Minimum Wage

[erowe1]

I have never in my life met a person that wanted to work for less than minimum wage.

How many times have you asked someone who's unemployed or unable to work as many hours as they want if they would like to be able to offer their labor at a lower rate?

My sister is developmentally disabled and works a few hours a week for minimum wage. She'd love to be able to work more. She's always looking for another job. She lives with our mom and gets social security. She doesn't need the income to live on. She would love to be able to offer her labor for less.

 

[Tpoints]

I have never in my life met a person that wanted to work for less than minimum wage.

Being unemployed... even minimum wage isn't enough to make you bother to work..
You can have a higher slandered of living collecting federal and state subsidizes, than you can have working 28hours a week a week at walmart.

Here in CT, unemployment max benefit is $555 a week. A minimum wage job here pays $330/week ($8.25/hr).
So, would you go work 40 hours a week for $1320 before taxes, when the state is offering you $2200/mo to sit home??
Oh and since your unemployed, you qualify for a bunch of other stuff.
You can get on MLIA, free health, dental, and vision! So that is $300/mo your not spending on healthcare.
You get $200+ a month in SNAP (food stamps).
You get $600 credit for heating towards your electric, oil, or gas.
You get free cell phone with 250 min, 250 texts a month.
You get free housing paid by section 8..

That right there is the problem.

why would you work 40 hours for $1320 when you can get $2200 to do nothing? It all depends on whether you qualify for that much, doesn't it?
how long can you collect $2200 for doing nothing?
does the free housing option limit where you can live?

 

[Neil Desmond]

How many times have you asked someone who's unemployed or unable to work as many hours as they want if they would like to be able to offer their labor at a lower rate?

Yeah, I myself have never (or at least don't remember ever) gone around asking anyone of they'd we willing to work for less than MW if they could. I myself would rather be able to work for half the current MW than for $25/hr in a MW-mandated economy, if that half of MW was more than enough to make ends meet for all my wants and needs, and $25/hr in a MW-mandated economy wasn't. If everyone else had a net worth of $10 and I had one of $11, I'd be the wealthiest person and would be able to afford more than everyone else; on the other hand, if I had a net worth of 10 million dollars and everyone else had one of 10 million and 1 dollars, I'd be the poorest person and would not be able to afford as much as everyone else. It's not the hourly rate that matters, it's whether or not you can get a job and be able to make ends meet regardless of whether it's above or below some MW.

 

[Steven Douglas]

How many times have you asked someone who's unemployed or unable to work as many hours as they want if they would like to be able to offer their labor at a lower rate?

Good point, which brings up another market-distorting factor, based on microeconomics 101: There is a demand curve for labor, no differently than any other good or service. Demand is a function of a willingness of a buyer (of labor) to take on a given quantity at a given price level.

What is absolutely ludicrous about minimum wage is how it ignores the concept of discounts as a tool for increased revenue. If you offer your services at $10 per hour, I may offer to buy 5-10 hours per week from 20 part time employees. At $7 per hour, however, I might consider it profitable to buy 40 hours per week from 50 full time employees, but only because I can profit from each and every hour worked.

Overtime laws are another market distortion--a minimum wage of a different kind. You don't get the option of offering to sell your overtime labor at $10 to one employer, and no one employer has the option of offering to buy overtime hours for that amount either. The net result, more often than not -- NO OVERTIME. Your overtime labor was artificially priced out of the market. A lot of people end up working the overtime anyway--and at minimum wage only--but only because that overtime is distributed as part time labor in multiple part time jobs.