A mandated minimum wage does more damage than good.

For this round I will primarily address my opponent's rebuttal. I likewise believe that it will not be necessary to bring up further arguments. C1: My opponent seems to have misunderstood the meaning of the word 'wages'. In Chapter 8 of "Wealth of Nations" Adam Smith clearly defines wages as compensation that is paid in exchange for labor (1). The profits of a business would not qualify as wages. What my opponent perhaps means to say is that an entrepreneur's income comes from business profits. This is true, but it does not mean the entrepreneur should use any means at his disposal to increase his income without regard for the well-being of others. C2: Just because a law prevents an businessman from making a certain amount of money does not mean it is necessarily harmful. Whether he goes broke or simply cuts back is irrelevant to the point. In business, some people will make money and some people will lose money. Just because you can't make money while playing by the rules doesn't mean the rules are broken. Otherwise there would be a perfectly good reason to legalize the sale of dangerous drugs, military grade weapons, and all manner of dangerous products that might help someone make money. Of course this is not what my opponent is arguing, but I use this extreme example to make the point that just because laws will hurt some people economically does not mean they all-around harmful. C3: My statement "Regardless of what the minimum wage is..." was meant to point to the fact that this debate does not specific what the minimum wage would be and it is being discussed only as an abstraction. My opponent cannot argue that my logic fails when the minimum wage is $50 per hour any more than I can argue that my opponent's logic fails when the minimum wage is $0.01 per hour. C4: I have overlooked nothing here. I never accused profit of being innately unjustifiable, I said that using business tactics which were harmful to the greater good in order to make a profit was unjustifiable. Here I instead offered an example of how the need for businesses to make profit can be applied positively. The idea that businesses put a greater emphasis on efficiency than government is not a new one. Since the early 1900's businesses have been promoting "Speed-Up" policies and meticulously working the maximize production and minimize costs (2). This is hardly dependent on "robotics and technology"; it is an innate trait of private enterprise. In addition, it is no so simple just replace unskilled laborers with skilled laborers. If I'm the manager of a Burger King and I need someone to run a cash register, I'm not going to start looking for someone with an B.A. in marketing just because the high school kids I'm hiring aren't worth the minimum wage. In some cases businesses may opt to hire more skilled workers, but if the job does not benefit from skilled labor than there is no reason to do this. C5: I express no doubt that the Berkeley study can be countered by other studies. If it was not, this would not be a debate topic. However, I expect that a conclusion made at one of the most respected universities in the countries indicates that my viewpoint is valid. I find it unnecessary to spew statistics back and forth about this particular point because it will without a doubt prove inconclusive. C6: My opponent seems to interpret the minimum wage was restricting a person's right to work for the wage they wish. I view it as restricting a business's right to pay a person what they wish. If there are dishes that need to be washed, a business cannot leave them simply because they would prefer to pay someone $3.00 an hour to wash them and the minimum wage is over that. Likewise, they would not benefit from hiring someone with more experience or a degree because it would not get the lob done any more effectively. Thus the business would have to hire the person for more than $3.00 an hour, benefiting him by giving him more income. C7: My opponent has taken my statement out of context. I "failed to see how it was a negative effect" to give consumers more money. If consumers have more money and spend more money, I view that as an increase in the economy. If costs increase because there is more money in the hands of consumers, than this will cause businesses to make more money but it will not hurt consumers since the only reason prices increased in the first place is because the consumers were better off. And if some cost is transferred to consumers to make up for the costs of paying the minimum wage, it is more effective than government welfare due to the increased efficiency of private enterprise. C8: If fully 80% of those earning the minimum wage are above the poverty line, than fully 20% of those earning the minimum wage are below the poverty line. Many of those from a household over the poverty line are young adults whose parents make a lot more money than them. Would many middle class kids be willing to work for $3.00 an hour if there was no minimum wage? I doubt it very much. In general, if your household is already making enough money than it might be pointless to get a job working for almost nothing. This seems to like it would lead to a decrease in employment. The remaining 20%, of course, would be in deep trouble. Sources have also shown that the minimum wage does benefit families who struggle to stay above the poverty line (3). I'm going to address my opponent's summary minimally because most of it is about basic economic theory that I agree with and simply provides context to the debate. The most relevant point is the one made about Human Energy. My opponent seems to believe that if a person's labor is not worth a certain amount, a business will not pay that amount to hire him. However, faced with the choice of not getting the labor or paying the extra costs, businesses will often pay the extra costs. This insures that people will not get stuck working pathetically low paying jobs. That is also the cost of operating in a wealthy country: people are not expected to work for less than a certain amount, which is indeed arbitrary, because working for a worthless amount in a place where everything is (comparatively) expensive would be pointless. Sources: (1) Wealth of Nations (Chapter 8) - Adam Smith (2) Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists 1861-1901 - Mathew Josephson (3) http://www.cbpp.org...