On the authoritative minimum wage.

My opponent claims that the minimum wage is not the only source of outsourcing. While this is true, it IS a cause of outsourcing as it makes outsourcing more practical. My opponent claims that she had refuted my R1 case, when in fact she had not. Her only mention of it in R1 is: "My opponent has laid out a very nice argument for you obviously taken straight from an Economics class, as my opponent is correct in stating that the minimum wage, on paper, is economically unsound. However, many times other factors in a particular culture or society have implications that affect the way a system is supposed to work. " My opponent did not contend this, she merely listed a few cases in which she felt a minimum wage actually helped (and it turned out they did not). She never truly attacked my case. ON UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS: Undocumented workers DO earn less than the minimum wage currently. My opponent's arguments are based on false premises. . http://www.workplacefairness.org... CONTENTIONS: 1a) My opponent claims that supply and demand play an important part in price. While this is true, labour is truly a cost component. This is undeniable. As the costs of labour increase to make a product, the price of that product increases as well. Supply and demand is effectively irrelevant to this fact. My opponent then says that "if customers stop buying goods and services, it is only another facot that leads to price inflation". This is false. If this happens, demand falls and prices go down. Then, my opponent claims that minimum wage helps "impoverished citizens" get by. However, if the price of everything increases proportionally to what their wages increased, are they any better? Finally, my opponent's economic nonsense shines through. She claims that natural price values can lead to inflation simply by being above a government minimum wage (my gosh. .. who taught her economics? ). In my opponent's example, there are a few fallacies. First, the employer would not pay the full value of the employee's labour. Wage labour is always paid less than the true value of labour. Second, in my explanation of how market-wide price inflation occurs due to minimum wage, I stated that a market-wide ARTIFICIAL INCREASE in labour costs would lead to a proportional increase in price. My opponent's example does not even fit "[my] logic". 1b) My opponent restates my case and claims it supports her. However, cheap labour and unemployment is merely a temporary effect (and, in fact, cause) of the business cycle. My opponent forces me to repeat myself: "Cheap labour is always temporary. As labour is cheaper, it is easier to effectively start a new business. This should lead to an increase in demand of labour, resulting in the increase in value of labour [2]. Then, wages rise again. " My opponent contends the above argument by stating that business WILL expand, but stop before demand is higher than supply. However, as long as supply is greater than demand, labour costs will decrease and it will be more personally desirable to employ rather than to be employed. Cheap labour is merely a part of the business cycle and having a minimum wage would simply eliminate more jobs during this period. 2) My opponent suggests that I believe that employees would not bid their wages down. Acutally, I did the opposite. I argued that they would bid their wages down and then employment would become more practical so that the demand for workers would increase. Again, as I said, this cycle is natural. My opponent simply agrees with me. 3a) See first round. I hate repeating myself. 3b) My opponent claims that low demand can increase price to maintain profits. However, such a practice would result in even fewer customers than before. Should my opponent's claim be true, the capitalist system would have fallen apart in the 1600s. My opponent then claims that without a minimum wage, businesses could drop wages of workers below what would otherwise be a minimum wage. However, when we apply a minimum wage, instead of dropping wages, workers are merely laid off. This causes businesses to contract in production, which has a more permanent effect than worker's wages temporarily dropping. "That leaves the market entirely responsible for wage compensation which is unfair. " Even Karl Marx knew that wages would never drop below the natural minimum wage, which was the price of living. Market wages are the MOST FAIR wages possible. They are always above the price of living and below the price of produce. Should government make this wage higher than price of produce, then there would be no incentive to employ stock and stagnation would occur. Supply and Demand allows for wages to increase and decrease within these parameters. Because the people involved are the ones making decisions, their decisions will always be better and more thought out than any third party. 3C) As my opponent's faulty logic collapses for 3B, it collapses here too. 4) My opponent makes another silly argument here. She claims that capital may be invested in product rather than expansion. Such an option would be EVEN BETTER! Investment in innovation creates high paying jobs (IE, scientists). 5A) Of course higher wages would help the economy. And, of course, the minimum wage would either cut jobs or cause price inflation to the point where the real value of wages are no higher than before. See R1, Economic Logic. "I don't know what Con wants here -- I mentioned a direct quote AND linked a verifiable source. " . http://www.fiscalpolicy.org... Found it, but without your help (this was not what you had sourced). Now, I can refute: My opponent sourced the New York Branch of the Fiscal Policy Institute, which has always been associated with the left wing. 5B) The only praise of Bernstein here (. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com...) is from Joe Biden. The rest is essentially claiming that he is a loyal and partisan mouth for the left. Further, 90% of economists disagree with him, (see below). SOURCES and 5C: My opponent's claim that there are many (meaning more than one) economists that believe that raising the minimum wage would have only a little effect on unemployment. There are many dissenters, in fact, VERY MANY: "According to a 1978 article in the American Economic Review, 90 percent of the economists surveyed agreed that the minimum wage increases unemployment among low-skilled workers" . http://en.wikipedia.org... This may be Wikipedia, but it sources the American Economic Review, which is a credible source. The last thing my opponent does is claim that she has no idea what my "unrefuted truth" is. It is the still unrefuted economic logic seen in R1. So, it remains: -If a worker's wage increases, but the cost of everything he has to pay for increases proportionally, is he any better off? -If a worker's employment produces $4 of value per hour and he is paid $3.88, should he be unemployed? --If the government tries to artificially raise his wage above $4, he will lose his job. --If a company only employs such workers and they can no longer afford to employ these workers in this trade, their entire company collapses. --Other companies that relied on that company for themselves also collapse. 1. Under no case does a minimum wage help any party involved. 2. Under no case should my opponent's sources be taken as credible. 3. 90% of economists agree that the minimum wage decreases jobs. 4. I have shown why.