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Originally Posted by Jeo123
Bit of playing Devil's advocate here, but what if raising the minimum wage won't improve the well being of the majority of workers?
Making up numbers, but if 500 people make 50% more, but 600 lose their jobs because of it, isn't that counter to the law?
My point is, you can't necessarily just look at the wording of the law as justification for perpetual increases. Additionally, you do need to account for whether the accompanying inflation really improves the "well being" of the workers who's wages were just increased. If it's a net nothing, then you didn't help them at all.
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Jeo123, first let us specify what is meant by increasing the minimum wage. If the proportional decrease of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power is greater than the proportional increase of the federal minimum wage rate’s proportional increase of purchasing power, the increased FMW rate’s finite amount has failed to retain the rate’s entire purchasing power since the prior adjustment of the FMW rate.
I.E. U.S. congresses’ passed increase of the FMW monetary rate is not likely to be exactly proportionally equal to the proportional decrease of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power. I do not consider a FMW rate that that has failed to retain its purchasing power as having been an increased rate.
Increased labor costs, as do any cause of increased spending is to some extent inflationary.
It is extremely unlikely that any increase of USA’s prices that’s attributable to an increase of the FMW would not proportionally be significantly less that the proportional increase of the FMW rate.
Only if the increased prices of all goods sold in the USA were entirely attributable to the increased cost of labor, and additionally that labor was entirely that of the lesser rates, (i.e. the working poor), could the aggregate proportional price increases of those goods then APPROACH the proportional increase of the FMW rate.
Only if the increased prices of those same goods were entirely attributable ONLY to minimum wage labor, could the aggregate proportional price increases of those goods equal the proportional increase of the FMW rate.
That’s due to the minimum rate not proportionally affecting all wage rate equally. The minimum wage rate’s proportional relationship upon any wage scale is inverse to the difference between the FMW’s and the job’s pay rate. I.E. those lower wage jobs are proportionally more affected and those greater wage jobs are proportionally less affected by the FMW rate.
The FMW rate has never and should never be suddenly and radically increased; (i.e. it has never been permitted to “shock” the market for labor. I’m unaware of any nation’s economy ever having experienced such an economic shock or having suffered such a consequence.
Every increase of the FMW rate has been of net benefit to USA’s Economy. An economically detrimental loss of USA jobs due to an increase of the FMW rate has never occurred.
There are many employers who now believe that many of their lowest paid employees are overcompensated but they do not eliminate those jobs. If those employers were to eliminate their janitorial staff, what do they do about their toilets?
Their store managers could conceivably earn extra money by doing the task before the sales clerks arrive but they may soon have difficulty remaining or hiring better qualified store manages. Their store managers would have similar difficulties if they had similar expectations from their sales clerks.
Those employers do not eliminate those jobs because it would be net financially costly to their enterprises.
It’s conceivable that someone to invent a machine to mop toilets and replace what has become overly expensive janitors. USA’s experience has been that (unlike our global trade deficit which reduces jobs and is a net detriment to our economy, automation to replace more expensive labor has always been of net national benefit.
You refer to jobs eliminated if we were to retain or even increase the FMW’s purchasing power; you made not mention our increased rate of poverty due to the U.S. Congress’s failures to retain the FMW rate’s purchasing power. The detriment to our nation's social well being due to increased poverty among our working poor families have economic consequences that far outweigh FMW’s effect upon our rate of unemployment. Failure to retain the FMW rate’s purchasing power is net detrimental to our economy.
Respectfully, Supposn
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