[thegrimmest]

Isn't the fact of rapidly climbing, market-driven compensation for typically-minimum-wage jobs such as food service, hospitality and labour sufficient to dispense with minimum wages all together? Yes perhaps the market takes X years to adjust, but it does in fact adjust. Why not just wait the years and save all the bureaucracy.

> they can just hire cheap workers and fire them as needed

But doesn't increasing the minimum wage just price these people who were formerly being hired/fired completely out of the labour market?

[Robotbeat]

No, because usually we aren’t in such an extremely tight labor market driven by high federal spending.

If you want to argue for indefinite high federal spending to guarantee a tight labor market for decades, then sure, a higher minimum wage might not be necessary. Is that what you’re arguing?

Because if a tight labor market is transitory (and minimum wage keeps dropping due to inflation), then businesses won’t be given a firm enough pricing signal to make productivity investments.

[thegrimmest]

I'm not arguing for indefinitely high federal spending, but I would make the case that spending money on infrastructure is a much better use of money compared to pretty much anything else the federal government can do with it.

I'm arguing that labour shouldn't be specially exempt from markets fluctuating between tight and loose. I'm also arguing that raising the minimum wage hurts the very poorest of us the most, by making them unable to complete in the only way they can: lifestyle compromise. Indeed, they end up worse off when they are priced out of the labour market and forced into joblessness.

[Robotbeat]

The problem is that in times without a super high labor market, employers are able to maintain a monopsony on labor and therefore suppress wages. This has caused massively increased inequality and wage stagnation. That’s why the minimum wage is good. But using federal spending to maintain a tight labor market can accomplish the same goal.

[thegrimmest]

> employers are able to maintain a monopsony

This doesn't make sense. Anyone who purchases labour is an employer. "Employers" are not a single entity and therefore cannot maintain a monopsony.

It seems more likely that wages lower or stagnate when the supply of labour exceeds the demand. Minimum wages actually hurt this process by banning the demand for labour below a given, fixed wage.

> massively increased inequality and wage stagnation

Increased as compared to when? Before minimum wages there were all sorts of service and labour positions in the economy that simply don't exist now. It used to be that unskilled labour was available for much lower cost. Think gas stations being able to afford multiple attendants, middle class families being able to afford domestic service. These positions simply aren't tenable at "minimum wage".

Was this a more unequal world? You can certainly make the case for that. Was it objectively worse than the world today, where it is tenable not to participate meaningfully in the economy and still be supported by society? I'm not so sure.