The Minimum Wage

== LETS REVIEW THINGS, SHALL WE? == 1. Do minimum wage laws cause unemployment? Based on theory, they should. In reality, I have demonstrated this to, at least, not be the case a large portion of the time. This is mainly because there are other policies in effect which reverse any unemployment that would be caused. So if we are to imagine that the work-place is a closed system where nothing else may intervene, then yes, it is likely that a minimum wage would raise unemployment. But there are many other variables involved that make this no longer an issue. Furthermore, according to a paper by Fuller and Geide-Stevenson, only 45.6% of American economists in the year 2000 agree that a minimum wage increases unemployment among unskilled and young workers. [1,2] 2. Does my opponent have any other arguments besides those regarding unemployment? No. .. it appears he does not. Read the debate. 3. Do I have any other arguments besides those regarding unemployment? Absolutely. Besides my arguments against unemployment I have also argued that workers need to be payed more than the price of commute; I have argued that it encourages people to get off welfare; I have showed how any supposed harm made to business by paying higher wages is payed back by having more being bought from them; I have argued that it reduces the troublesome income gap; I have shown that there are other theories for what a "just" wage is, which my opponent unfortunately never addressed. Of all the arguments which my opponent did address he continued to yell "Unemployment, unemployment, unemployment! " 4. Theory aside, what empirical evidence does my opponent put forward for his case? This: . http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com... This graph was presented in an effort of defending the case that the minimum wage causes unemployment. Unfortunately, such statistics do not prove causation, only correlation. So his point is moot. My opponent then, in a strange twist, tried to accuse me of committing this same fallacy with my own statistics. However, unlike my opponent, the case my statistics were made for was not that of proving causation. Rather, I was showing that, even if the minimum wage does initially promote hiring less workers, it is not universal--that in some cases, even, the exact opposite of what one expects is seen. Thus I have committed no such fallacy, unlike my opponent. Furthermore--GET THIS--the point made by his graph is not even entirely accurate. Why? Because it forgets to adjust for inflation. Inflation decreases the value of the dollar and thus, in effect, lowers the real worth of the minimum wage. In this graph (light-blue) you can see that the real minimum wage has actually been going down: . http://upload.wikimedia.org... It has done this at the same time that unemployment has been going up, fancy that. 5. What if it really does result in unemployment? My opponent was so desperate trying to prove that the minimum wage causes unemployment that he forgot to make any case for why that proves it to be unnecessary. Employment is not the only factor in an economy. Many believe that raising the wage floor is a great enough benefit to the working class to over-rule the sacrifice of higher unemployment. I'm not saying that's true but I am saying that the Instigator did not disprove or even address this, and it is he who has the burden of proof. It's not something I should have been the one to bring up. == SOURCES == 1. Fuller, Dan and Doris Geide-Stevenson (2003): Consensus Among Economists: Revisited, in: Journal of Economic Review, Vol. 34, No. 4, Seite 369-387 2. . http://www.reference.com...