Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Why I am Against the Minimum Wage

2 recent minimum wage studies here and here.

So here is why I'm against the minimum wage:
  1. Idle hand are the devils workshop. Young men not working get into more trouble than those with jobs. I would rather not take the chance of even putting a very small number of people out of work.
  2. Anyone working full time in the developed world is really not living in poverty. See: How I Live on $7,000 per year.
  3. Unemployment is depressing. The Grave Evil of Unemployment
  4. People often learn skills on the job and BTW you would have to make internships pay minimum wage to be fair.
  5. Jobs integrate younger and older people and older people's life styles are generally better.
  6. If you consider the difference in pay between the market rate and the minimum wage rate a tax, fair in my mind, the tax falls on employers of low wage labor in the short run and consumers of products produced by low wage labor in the longer run, why tax them more than others? BTW Dear Republicans even if you do not call it a tax it's still a tax, so  you might want to support a higher taxes to fund an hourly wage subsidy or a UBI.
  7. Many people are already working for less than minimum wage.  WHy Drug Dealers Live with there Mom's
  8. Black youth unemployment is already much to high. 
  9. An hourly wage subsidy would be so much better. 
And yes, I would get rid of it all together and leave it to individuals, unions to work out wages.

BTW statistics and be tricky and when you read economic studies, you need to think about what could have gone wrong on the study and how they could be biased, but statistics are much better than stories (anecdotes). Statistics and theory are the best we have. The old saw "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." has truth to it but again statistics are better than the alternatives.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Would it be OK if I cross-posted this article to WriterBeat.com? There is no fee; I’m simply trying to add more content diversity for our community and I enjoyed reading your work. I’ll be sure to give you complete credit as the autfhor. If “OK” please let me know via email.

Autumn
AutumnCote@WriterBeat.com

JWO said...

Autumn Cote sure.