Chicago "Cook County" Approves $13.00 hr Minimum Wage (Washington: employment, salary)

[Jimmyp25]

Cook County approves $13 hourly minimum wage affecting suburbs - Chicago Tribune

[ARaider08]

Good.

[EddieOlSkool]

About freaking time. At least Chicago is making great strides!! I hated seeing how Minnesota seemed to be the only Midwest state to give a damn about things like this.

[andrew61]

Originally Posted by ARaider08

Good.

It seems good until the unintended consequences kick in. How many businesses might end up relocating to an adjacent county in order to keep their costs down and remain competitive? And how many others might stay put but decide to cut headcount for the same reason?

You can pass all the laws you want, but economic reality will always win in the end. The true minimum wage is zero, as any unemployed person can tell you.

[EddieOlSkool]

Originally Posted by andrew61

It seems good until the unintended consequences kick in. How many businesses might end up relocating to an adjacent county in order to keep their costs down and remain competitive? And how many others might stay put but decide to cut headcount for the same reason?

You can pass all the laws you want, but economic reality will always win in the end. The true minimum wage is zero, as any unemployed person can tell you.

Seemed to work fine in Washington state.

[SkylarkPhotoBooth]

Good. It's about time. Why the scare quotes around Cook County, though?

[NealIRC]

If you don't want to work for less than $9/hour, nobody can force you to. So how does a minimum wage help you? All it says is that even if you want to work for less than $9/hour, you can't. How can a law that prevents you from doing something, which you would only do if you wanted to anyway, help you?

The answer, of course, is that it helps you only in the sense that it reduces the competition from those more desperate than you. The irony is that the more desperate you are, the more it harms you.

Consider a reductio ad absurdum. Someone fairly poor can easily out-compete me for the job of garbageman. After all, they're willing to work for much less than I am. Suppose I get a law passed requiring all garbagemen to get at least my salary. Now I can compete with that poorer person.

These are just like equal pay for equal work laws - they harm those who need jobs desperately by removing their primary competitive advantage, the ability to work for lower wages than those less desperate. Do not pretend minimum wage laws are progressive. The more desperate you are, the more you are harmed because the competitive advantage you are stripped of is larger.

Without the minimum wage.

Without the minimum wage, a person willing to work for $9/hour would have a tremendous competitive advantage. With the minimum wage, he does not. Such a person must be incredibly desperate and in serious trouble - yet he pays the highest price for a minimum wage law, unable to even earn $9/hour.

In every situation where the minimum wage results in a person getting a higher wage, he could have refused to work for any less than that amount anyway. Obviously, the employer wouldn't refuse the wage because the job isn't worth the wage, or he wouldn't hire anyone at all. The only reason an employer would pay less than the minimum wage, where the minimum wage makes him pay more, is because there was someone willing to work for less than the minimum wage who is now prohibited from doing so.

Minimum wage causes unemployment.

The higher and higher the minimum wage - the more and more unemployed people increase.

If your labor is not worth the minimum wage, you will not get a job. So the higher you set it, the more people become unemployable.

[EddieOlSkool]

Originally Posted by NealIRC

If you don't want to work for less than $9/hour, nobody can force you to. So how does a minimum wage help you? All it says is that even if you want to work for less than $9/hour, you can't. How can a law that prevents you from doing something, which you would only do if you wanted to anyway, help you?

The answer, of course, is that it helps you only in the sense that it reduces the competition from those more desperate than you. The irony is that the more desperate you are, the more it harms you.

Consider a reductio ad absurdum. Someone fairly poor can easily out-compete me for the job of garbageman. After all, they're willing to work for much less than I am. Suppose I get a law passed requiring all garbagemen to get at least my salary. Now I can compete with that poorer person.

These are just like equal pay for equal work laws - they harm those who need jobs desperately by removing their primary competitive advantage, the ability to work for lower wages than those less desperate. Do not pretend minimum wage laws are progressive. The more desperate you are, the more you are harmed because the competitive advantage you are stripped of is larger.

Without the minimum wage.

Without the minimum wage, a person willing to work for $9/hour would have a tremendous competitive advantage. With the minimum wage, he does not. Such a person must be incredibly desperate and in serious trouble - yet he pays the highest price for a minimum wage law, unable to even earn $9/hour.

In every situation where the minimum wage results in a person getting a higher wage, he could have refused to work for any less than that amount anyway. Obviously, the employer wouldn't refuse the wage because the job isn't worth the wage, or he wouldn't hire anyone at all. The only reason an employer would pay less than the minimum wage, where the minimum wage makes him pay more, is because there was someone willing to work for less than the minimum wage who is now prohibited from doing so.

Minimum wage causes unemployment.

The higher and higher the minimum wage - the more and more unemployed people increase.

If your labor is not worth the minimum wage, you will not get a job. So the higher you set it, the more people become unemployable.

Any actual concrete evidence that this has happened?

[NealIRC]

Originally Posted by EddieOlSkool

Any actual concrete evidence that this has happened?

Minimum wage laws were established to prevent poorer workers from competing with workers who were better off.

The fundamental point - all a minimum wage law does it say that even though Joe is willing to work for $8/hour and even though Jack is willing to pay him $8/hour, the 2 of them cannot do so because it is unfair to someone else.

[nana053]

Originally Posted by NealIRC

<snip in interest of brevity and answering only this part of the post>

Minimum wage causes unemployment.

The higher and higher the minimum wage - the more and more unemployed people increase.

If your labor is not worth the minimum wage, you will not get a job. So the higher you set it, the more people become unemployable.

The economic consensus is that minimum wage and minimum wage increases do NOT cause more unemployment.

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their jobs.

Not true: In a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders urging a minimum wage increase, more than 600 economists, including 7 Nobel Prize winners wrote, "In recent years there have been important developments in the academic literature on the effect of increases in the minimum wage on employment, with the weight of evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market. Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front."

Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will result in job losses for newly hired and unskilled workers in what some call a “last-one-hired-equals-first-one-fired” scenario.

Not true: Minimum wage increases have little to no negative effect on employment as shown in independent studies from economists across the country. Academic research also has shown that higher wages sharply reduce employee turnover which can reduce employment and training costs.