[dnautics]

How do you decide what the appropriate level is, gut feeling? I'm afraid that debates over what the number should be obscures debate over the harder question of what is causing the minimum wage to have to keep increasing.

The question we should be asking is why are we devaluing the completed labor of the lowest wage classes?

[crdoconnor]

>How do you decide what the appropriate level is, gut feeling?

I would keep raising it incrementally until inflation hits around 4-5%.

This is probably the simplest, most effective way of solving the income inequality problem. Minimum wage hikes cut in to the bottom line first and prices second. There's a lot of profit at the top that an just be redirected to the bottom by increasing the minimum wage - barely even affecting the middle classes.

>why are we devaluing the completed labor of the lowest wage classes?

So the value of their labor above and beyond which they are compensated for can be extracted and redistributed - mostly in the form of profits.

This is done via outsourcing (lowering the demand for domestic labor), austerity (e.g. leaving portland's pothole fixing to the anarchists) and slashing benefits like SNAP/ unemployment (lowering the negotiating leverage of workers).

[dnautics]

> So the value of their labor above and beyond which they are compensated for can be extracted and redistributed - mostly in the form of profits.

I don't think that is the working model. The value of labor is decreased by government policy because it's believed that wages are sticky and decreasing the wage value will lead to greater employment macroeconomically.

Yes, the downstream effect is that we line the pockets of corporations and the already wealthy, but the justification and motivation for it is progressive social policy.

[drabiega]

What the appropriate value for minimum wage is largely a social question not an economic one. I would stipulate, however, that whatever you think that value is it should probably be a real value, not nominal. The real value of our minimum wage has gone up here and there but it took a huge hit in the 80s and hasn't ever been adjusted back up to what it was before then.

[occamrazor]

The idea is to progressively increase minimum wage, until it starts to affect unemployment rate. After that point, it may be a better policy to increase fiscal redistribution, through welfare, basic income, etc.

[otakucode]

We 'must' decouple compensation from the actual value being created by workers because workers are far too productive with modern technology. If compensation was related in any way, even a very small way, to value of the work being done, wages would raise so fast that there would be enough jobs for everyone, people would work less and all those promises of the wonderful future technology would bring would actually happen. And that is unconscionable.