The minimum wage is a good law

In my view, the minimum law is an immoral, economically unjustified, and overall silly law that should be abolished. Now there are primarily two strong arguments against the minimum wage, the economic argument and the ethical argument, and I will state these now. The ethical argument: The employer-employee contract involves no force by either party. If I offer to pay David 4.00 dollars an hour to mow my lawn and he agrees to it, no force has been initiated. It is simply an activity between two consenting adults, just like marriage between homosexuals, which I know my opponent is in favor of. Now let me pose the question: who's concern is it what the wage agreement is between me and David? What gives the government, or anybody else the right to interfere with a voluntary interaction between consenting adults? A law is essentially a threat of force, namely if you commit/fail to commit action X you will have force committed against you. And this is fine for things like murder, rape, assault, theft etc. But that is BECAUSE these actions involve force against others. When me and David voluntarily agree to a particular wage, no violence is in that equation. The only force involved is that which is committed by the government when it enforces the minimum wage law. The economic argument(s): On the economic side of it, one must first pose the question: Why do entrepreneurs hire people to work for them? Why not hire nobody and do everything yourself? You hire people for the same reason that you use laptops and machinery, namely it saves you time and increases your productivity. You can be more productive if, instead of flipping all the burgers yourself you hire someone to do that for you, in the same way that using a laptop makes you more productive than if you had to us scrolls and carrier pigeons. Now think about it: If the price of something goes up, what do w generally do? We buy less of it. If houses were 3 dollars, people would buy more houses. If the price of yogurt went up to 20 dollars a pack, people would buy less yogurt. Labor is no different. If you raise the minimum wage from 8 dollars an hour to 15 dollars an hour, you are simply raising the price of hiring somebody. Wages are generally determined by productivity. That's why stock brokers make more than people who work at gas stations, and why engineers make more than subway employees. Now lets take the example of someone who is a teenager, and is first entering the workforce. Because of a lack of job experience, this individual is low skilled and has low productivity. Because of this, his wage would probably be around 5-7 dollars an hour hypothetically. But if the minimum wage was raised to 15 dollars an hour, his odds of being hired will drastically decrease. People like to think of the minimum wage as a floor under wages, and if you raise the floor, you raise wages. But what the minimum wage really is is a barrier you have to jump over to get a job, and the higher that barrier is raised, the harder it is to get employed. The law also discriminates against unskilled workers the most, because nobody worries about the minimum wage with regards to Doctors or lawyers. Another good economic argument against the minimum wage is that it actually favors big business. The reason is that if you're Walmart or Target, you would have a much easier time complying with the law than a small diner. If the left really worried about big business taking over, they'd be against the minimum wage. And there is another principle at work, and that is the principle of trade. By it's nature, trade is win-win, because both parties expect to benefit. David has a watch, and I have a pen. I want the watch more than the pen, David wants the pen more than the watch, so we decide to trade. Who loses? Nobody. Now that's not to say that after the fact you wont necessarily regret it, you may later wish that you hadn't partaken in the transaction, but in that moment you expected to benefit. Now the example of trade that I was gave was barter, but the same principle applies when talking about employers and employees. The employee offers his labor in exchange for money. If one of them thought it wasn't in his best interest to engage in the arrangement, the arrangement would not have taken place. So if someone is working at a particular establishment, it is reasonable to presume that both the employer and employee think they get something out of it. In short, I am against the minimum wage because I view it as immoral, and economically detrimental. . http://mises.org...