[quantumBerry]

No the argument is that if you outlaw all jobs under $15, then you've just outlawed employment for anyone who can offer less than $15/hr in value, and relegated that person to unemployment and cut their ability to climb the wage ladder.

[ravitation]

I am, almost word for word, citing the Cato Institute.

> First of all, one consequence of federal minimum wage hikes can be job or hours loss for low‐ wage workers, as we’ve seen, which can create poverty. Second, a lot of people who earn the federal minimum wage or just above it are not poor, or will not be poor in the longer term (think of working students, or second‐ earners in relatively affluent households working part‐ time).

https://www.cato.org/commentary/case-against-15-federal-mini...

EDIT: Before you reply with what I know you will, the reason the first and second argument above are lumped together are because the are both essentially myths (for example, see the original article), and the Cato Institute cites no actual data that either are, generally speaking, true.

[quantumBerry]

>one consequence of federal minimum wage hikes can be job or hours loss for low‐ wage workers, as we’ve seen, which can create poverty.

If the minimum wage has no effect on unemployment, then why stop at $15? Make minimum wage set at 20 pounds of gold per hour. Lets maximize our wealth.

[ravitation]

HN is not a place for this kind of talking past each other... There is a reason they are in the same paragraph.

EDIT: No one said it had no impact of employment (just as no one said there were no "student workers").

There is nuance to the cost/benefit of given minimum wages...

[quantumBerry]

Glad to know you think anyone who can offer under $15/hr in value just a "nuance" worthy of unemployment.

[ravitation]

1) I feel like you know that is an oversimplification, and therefore you are not arguing in good faith... Something I would really like to not do here.

2) Even if we assume that a $15 minimum wage would eliminate a notable number of jobs, elimination of jobs is not equivalent to unemployment. We, as a society, are okay with, going by your own argument, eliminating all the $5/hour jobs (with state minimum wages being $7.25+) because it does not lead to significantly less overall employment. Do you have evidence this would not also be true with a $15 minimum wage?

[quantumBerry]

>1) I feel like you know that is an oversimplification,

No it really is this simple. Jobs that have negative economic value (wages do not cover value) are not maintainable in a free market for anything more than a short period of time. I'm sure some exist but jobs with negative economic value are not in any way plentiful compared to ones with positive or break even value. If I have a job that gives me $14/hr in value it does not make sense for me to offer it under a $15/hr minimum wage.

The ones actually acting in "bad faith" are those who fail to disclose to the ofter marginalized people working low wage jobs that their policy goals are to eliminate the only jobs available to these marginalized people, forcing them to operate on the black market or let their skills and work history decay in unemployment. The farther you slide the minimum wage bar right from zero, the more people you eliminate from the labor market: the nuance being if it is low enough it only destroys the earning power of the most marginalized that some of us are happy to forget about.

> We, as a society, are okay with, going by your own argument, eliminating all the $5/hour jobs (with state minimum wages being $7.25+) because it does not lead to significantly less overall employment

Well it does lead to significantly less employment for anyone who cannot provide minimum wage in value. But what happens is a mixture of elimination of those jobs and the pushing of those jobs to the black market, where those persons (including many illegal immigrants) just have to work in the shadows without any unemployment insurance or labor protections and have to live in constant fear the IRS will find out and also get them for unreported income. So they're definitely a lot worse off.

>elimination of jobs is not equivalent to unemployment

It is if there is no alternative job because you can't offer enough in value to make the minimum wage cutoff.

>Do you have evidence this would not also be true with a $15 minimum wage?

Do I have evidence that employers will have to eliminate jobs if the position doesn't create enough value to cover the wage? One example is when QFC had to close a couple Seattle stores due to mandated 'hazard pay' [1]. Simple logic tells you the jobs generating under $15/hr in value will either become black market or be gone, if it's illegal.

If you're in retail and can't find anyone to pay $15/hr, and think you are worth that, why not try it on the open market? You can come to my border city, where mexicans engage in retail without any boss whatsoever selling retail snacks and elotes. If you can really produce over $15/hr in value then go ahead and do it for yourself. I'm sure many of these street retail street vendors make more than that, and at least in my city the police don't care at all if you have a license or not.

[1] https://www.supermarketnews.com/issues-trends/kroger-s-qfc-c...

[Lammy]

Wouldn't you rather have a token (sorry, "Note") that's worth 1.0 of itself that we can make arbitrarily more of and give out to our corporate friends any time we want?

[quantumBerry]

maybe enough "Notes" to pay my stay out of jail money, and the rest in hard currency :)

[danaris]

If eating a sandwich is good, when why stop at one? Eat fifty sandwiches for every meal! A hundred!

...Or maybe there are things that can be good to increase some, but not good to increase arbitrarily.

[NineStarPoint]

This is a separate and more reasonable argument, but doesn’t directly hold much water at the moment. There aren’t many jobs that aren’t worth mechanizing at $15 an hour but are at the current minimum wage. And people aren’t hiring more people than strictly necessary to run their business regardless, so they can’t just drop lower-performing employees due to a wage increase.

The related concern that is real is that businesses that are solvent at current minimum wage might not be if they had to pay their employees 15 dollars an hour. The question is if we think it is more valuable that people get paid a more liveable wage for their effort, or if we value the jobs/services that businesses that pay under 15 dollars provide more than that. Second question is if the destruction of employers who rely on low wages to exist would also open up room for less exploitive employers to take their space in the business sector. A third question countering that is if lowered profits to business has a stifling effect on money-funded innovation. And then there are questions beyond that, that ultimately sum up to “Economics is complicated, and just looking at first order supply and demand effects never tells the whole story.”

[Lammy]

Won't somebody please think of the Job Creators? https://www.epi.org/blog/wages-for-the-top-1-skyrocketed-160...