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You are attempting to understand the impact of a minimum wage from from an intellectual perspective but the map is not the territory. Just as having low taxes a
by Produce 15y ago
You are attempting to understand the impact of a minimum wage from from an intellectual perspective but the map is not the territory. Just as having low taxes and few public services intellectually makes more sense but in reality reduces the quality of life in society, so it is with having a minimum wage. Compare the US and counties like Sweden for evidence.
You assume that the minimum wage is there to protect incompetent people but the reality is that when you treat someone badly like that, day in and day out, it destroys their self-esteem. You sound like you have grown up in a high self-esteem environment and probably can't relate to the poor mentality. It is a trap, it is created by the environment people grow up in and changing is difficult. For evidence, try changing your mentality and see how easy you find it. Most people tend to stay in one place in terms of their mindset for their whole lives, whether they are rich or poor.
If you honestly think that being paid a wage so low that you don't have enough money to bring yourself out of poverty is better than being unemployed, I have trouble not calling you delusional. Why should anyone have to work two or three jobs just to (barely) survive? How is this better than welfare for those who can't and a wage which results in living above the poverty line for those who can? How can you not understand that this would greatly increase crime? Think about it, imagine it - you're unemployed and have an opportunity to work 16 hours a day and you'll still starve or you could start selling drugs or robbing people or swindling money, which would give you enough to live on.
Honestly, your whole attitude reeks of ignorance. Go spend some time with people who live in chronic poverty, try to understand what they're going through and you'll be able to get around this.
- Symmetry 15y agoYou are attempting to understand the impact of a minimum wage from from an intellectual perspective but the map is not the territory. Just as having low taxes and few public services intellectually makes more sense but in reality reduces the quality of life in society, so it is with having a minimum wage. Compare the US and counties like Sweden for evidence. Funny thing about comparing the US and Sweden, the US has a minimum wage and Sweden doesn't. What Sweden does have lots of, though is a lot of re-distributive taxation[1]. If you go and look at actual real world economists instead of the caricatures that make it into our political debates in the US you'll find that most of them are actually democrats, and many like progressive income taxes, welfare, etc. But despite the fact that most of them like government spending, pretty much none of them like the minimum wage. You could say that Sweden is exactly how your typical democrat economist would run a country if they could, with Singapore being the conservative equivalent. [1] Ok, their taxation structure is less progressive than the US's, but they spend much more of their taxes on services instead of, say, fighter planes so in practice its more re-distributive.
- Produce 15y agoI would argue that Sweden does have a minimum wage since, from wiki - "There is no minimum wage that is required by legislation. Instead, minimum wage standards in different sectors are normally set by collective bargaining." I think that having a government lobby for your interests is the same as a collective doing so. Looking at countries with no minimum wage, or, to put it another way, no formal organisation(s) to lobby for the rights of workers, it is clear that the results are less than savory (hint: the only country this applies to is North Korea) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_countr... I think that the core issue is that the majority of people expand as much as they can until something stops them, which is why formal agreements are necessary at this stage of humanity's development. Few people are conscious enough to act fairly in the absence of law. I think that the long term solution to creating a society where a minimum wage is not necessary is education and a culture of personal development. When people stop outsourcing their morals to authority, they will make the right decisions.