SHOULD THE BE A MINIMUM WAGE

I look forward to a good debate. I will respect your request to limit our discussion to the United States, although my arguments will apply in any case given; however, one good turn deserves another, so I ask that my opponent, liberty, limit his arguments to reality. Affirmed: There should be a minimum wage. "[F]irst of all minimum wage cost[s] many jobs to the economy and workers of it especially the lower qualified ones. " -Minimum wage exists in its common form as a way of protection for workers - especially the least qualified. It is in place as a shield from exploitation by employers. "Also, most people who work for minimum wage are student and workers in training e. t. c and do it just to tell potential interviewers that they indeed have work experience, so evidently most of them intend to achieve more. .. " -Certainly, many minimum-wagers are students or other young people, but certainly many are not. Without a given amount of innate intelligence, education, opportunity, and subsequently specialized skills - the state that many are in - minimum wage, with possible raises through the years, is the only kind of payment from legal work that they can expect throughout their lives. You also miss one of the primary, if not THE PRIME, reasons for any wage-labour in the first place: making money in order to survive, and beyond survival it is merely as matter of buying crap that you really don't need, which is of course produced by the employer of the wage-earner. From personal experience, I can say that I did not work as a host at Red Lobster when I was 16 (this was when they had those horrible fish shirts) to put it on my future resume - I did it for money. I personally intended to achieve more, as you say, but this isn't the case for myriad persons. ". .. the more the minimum wage rises the fewer of these people can be afforded to be hired by employers. " -False. Inflation outpaces the rise in minimum wage by football fields at a time. By the time minimum wage catches up, Employer X has made more than enough profit to offset this. I am not familiar with any cases of a minimum-wage labourer being either fired or not hired because the current rate of minimum wage was raised. Until recently, the minimum wage was set at $5.25 an hour. At 40 hours a week, this comes to $840.00 a month before taxes. So if a person were single, they are still below the poverty line even though they work full-time. I infer that most employers, according to you, would start labourers below this mark, as it is the cost that is the issue of primacy here. Certainly, they could hire more workers. .. that work for less than it takes to live, the purpose of working. Unemployment would be at an all-time low, but poverty would be at an all-time high. Interesting. .. "Additionally getting rid of minimum wage will eventually lower prices of every day products because of the lower cost for in training workers, so both the managers, the lower qualified worker (who otherwise would be unemployed) and the [consumer] gain. " -I doubt it. In any case, unfortunately, by the time that lower prices "eventually" came into sight, the gap between rich and poor would be a true chasm, and half of the new workers that were hired would be either homeless because they can't afford even the cheapest of rent or dead from starvation because they can't afford food. Civil strife would erupt, etc. 1. Why there should be a minimum wage: We tyrants, tycoons, captains of industry, CEO's, presidents, moguls, barons, dukes, princes, and other excellent and successful people should give the little people SOMETHING - at least enough so that we won't go to the guillotine. Understand that we do not OWE them anything, but it is in our own self-interest to give them enough bread and pocket change to distract them from their unimportant and, for the most part, useless (their only true use is to generate profit for us) lives. 2. Why there MUST be a minimum wage: Even if the minimum wage were set at $0.005 (two zeros on purpose), it MUST exist. Otherwise, employers could pay workers absolutely nothing, and they would be slaves or serfs. Back to you, liberty Britt