourly wage for a nurse's aid is about $13/hour, and when I look at breakdown for Phoenix, AZ (not a high wage city) they show the lower 10th percentile making about $22k/year which is probably about $11/hour. I guess it's possible there are a nurses aids making $7.25 but one would think for it to be "a lot" there would be a greater impact on the hourly wage data for the lowest 10%, pulling it lower than $11/hour.
Karl Marx was a big dummy, now he's a big dead dummy.
There is no such thing as the "social value of labor". Labor is worth what people will pay for it. Anything else is a perversion of the market and will have negative effects on said market.
You can't go stack a pile of rocks everyday in your backyard for 8 hours and expect a huge paycheck.
You can however learn how to install a toilet, or unclog pipes, and make $60 an hour.
Economic theory is clear: raising the minimum wage has the following effects:
The total number of low-end jobs decreases, as the minimum wage is above the market clearing wage.
Many formerly employed low-end employees lose their jobs.
Many hope-to-be employed low-end employees enter the job market for the now-higher wage only to find no one will hire them.
Those low-end employees who keep their jobs will have larger paychecks.
Prices at the margin go up
We'll get to see how much of the above actually happens in the real world.
Already seeing this happen in the retail sector with companies moving to self checkout to save on labor costs. amazon has warehouse drones, wholefoods is piloting checkoutless shopping, etc. It's all a matter of time, and raising minimum wages high is only hastening the move towards eliminating low end workers. But boy oh boy does it feel good to raise that minimum wage and politicians and NPO ceos can pat themselves on the back for a job well done and collect their 6 figured salaries.
If income equality is so important why not enact a Maximum Wage law while they're at it?
That's basically the purpose of increasing marginal taxes, which is definitely desired!
You say income equality, but really it's comparability. The whole notion of a free market rests on the idea of similarly-informed participants with similar leverage discovering prices. If there are wide discrepancies in income, the basic economics of the market economy break down.
If income equality is so important why not enact a Maximum Wage law while they're at it?
we don't need either. They get paid what they're worth, just like those at the other end of the scale.
Keep raising the middle wage and these low-income jobs will attract seniors back to work. Those at the bottom, will still be out out of work.
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