Legally Raising The Minimum Wage In The US Is Pointless

I argue that it's pointless to directly, legally increase the minimum wage in the US. We must correctly identify the cause of low wages before aiming to raise them. The first issue I'd like to bring into this discussion is the job losses for manufacturing of material goods. "Made in the USA" products were once quite prevalent. Jobs related to these products were the backbone of our middle class. These jobs were generally quite plentiful and could be performed with minimal education. Today, these jobs are rare. Profiting from something of actual material worth in America is incredibly difficult. The reasons for this effect most jobs in America, but the manufacturing sector has been hit hardest and is the best example. Some reasons for this are as follows: Environmental Regulation: Good or bad, this is expensive. The businesses that profiteer from the legal requirements of this are often more profitable than the businesses they are pro-actively investigating (or regulating, if you want to call it that.) Fines against businesses for breaching these regulations are very hefty and often fail to scale to the size of the business. Legal fees and lobbying for certain exemptions are also things that influence the survivability of fresh competition. Less competition means higher profitability for larger corporations but less job-market competition in related or similar fields. Workers Rights: Human resources, safety inspections, disability taxes, safety meetings and regulation requirements, hazard analysis, swaths of legal documentation and court-preparedness, worker training, supervision, mandatory safety equipment from companies with patents or licensing fees, massive insurance payments and bigger penalties. I could go on for hours. Tax: 90,000 pages of tax code. IRS penalties. Legal costs. Cost of hiring tax experts. Special taxes that apply to your sector. Volatility due to political climate. Resources and waste management: Manufacturers often need to pay extra to use energy, water, attain resources, negotiate trade deals, manage waste on their own, provide their own infrastructure instead of utilizing services provided by the tax pool they pay into, and more. Shareholders, banks, and stock market management: This is crucial and at the heart of most successful business. Don't spend money developing good practice in these places, and you will be out-played by the companies who excel in these fruitless games. Yet another thing that produces zero material use for society. I mean, I could probably go on for days, but I'm not quite an expert. I'd hire an expert if I had the kind of money required to start a business that has any hope of succeeding. Now as I said, much of these things are actually good. Many are horrible, but well-intended. All of these things cost a lot of money on the government level and the corporate level. Tax payers (workers) pay for the government side of things, corporations pay for both. Let's even go ahead and say we keep all of this and don't even analyze the actual cost of all the governmental de-stabilization of the free market (can we still call it free?) What happens when we start freeing up trade with China, or India, or Taiwan. Japan, Africa, Korea. What do you think should happen, when we trade with almost anyway and we can't make their markets adhere to the same standards that ours do? Well, we'll probably get the cheapest goods from the countries who can trade with us as efficiently as possible. I'll tell you, it won't only have to do with the skill and efficiency of their work force. It'll probably have more to do with their total lack of caution for the well-being of their workers, the environment, common-wealth, and anything you can consider good business practice other than what's good for profitability. So after we've done all this to improve our business ethic by governing the market, we go and open up that market to the entire world and let our businesses try to compete. When they fail, we blame it on mysterious "economic crises." Now, after decades of building on all of this, the job market is extremely competitive. Not for the people hiring, but for the people looking to be hired. People are seeking higher education to evade the growing number of jobs for our "working poor" class. They're gambling on their ability to be better than the next person, hoping for better schools, grades, or trades. All of which require more investment at the younger ages, and a great deal more stress. Meanwhile, the jobs available for these educated people are showing no sign of increasing. This means more people with more debt, still finding themselves in the "working poor" class. These people actually generate less tangible earnings than those who give up entirely on education. Wealth that builds over generations, such as that earned by property (or at least not lost to loan penalties) is diminishing as well; and we know that poverty transcends generations. These are big problems. Of course, the root issue is the lack of jobs. The lack of jobs appears to be due to the volatility of our government impacting our free market in-proportionately to the markets we trade with. Trading with foreign countries is a privilege that is generally reserved for the richest corporations. Corporations that have copyrights, patents, and other mechanisms to restrict the free market through law. They even have funds to lobby for politicians, and pay for campaigns necessary to run elections. In the end, none of it seems to serve the common American worker. Our politicians are asking for our vote with the promise of a minimum wage increase; is this the solution? I don't think so. I think a minimum wage increase is a bandaid that will actually harm the worker more over time. We haven't even covered inflation. Inflation of our currency, cost of goods, the every-increasing cost of borrowing on a national level.. Does it make sense to simply force businesses to pay more to employees, when the climate that resulted in this abuse has yet to be reformed? A say minimum wage increases are just political tools. They serve to do nothing to fix the root issues, and may actually harm us more in the long run. Minimum wage increases have only served to buy temporary calm from the people of this nation. It's being touted around as something to save single moms, college students, and struggling low-economic areas. It's none of these things. Minimum wage is just a fresh carrot for a very tired horse. I think it's about time people realized that.