[OzyM]

We've tried the no-minimum-wage experiment before.[0] A lack of minimum wage tends to lead to extremely exploitative wages for workers without skills in high demand.

If you agree with the statement "anyone who works full time should be able to afford necessities like safe housing and adequate food," a minimum wage is required.

If you disagree with that statement, I guess you could argue for no minimum wage, but your moral system will be different enough from most people to make you the minority position.

[0] https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/flsa1938

[hairofadog]

> your moral system will be different enough from most people to make you the minority position.

I hope you’re right about this, but in my experience many folks in the US harbor a puritanical sense of justice in which people have what they have because they deserve it (i.e. poor people are poor because they deserve to be, and wealthy people are wealthy because they deserve to be). To be clear, I vehemently disagree with this sentiment but I have encountered it enough to wonder whether it’s the majority opinion.

[OzyM]

For the sake of my own sanity, if nothing else, I am going to choose to believe that this isn't the majority opinion. I don't think Objectivism is quite that popular.

[thehappypm]

"anyone who works full time should be able to afford necessities like safe housing and adequate food" sounds great.

A minimum wage is a lot like having your health care tied to your employer. With employer-sponsored health care, employers pay the lion's share of the cost, and workers are left out to dry if they leave their jobs.

Minimum wage is the same concept except for at a grander scale. Your employer provides the lion's share of the resources for your food, housing, transportation, etc.

With health care the liberal agenda is focusing on shifting it away from the employer, so you're not stuck in the rat trap of needing a job to go to the doctor.

Maybe we need a similar thing for other basics.

[OzyM]

As in UBI? That's the only experiment I know of (or at least, politically feasible experiment) trying to decouple physical necessities and employment.

I guess you bring up an interesting point here, that UBI would make minimum wage obsolete.

It seems like you're arguing for changing "anyone who works full time should be able to afford necessities like safe housing and adequate food" to just "anyone should be able to afford necessities like safe housing and adequate food." I'm not opposed on principle, but I think this is a harder goal to hit in practice.

[thehappypm]

Right now, we demand companies that use minimum wage labor to over-pay their workers, as a form of corporate-sponsored welfare. Wouldn't it make more sense for Walmart to pay employees market rate, and the tax base as a whole ensure that nobody goes hungry?

[OzyM]

I think this is such a massive and fundamental restructuring of the US's historical way of doing things (and the popular conception of "how it should be done") that pushing for incremental change like livable minimum wage is probably more effective in the short-run.

In the long run, if UBI continues proving its success in real-life trials and we're able to get a larger share of the population on board, I'd vote in favor of trying it.