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The minimum wage as currently constituted is a economic charade that hurts those it purports to help. When I took econ 101, our textbook, written by the liberal economist Paul Samuelson, had a supply demand graph and a few lines of algebra showing how this was so.
Suppose you're a 10-yr-old with an apple tree in your yard. In season, you can pick 10 apples per day and sell them for $1, giving you a nice bit of spending money. But you can't afford your dream bicycle on that (fancy bikes can now go for 5 figures). Along comes Mayor Pete and says, "tell you what I'm gonna do for you, kid. I'm gonna institute a $5 minimum apple price. We're gonna get you that dream bike." But at $5 dollars, nobody wants to buy an apple except maybe the rich widow down the street who feels sorry for him once per week and buys. So his income goes from $10 day to $5/wk. thanks to Mayor Pete's "help." The minimum wage is good for getting votes for guys like Mayor Pete, but it doesn't on balance help low-wage workers. It on balance hurts them.
Now there is the idea of the universal basic income from Democratic candidate Andrew Yang. Just for drawing breath, you are entitled to a certain minimum level of income every month. This indeed would help the low-skill, low-wage worker, but would be very expensive for the taxpayer.
What if we combined the two ideas? Let the wage rates float up and down according to the market, but if the wage goes below a certain level (say $15/hr), the government makes up the difference with a subsidy. This is essentially how US agriculture price supports work. If the price of corn goes below a certain threshold, the corn farmer gets a check from Uncle Sam to make up the difference.
What do you think?
Interesting. I'm not sure. I'll have to think about that.
I think of the Basic Income as coming from the government, and it's an idea worth exploring.
But while I think a minimum wage is essential, since we've seen how badly employers can act, I'm not sure if it should be raised, which is where the trend is going.
Nobody is forcing anyone to take a low paying job. If everyone were to refuse to work for company XX due to their low wages, said company will have no option other than to offer wages at a rate acceptable to workers.
Minimum wage restricts low skill American workers from the job market. At a minimum, it should be decided at the local level, not federally. (In North Dakota, fasy food/Walmart jobs advertise 20+ an hour in oil boom areas).
UBI I would think could be considered, if it completely replaced all means tested assistance (SNAP. welfare, etc...) and the bloated administrative monstrosity that administers it. See Milton Friedman's negative tax.
The concept reminds me of Neal Stephanson's novel Diamond Age. In this future setting, nearly every possible human need could be satisfied through nanotechnology manufacturing at essentially zero cost. This made it all but impossible for most people to find work, so basic needs were supplied through a resource feed that could be used to manufacture food, make furniture, and so forth.
i believe much of our system is shortage based..which affects price/profit
we are capable of production for the entire world..and i think of food rotting on shipping piers in London during the Irish famine because the price was wrong..heard an old-timer tell of ten-foot high quarter mile long piles of oranges set ablaze during the depression...any attempt to alter these things is "communism"..the chamber of commerce has done a great job bullshi**g the American voter...
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