The minimum wage is a good law

One point that I feel I must re state for the sake of clarity is that the minimum wage is a barrier to entry for unskilled workers. Lets take the example of Sean. Sean is 15, and works at a local family owned grocery store. His main job is sweeping and stacking shelves. He works for the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, and his employer calculates that his productivity is roughly $8.00 an hour. Therefore, when his employer pays him, he makes a 75 cent profit for every hour Sean works there. Now lets say the minimum wage was raised to $15.00 an hour. Since this is a new cost on the business, the employer has to make a decision on whether or not it is worth it for him to keep certain employees. Because Sean has a productivity of about 8 dollars an hour, and the minimum wage is now 15 dollars an hour, rather than making a 75 cent profit, the employer will now lose money. Most employers will not keep an employee if it is not worth it to them, unless it's out of charity. One or more of a few things is likely to follow. Sean will be fired, or his hours cut. Sean's friend Dylan also wanted a job at the Grocery store as well, but his odd's of being hired have been decreased. The employer may also choose to compensate for the extra cost by raising the price of the goods he is selling. And again, i'd like to point out that this favors big business because companys like Dominion ( I don't know if you have this in the united states, it's a large chain of grocery stores.) will have an easier time dealing with these new costs than the small store that Sean works with. But my question, or rather Reductio ad Absurdum is why stop at 9-15 dollars an hour? Why not make it 100 dollars an hour? Wouldn't that mean an enormous wage increase? No, because at some point people understand that the cost of hiring will either be too much for certain businesses to bear and they'll go broke, or it just wont be worth it for some companies to hire people anymore. Now it's important to understand that the point at which this would happen is different for every line of work. Raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00 won't affect Doctor's, or bankers, or Chemical engineers because they already make well above minimum wage. But this WILL affect low-skilled workers, making it that much harder for them to find jobs. Now some people say that it can be economically beneficial to raise wages, and that is absolutely true, no question. But if the employer sees it in his best interest to raise wages, then he will do it. The minimum wage is unnecessary for this. The same goes for giving jobs out of charity. David points out that in a bad economy, the minimum wage is more necessary than ever. But surely, when looking at a struggling economy, the last thing on your mind should be artificially raising the cost of hiring somebody. And I find the idea that the employer is enslaving the employee in the situation described ridiculous. David said it himself, if the choice is starve to death or take the low paying job, it really isn't much of a choice at all. Slavery implies that the worker cannot leave. The employer is not pointing a gun at the employee, forcing him to work for him. He is offering the individual an opportunity: an opportunity to not starve on the streets, and make a better life for himself in the long run. In an economy that bad, this person should be happy to have a job at all. There is no coercion involved. It largely comes back to the whole principle that trade is win win. If either party in this situation doesn't feel that he or she will benefit from this contract, then the contract will not take place. "A minimum wage would protect Samuel from being forced to work for so little." Again, the only force involved is when the government enforces the minimum wage law. If Samuel feels that it is not in his best interest to take a job with a particular company that pays 7 dollars per hour then he will not take the job. But if he DOES take the job, one can assume that he thought it WAS in his best interest to take the job. Now please note that this is not a personal attack, but the notion that we have to "protect" samuel I find incredibly condescending, and monumentally patronizing and paternalistic Liberal elitism, unfortunately very prominent today. You are treating samuel like a CHILD. I probably should not have included this as it's not a real argument, but it's something that just really irks me. But the bottom line is, it's no business of mine, or your's, or the government's what the voluntary contract is between consenting adults. Otherwise, we are no better than the social conservatives that me and David both decry. http://reason.com... http://reason.com... http://www.cato.org...