[pm]

Agreed, what harm does a minimum wage cause? We have a reasonable minimum wage in Australia (though I don't think it's been adjusted for inflation for a while) and it facilitates time for education, which in turn facilitates social mobility.

On the other hand, you can have no minimum wage, and end up with a class of working poor who have no time to educate themselves, thus condemning them to a life of constant work with no hope of social mobility.

I don't see how a minimum wage is harmful.

[logicchains]

Australia has relatively high youth unemployement, a predicted effect of a high minimum wage: https://www.statista.com/statistics/811644/youth-unemploymen.... Having difficulty finding work after graduating high school or university is a common complaint among Australian youth, in my experience. The hardest part is getting the first job, getting the foot in the door, and this is because a minimum wage prevents many entry-level jobs from existing, where the value the positions would generate is much less than the minimum wage, so it makes no sense to create the positions.

>On the other hand, you can have no minimum wage, and end up with a class of working poor who have no time to educate themselves, thus condemning them to a life of constant work with no hope of social mobility.

The minimum wage can also create cycles of poverty by pricing people out of work. Some portion of the people who are "least hireable" are unable to get jobs because nobody would pay them $15/hour, so their only option is living permanently on welfare, which has a demoralising effect, and is associated with poor outcomes for their children. Imagine for instance the stereotypical Frankston junkie.

[h0l0cube]

> Imagine for instance the stereotypical Frankston junkie.

I'd like to see data comparing minimum wage to drug abuse, but there's a few problems with trying to make that correlation. E.g., social welfare measures would largely factor in here, but I imagine that both minimum wage and welfare measures typically go hand in hand. But by naive comparison, just this wiki article seems to show that opiates abuse is about 5 times greater in the US vs Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevalenc...

[pfranz]

> Having difficulty finding work after graduating high school or university is a common complaint among Australian youth, in my experience.

Those numbers don't look all that different from the US. Are people pursuing minimum wage jobs after graduating high school or university? Even high school graduates with no intention of pursuing higher schooling seem to pursue a vocation at something higher than minimum wage.

[logicchains]

Before corona, it was around 12-13% in Australia compared to 8-9% in the US, 3-4% is a non-trivial difference. In rural areas it's worse (https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/youth-unemploym...), which is expected as even if minimum wage is set "properly" for the cities, where most people live, it may be relatively too high for rural areas where cost of living and wages are lower.

>Are people pursuing minimum wage jobs after graduating high school or university? Even high school graduates with no intention of pursuing higher schooling seem to pursue a vocation at something higher than minimum wage.

Not everybody is able to find a higher-paying job, that's why we still see people at age thirty working in checkouts or McDonalds. Try not to think of the average person; instead imagine the worst behaved, most disruptive, academically failing students at your high school, and consider what kind of jobs are available to them. It's the least hireable people that are affected by minimum wage laws, not anybody who's capable of getting a better job.

[pfranz]

> Before corona, it was around 12-13% in Australia compared to 8-9% in the US, 3-4% is a non-trivial difference.

I was looking over the past 10-20 years (I have no idea how long Australia has had a high minimum wage...I figured that wasn't a recent development). Around 2008 the discrepancy had the US 10% higher.

> Not everybody is able to find a higher-paying job, that's why we still see people at age thirty working in checkouts or McDonalds.

I agree. What I had (incorrectly) drawn from your statement was graduating implied they were pursuing a field--not the average person. I just saw that the US has 44% working low-wage jobs.