Resolved: A Minimum Wage Should Exist.

Before I begin, I'd like to say that I dropped nothing. I explicitly said that I would consider your first argument in this round. I didn't have enough room to adequately refute your original argument in my first argument, so I devoted this round to doing so. Self-OwnershipThe whole idea behind self-ownership Libertarianism is that each person owns his or herself. However, the whole idea rests upon a paradox: "Self-ownership conflicts with Pareto-Optimality. .. [S]ince self-ownership is construed by libertarians as an absolute right, it follows that it cannot be violated even in small ways and even when great benefit would accrue from doing so. Thus. .. absolute rights of self-ownership seem to prevent us from scratching the finger of another even to prevent the destruction of the whole world. And although the real objection here seems to be to the absoluteness of self-ownership rights, rather than to self-ownership rights as such, it remains unclear whether strict libertarianism can be preserved if rights of self-ownership are given a less than absolute status. " In other words, my opponent's theoretical argument rests upon a paradoxical assumption. [1]Another problem with my opponent's argument is that it rests upon the idea that no voluntary contracts can be made where the wage is lower than the minimum wage. To a certain extent, this is true. However, "The minimum wage law (the FLSA) applies to employees of enterprises that have annual gross volume of sales or business done of at least $500,000. " In other words, two individuals can make a voluntary contract to sell one's services to the other without the need for the minimum wage. When applied to businesses, the needs of the many workers who depend on the minimum wage is more important than the wants of a few employers to make contracts with people with wages below the minimum wage. [2]The whole idea of "self-ownership" and "voluntary contracts" doesn't have much of an effect in a debate on the minimum wage. The vast majority of people making the minimum wage need more, and rightfully should earn more, but the contracts they are able to form prevent this from happening. Forcing contracts to provide a wage at or above a minimum wage is good, simply because the benefits that it accrues to workers are enough. Indeed, as I will show below, the minimum wage doesn't have a noticeable effect on the amount of people in contracts. EconomicsUnemployment - While my opponent's argument that the minimum wage causes unemployment appears valid, reality is different. Empirical studies that track unemployment changes with changes in the minimum wage consistently show that the minimum wage has very little to no effect on unemployment. One need look no further than a chart showing the real value of the minimum wage against unemployment: There is no visible correlation between the minimum wage and unemployment. One, raising the minimum wage should have an immediate effect on unemployment, but that isn't seen. And two, any short term correlation (i. e. from the past recession) is post hoc ergo propter hoc logic and only in the short-term. In the long term, there is no correlation. [3]In addition to the Card-Krueger meta-analysis, Doucouliagos and Stanley also put forth one, considering 64 minimum wage studies in the past 30 years. "Doucouliagos and Stanley concluded that their results '. .. corroborate (Card and Krueger's) [which I'll talk about later] overall finding of an insignificant employment effect (both practically and statistically) from minimum-wage raises. ' In their view: 'Two scenarios are consistent with this empirical research record. First, minimum wages may simply have no effect on employment. .. Second, minimum-wage effects might exist, but they may be too difficult to detect and/or are very small'"[4]The results can be shown here: This shows that the most precise studies showed no correlation between the minimum wage and unemployment. Besides faulty and imprecise methodologies, why do a lot of studies conclude that the minimum wage does affect unemployment? It's because they forget the definition of unemployment. To be considered unemployed, one must be unemployed and be actively looking for a job. When the minimum wage increases, those who were economically alienated by the past minimum wage start looking for jobs again, and this manifests itself in the unemployment rate. So actual unemployment (the U-6 unemployment, if you will) does not increase at all, and may even decrease after a bit. I venture to guess that most, if not all studies that concluded that the minimum wage increases unemployment failed to take account of this fact. [5]As for my opponent's criticism of the Card-Krueger study, both of his points are invalid. One, his claim that the fast food industry is inelastic is flat out wrong. In fact, the fast food industry is relatively elastic. Fast food is popular now mainly because it's cheap. If it becomes more expensive, people will find other ways. And two, the study that my opponent cites that supposedly reanalyzed the Card-Krueger study data, were reanalyzed itself by Card and Krueger, and found to be incorrect. [6][7]Consumption - But the money lost to the businesses those employees work for would be recouped by the businesses the employees are spending more money with (because they have more money). "Across the phase-in period of the increase, GDP would grow by about $22 billion, resulting in the creation of roughly 85,000 net new jobs over that period. " The increased consumption outweighs the lost investment potential. [8]Income Inequality - I've already shown how income inequality is a bad thing. It raises crime rates (particularly theft), social cohesion is eroded, drains the welfare system, and people more rely on the black market. Education, health, and many other things are also at lower levels for the poor. And as I've also explained earlier, the lower classes spend a larger portion of their income than the wealthy do. This means that the less income inequality there is, the net GDP goes up. So higher amounts of income inequality cause more problems and lower GDP, and this is why income inequality is bad. [9]Who Gets the Minimum Wage? For those who are at, or near the minimum wage level, the minimum wage is very helpful by putting a price floor on how much employers need to pay them. In addition, raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to just $10.10 (modest compared to some countries) would, "An increase to $10.10 would either directly or indirectly raise the wages of 27.8 million workers, who would receive about $35 billion in additional wages over the phase-in period. "[8]As for the claim that only teenage, part-time employees receive the minimum wage, "Among affected workers, the average age is 35 years old, nearly 88 percent are at least 20 years old, and more than a third (34.5 percent) are at least 40 years old. Of affected workers, about 54 percent work full time, about 69 percent come from families with family incomes less than $60,000, and more than a quarter have children. The average affected worker earns half of his or her family’s total income. " As can be seen, the minimum wage is a very important part of a lot of people's incomes. [8]Sources[1]: . http://www.iep.utm.edu...[2]: . http://www.dol.gov...[3]: . http://aneconomicsense.com...[4]: . http://www.cepr.net...[5]: . http://www.oecd.org...[6]: . http://spot.colorado.edu...[7]: . http://web.stanford.edu...[8]: . http://www.epi.org...[9]: . http://money.cnn.com...