> Could we make it $50/hour with no employment effects? No, of course not. Nobody is asking for that. > Which means the minimum wage is indirect welfare that

> Could we make it $50/hour with no employment effects? No, of course not. Nobody is asking for that. > Which means the minimum wage is indirect welfare that redistributes money to low-skilled workers by taking it from some combination of business owners, employees, and customers. That's a stretch... If raising the minimum wage caused a dollar-for-dollar increase in the price of everything then yes, but that would only occur in a business who's only major expense is unskilled labor, and even there it wouldn't be equal to the rise in wage. And for a low-income person, housing is a major expense that has a negligible labor component built into it. > If Walmart pays a cashier $10/hour, they're helping him more than you are, but somehow they're the bad guy. If people at Wal-Mart work and don't have enough money, and then they get welfare in order to make ends meet, that's you and I subsidizing Wal-Mart. I would rather that extra money for the worker come out of Wal-Mart's profits than your and my taxes.