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If you know someone who's labor is worth less than minimum wage to employers, consistently over a period of years, then that satisfies what the author was sayin
by justin_vanw 17y ago
If you know someone who's labor is worth less than minimum wage to employers, consistently over a period of years, then that satisfies what the author was saying, that they can't find work because there is a difference between their work value and the minimum they can be paid.
However, temporary economic hard times are more like a mismatch in the number of people available to do work and the positions available. For example, if the coal plant in your county runs out of coal, there are no coal mining jobs, no matter how cheaply you will work. This doesn't prove anything about the minimum wage.
Since you can't find anyone who is unable to find work due to their labor being worth less than the minimum wage (even digging holes or lugging sacks of concrete pays way more than minimum wage) either the minimum wage is so low that it is moot, or other effects dominate any theoretical 'person worth less than minimum wage' effect in practice.
- sokoloff 17y agoIt shouldn't be any surprise that demanding physical labor jobs do in fact naturally pay more than minimum wage. Lots of people have physical limitations that prevent them from lugging sacks of concrete, yet they need and can afford things built with concrete. If minimum wage is totally moot as you argue, what is the downside to abolishing it? It does not require someone to be consisently un or under employed over a number of years to prove that minimum wage laws contribute to unemployment. Being out of work for 6-12 months, but willing and unable by minimum wage law to work for $5 an hour to put food on your family's table, would be a substantial and avoidable hardship. Fortunately, in the real world that doesn't actually happen much, because those enterprising hard-working people can find under-the-table paid-in-cash work.