Minimum Wage Should be Abolished

Rebuttals:Increases the standard of living for the poorest and most vulnerable class in society:"Clearly, the min. wage would vastly improve the situation for these parents, in turn dealing with the poverty to some extent. This is the fundamental reason to employ a min. wage: to prevent people from living below the poverty line because businesses will pay people virtually nothing if they are allowed to." If people refuse to work for such a low pay, the business will simply not employ them or look for someone whom will (overseas if need be)."In response to how much this increase would actually help in poverty, I think the 2005 Current Population Survey shows differently (not sure why you quote a 1998 source). This first thing I'd like to point out is that 1.9 million workers were making min. wage or below it. (1) The next is that these workers fall into 2 categories. "The majority of min. wage-earners fall into the first category: 53 percent of those earning $5.15 or less per hour are between the ages of 16 and 24. The remainder are 25 years of age or older." This is important because, as you said, "the fundamental reason to employ a min. wage: to prevent people from living below the poverty line".For young adults (ages 16-24) working on minimum wage, "only 17 percent live at or below the Poverty line, while 65 percent enjoy family incomes over twice the Poverty line". (2) If one does the math, the amount of these young workers living below the poverty line is about 1.9x10^6 x .54 x .17 = 174,420 younger people. For the older workers (ages 25+), "Just 23 percent live in Poverty, while 45 percent have incomes over twice the Poverty line." This totals to about 205,390 older people.In total, the amount of people in poverty (in 2005) one would hypothetically* help from a raise in min. wage would be 379,810 people. Not quite as impressive as the 14.5 million people not working on min. wage that your source says will help. Of course, these 14.5 million people aren't the ones that need the help. It's those min. wage, less than minimum wage, and unemployed workers(in 2005, 8.5 million) (3) that need our help the most.*I say hypothetical because this doesn't include the amount that may potentially get fired from no longer being profitable by the company. I will get into this later.Business exploitation and the Anchoring effect"If people refuse to work for such a low pay, the business will simply not employ them or look for someone whom will (overseas if need be). It isn’t like there are only a handful of people whom a business can employ to do min. wage work for them."The problem with this argument is that businesses can already outsource jobs, and do it commonly. The only difference with a min. wage is that, instead of the people making the refusal decision themselves, the government does it for them. In fact, the min. wage encourages outsourcing! When the government puts an artificially high wage, the price to hire people in Americans for low-skilled work becomes more expensive than in other countries. Thus, businesses take their job opportunities elsewhere. To combat poverty, a less-than min. wage job is better than no job at all. "The Anchoring effect occurs when someone bases the validity or worth of something by comparing other things of a similar nature within the vicinity. To put this into context, there is no way to objectively gauge what a person’s working time is worth (i.e. what is a person’s time worth if he or she is stacking boxes?)."This example assumes that there is no way to objectively gauge what a person's working time is worth. To answer how much the box stacker is worth, an employer could look at how much the company profits from the worker being there, and how much the company makes without the worker. "Arbitrary standards will be set, and will be (unfairly) set by the business. But here is where the fallacy comes in. Say I’m packing boxes full of clothing and getting payed $0.5 an hour. I’m doing a better job than the guy next to me, who is getting payed $0.3 an hour. So, logically, it would seem that I’m getting payed extra for my extra effort, right?"This standard could have been set by one company, and other companies could copy this as well. Over time, the market sets standards for how much a job is worth. This is how it works with every job that pays above just above the min. wage. This is how it would work with ones below it. One thing is for certain though. The government most likely didn't get the value correct with min. wage. The idea that a business has no restrictions is simply false. I agree that businesses want to maximize their profits. The problem is, there is competition between businesses for the employment of these individuals. If the box stacker employer wants to set their salary to $.5/hour, then another company nearby could see this and set their salary for a low-skill job at $1/hour and still make a high profit. This would incentivize people to work for this company, as opposed to the lower paying business. In turn, the box stacking employer would need to increase wages to be competitive with the others. This process will continue until the price to hire the employee is just under the amount of money the employer would produce. To think it would be <$1 is absurd." In reality, the business has set a very low standard, exploiting people by use of the anchoring effect and paying them less than what a person who sees the situation objectively would demand. This is another reason businesses must have min. wages set by a separate entity".How is $7.25 an objective standard for all jobs in the country? Who is the government to decide which is a "fair" salary for a job? The min. wage doesn't take into account how much a person's value is for any specific job. As a result, those jobs which would only profit from employing individuals with salaries below the min. wage can't hire. They would lose money. Also, the reason why so many low-skilled jobs have salaries above the min. wage is because the market can set fair salaries for a specific job. If what you said was the case, the vast majority of unskilled jobs would be at the min. wage in order to maximize profits. " To demonstrate exploitation in action (not necessarily the Anchoring effect in all instances), in 2006, “the earnings of a full-time min. wage worker with a family of three would earn $10,712 a year, thus falling 35.5% below the official 2006 federal poverty level of $16,600." This assumes that the only one parent is working. In actuality, for older workers (25+) on min. wage, "They have an average family income of $33,606 per year." Also, just 23% of these workers live in poverty.(2) Arguments against Min. Wage Unemployment:The biggest problem with min. wage is it hurts the very people it's trying to help. When an employer can't afford to pay the min wage, and the potential employee wants the job anyway, then there is a loss in a desired job. "Years ago, unskilled youth cleaned windshields and checked oil at gas stations, showed people to their seats in movie theaters, and bagged groceries. Many of those kinds of jobs disappeared as the minimum wage rose. Teenage unemployment, especially among blacks, has been a scandal ever since."(4)The video above explains this in better detail. http://www.youtube.com...I would like to know your answer to the question in the video: Why not raise minimum wage to $20/hr? Why not 100?I'll continue my arguments next round, as I ran out of room.Back to you.1.http://www.bls.gov...2. http://www.heritage.org...3.http://www.bls.gov...4.http://reason.com...