Minimum Wage

"argument for why minimum wage is good" I did. I said that it protects the economy by holding up demand. But my overall argument for what makes minimum wage good is that it aligns economic outcomes with social values. People believe that hard work should be rewarded, Which is fine. The problem is that markets don't. When people feel that the economic system offends their values, People make demands on the markets, Which is how we got minimum wage in the first place. "don't know why you thought i was arguing about validity. Of laws. . " The phrase "forces at gunpoint" is an attack on the rule of law. There's nothing unique to the mode of law enforcement applied to minimum wage. It's enforced the same as any other law. What's bad for the goose is bad for the gander. "forced by starvation. . . Not relevant" The idea that enforcing laws is inherently violent ("at gunpoint") comes from libertarianism. Libertarians are people who pretend to believe that the only source of coercion in this world is from government. What I'm saying is that this is not true. Most people don't choose to work, They do it to survive. Therefore what they earn from their work cannot be purely the choice of their employers, Because the balance of power is out of wack. You need a job to eat, But no employer has to give it to you. Its the job of government to offset that imbalance at least somewhat. "I have a point no matter who owns a business" If you argued that abolishing minimum wage would be good for business owners, I would agree with you. But it would be bad for the economy overall, Because business owners are only part of the economy, And they are a minority in society. There are also management, Workers, And customers. So what's good for business owners is not necessarily good overall. "They don't care what their prices are as long as they are maximizing their profits. " Profit = Revenue minus expenses. If minimum wage is abolished, That would decrease expenses. But then you'd need a good reason to bring that number back up. Yes more expansion would occur, But the same countervailing impulse to limit hiring exists just the same. My next argument is also relevant here. "companies will hire more people" This is your worst point. The less jobs pay, The less value more jobs have. And the opposite is also true. The more jobs pay, The more workers can support their spouses and kids, So fewer jobs would be necessary. Decades ago, Many American families had one income-earner. "growth and innovation" . . . And entrepreneurship, Oh my! These are the corporate buzzwords of today. Let's face it: if your pay is cut in half, And mine doubles, Then "economic growth" has occurred between the two of us. This is exactly what's happening in America as the base of the economy narrows to fewer key players. People who aren't paid enough no longer constitute demand and factor out of the economy. They are functionaries of the system but not players. One function of minimum wage laws is to keep the economic base from shrinking. Likewise, Innovation may or may not mean better overall outcomes. Innovation is very visibly employed to reduce the number of jobs, Such as Kodak being replaced by Instagram, Or the emergence of AI. Whether or not innovation is a good thing overall is a very open question. "People won't work for them" This is only true insofar as workers have options. Abolishing minimum wage makes working people's options worse. Places and times without minimum wages aren't flush with better paid workers. "ridiculous to say that workers have been paid less" You have to adjust for inflation. Minimum wage has gone down over the last 50 years when adjusted for inflation. "Its going to raise the rent" This is happening anyway. The point of raising minimum wage is to keep up with rent. Plus there's something cartoonish about this argument. I'm sure you know that landlords cannot peg their rates directly to their tenants income. Its not like taxes. Better-paid people have more options and landowners will attract as much of that pay to themselves as they can, Driving up quality. ". . . Affordable housing" Since you love business owners so much, More affordable housing would be great for you. Affordable housing frees employers from the burden of keeping their workers alive and places the costs directly on the tax-payer. Thus affordable housing and food assistance are alternatives to living wages. Minimum wage puts the cost of sustaining a workforce back on the employer -- what a novel concept. It aligns the market cost of labor (what employers will pay) with the actual cost of labor. And now for your big question about $100 minimum wage: First, Its a stupid question. If a scoop of ice-cream is good after dinner, Why don't we have 100 scoops? That's not good, Therefore a scoop of ice-cream can't be good. This seems to be your logic. But to answer the question anyway, I'd say that the purpose of government interference in the market is to align economic outcomes with social values. A $100 minimum wage violates social values and therefore defeats the purpose. There's no philosophy in the world that says everyone should be rich. No political party in the US promotes this either. So there's no basis for it. On the other hand, The American Dream and work ethic form the basis for minimum wage laws.