minimum wage should exist

as to the quote about a man's worth. there are several ways to measure a man's worth. you posit that the man should be worth what the market will pay. we effectively have an infinite labor pools, espeically if we include other countries etc. that means a man is worth beans... not because of what he earns for his boss, but for what the boss is able to pay. this allows people to make millions or tens of thousands at the expense of exploiting an infinite labor pool, by paying beans. we know that they pay beans, because everytime there's a wage set, that's what employers pay. such as 3.50 in the 80s. we both agree that the wage causes some unemployment. but that's simply the price we have to accept to ensure a broader range of people are paid decently. we can allow for two unemployed people if that means twenty are paid decent, for example. most people can eventually find minimum wage jobs... it might be a bit harder, but as far as i've ever seen, it can be done... especially in times that are not as bad as this current recession. that means the two unemployed will eventually be among the employed. anyone who can't ever find a job even in good economic times, probably is not worth hiring much at all, and even if they are worth two dollars an hour... it's the price we must pay to allow those twenty people to have a decent job and worth their way up the ladder. Con is trying to make the norm where everyone makes 2 dollars an hour, and everyone closer to the wage will make that much too.. instead of finally making 9 at mcdonalds you'll finally make 4. the same people will be working their way up the ladder to the same positions, but they will simply find themselves making less and next to impossibly able to get by while getting there. the norm works.... minimum wage ensures a standard, and works on a mass scale. "Some more economists, David Neumark and Olena Nizalova, found ironically that young workers in states with a lower minimum wage earned more money on average than workers in states with high minimum wages. Minimum wages aren't terribly helpful." a reasonable explanation for this is that those states don't have a minimum don't need it, cause their market is able to afford more without requiring more. also, i'm not arguing how much the wages should be, just that we should find a magic spot... too high would of course be bad, probably for everyone. even in those states that don't have them as high, the wage exists everywhere as that's required by federal law. the minimum wage is not well known for hurting the poor.... it's well known for helping the poor. leave it to someone to throw out common sense, ie that we require certain standards in employment, and contort themselves to insist that the common sense standards are actually bad. "Until the 1990s, economists generally agreed that raising the minimum wage reduced employment. This consensus was weakened when some well-publicized empirical studies showed the opposite, although others confirmed the original view. Today's consensus, if one exists, is that increasing the minimum wage has, at worst, minor negative effects" "A Blunt Instrument; The Minimum Wage," The Economist, October 28, 2006. "In 2006, the International Labour Organization (ILO)[6] argued that the minimum wage could not be directly linked to unemployment in countries that have suffered job losses. In April 2010, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)[47] released a report arguing that countries could alleviate teen unemployment by "lowering the cost of employing low-skilled youth" through a sub-minimum training wage. A study of U.S. states showed that businesses' annual and average payrolls grow faster and employment grew at a faster rate in states with a minimum wage.[48] The study showed a correlation, but did not claim to prove causation. Although strongly opposed by both the business community and the Conservative Party when introduced in 1999, the minimum wage introduced in the UK is no longer controversial and the Conservatives reversed their opposition in 2000.[49] A review of its effects found no discernible impact on employment levels.[50]"