Comment Re:This is not the problem (Score 1) 688
15% of the United States of America is starving to death.
With 300 million Americans, that would be 45 million people starving to death.
Show me. Where are the dead bodies? People dead by obesity related problems don't count, for obvious reasons.
I'm responding to this point first because there is no point to further discussion if you cannot or will not make truthful claims about reality.
Reaction is irrelevant. A business can react to a moral issue for the owner by shutting down. Hobby Lobby, for example, could close its business or cut hours to below-ACA limits in reaction to the birth control mandate.
Reaction is very relevant. That's why it is a demand CURVE, not a demand vertical line.
The abstract concept of the demand curve also already includes the marginal profits. It's already accounted for.
More to the point, if the business can gain a greater increase profits by hiring more workers than it can by any other strategy, it will hire more workers. Exact wages are irrelevant; the only mechanism that is relevant is whether adding workers produces the greatest possible profit. If a business can profit $1M/year on 100 workers, and $0.999M/year on 101 workers, and $0.999M/year on 99 workers, it will hire exactly 100 workers; if you raise wages such that the business profits $0.8M/year on 100 workers, $0.799M/year on 101, and $0.799M/year on 99, it will still hire 100 workers. When a new management strategy comes along that allows for profits above what 100 workers can provide, that strategy is selected and workers are eliminated.
Your math is making an assumption that completely contradicts what a minimum wage does. Your math treats the minimum wage as raising labor costs uniformly across the board, such that optimal profit is achieved with the exact same number of workers.
The problem with this analysis is that the minimum wage only increases the costs of workers who earn less than the minimum wage. The optimal number of workers for profit for the average businesses is going to change, even if you can find a few businesses who are not affected. That's like saying no one is unemployed because you can find a single worker who has a job.
Of course not. Front-line workers were paid a minimum wage of $7.25/hr at the time; except for about 30% of us, who were paid $6/hr. Workers below the age of 16 are not legally required to receive minimum wage, so we were paid less. The single manager on shift at any given time was paid in the vicinity of $11/hr ($10.25 up to $11.50); the district manager made more, but I was never able to find his wages or salary.
Which is what I expected - your claims about minimum wage effects on business decisions are ludicrous.
Let's take your own example - if minimum wages removed the 16-yo exception, making minimum wage to affect all workers - all those 16 year olds would be out of their jobs, even if they were willing to work at $6/hour. Maybe a handful would get hired on at $7.25/hour, but there would be some who were not worth $6/hour.
Even if you personally think all your 16-yo coworkers could justify $7.25/hour, there are going to be some who would not be at some other business affected by the law - and they would no longer have their job by law, not because the business is unwilling to hire them, or because they are unwilling to work.
Minimum wage restricts the labor supply by forcing some workers not to work. You may argue against this all you want, but you can't change the math behind it.
It's not, but it's also not going away.
We're mostly agreed on the problems of the current welfare system. I don't have much to say on your proposed fixes, but you do need to understand what minimum wage actually does if you want to make public policy about wages.
