Want to easily kick some progressive ass, in a debate? Debate them on the minimum wage!

[Teaser Rate]

I haven't encountered this yet, probably because i've just been debating average joe progressives, not academic ones.

However, I don't think it's hard to effectively respond to that without empirical data.

I would challenge the very notion that they are putting a "floor" on wages, and assert that this "floor" is actually a hurdle for the unemployed.

I would then ask this "educated supporter" to answer the question in my example or show me how the example is flawed, rather than let him go off on this tangent.

I would suggest you seek out more sophisticated debating partners, as they are more fun to converse with than people who are clueless on any given topic.

Your point about the floor being a hurdle is dependent on the elasticity of demand for low-skill labor. i.e. You wouldn't make the point that raising gasoline taxes by a cent a gallon will make it harder for gas stations to sell their product because most people won't adjust their buying preferences based on one cent.

 

[low preference guy]

I interpreted him as saying that most supporters of a particular political or economic policy aren't really economically literate. I dont see how what he said was an attack on mises or Ron Paul?

Even if I was not an attack on Mises or Paul, I still think it's ridiculous. If you take a test of the economic knowledge of supporters of the gold standard, and take the average, the scores won't even be comparable to the scores of those who believe that there should be a minimum wage. I think that if you are talking to a supporter of the gold standard, you're most of the time talking to someone who knows way more economics than the average person.

 

[low preference guy]

Your point about the floor being a hurdle is dependent on the elasticity of demand for low-skill labor. i.e. You wouldn't make the point that raising gasoline taxes by a cent a gallon will make it harder for gas stations to sell their product because most people won't adjust their buying preferences based on one cent.

Are you mocking those who oppose increasing taxes for oil 1 cent per gallon? Are you mocking those who oppose to transfer 6 additional millions from the private sector to the government per year?

Those millions add up!

 

[cubical]

The best question to ask them is "Why does ANYONE make above the minimum wage?"

 

[KurtBoyer25L]

I would suggest you seek out more sophisticated debating partners, as they are more fun to converse with than people who are clueless on any given topic.

Your point about the floor being a hurdle is dependent on the elasticity of demand for low-skill labor. i.e. You wouldn't make the point that raising gasoline taxes by a cent a gallon will make it harder for gas stations to sell their product because most people won't adjust their buying preferences based on one cent.

Clever example, but I submit that small changes increase in significance as they apply to more than one business relationship at a time. A man pays extra for gasoline, it only affects him a few bucks at most. If a business employs dozens of people, a 1$ minimum wage increase will cause a severe disruption in budgeting, and potentially cost jobs & damage the long-term success of the venture.

I interpret the minimum-wage debate as having a rather insidious subtext on both sides. Progressives seem to carry the undercurrent of "Businesspeople are rich, selfish, lucky, and immoral, so they can always afford a little more, we just wanna balance things out," while the neoconservative tacit argument seems to be "Successful people deserve to pay their employees almost nothing if desired, and keep more for themselves, since they outworked everyone in order to get there."

I would personally not mind a very low minimum wage that appeals to common sense and prevents sweatshop environments, but I'm in favor of lowering it as far as possible immediately.

 

[VBRonPaulFan]

And most people here are totally against it, because it is your duty as a prospective employee to set the terms of your employment before you start a job. If you aren't content with making $5/hr digging a ditch for Billy Bob Construction, you're free to decline the position and walk over to Dirty Harry's Bar and Grill to take a $7/hr dishwashing job. I have a very hard time believing that without the minimum wage, our entire economic structure is going to decline to one in which everyone is forced to work for a pittance. It's just not a realistic viewpoint.

 

[nayjevin]

Where does this idea that jobs are scarce come from? Scarcity is not the human condition, abundance is. Corporatism causes scarcity when the fat cats get government to do their bidding.

 

[Teaser Rate]

The best question to ask them is "Why does ANYONE make above the minimum wage?"

This is actually a good point.

Clever example, but I submit that small changes increase in significance as they apply to more than one business relationship at a time. A man pays extra for gasoline, it only affects him a few bucks at most. If a business employs dozens of people, a 1$ minimum wage increase will cause a severe disruption in budgeting, and potentially cost jobs & damage the long-term success of the venture.

This is an argument about elasticity once again.

I interpret the minimum-wage debate as having a rather insidious subtext on both sides. Progressives seem to carry the undercurrent of "Businesspeople are rich, selfish, lucky, and immoral, so they can always afford a little more, we just wanna balance things out," while the neoconservative tacit argument seems to be "Successful people deserve to pay their employees almost nothing if desired, and keep more for themselves, since they outworked everyone in order to get there."

I would personally not mind a very low minimum wage that appeals to common sense and prevents sweatshop environments, but I'm in favor of lowering it as far as possible immediately.

I can’t speak for mainstream progressives, but the intelligent people I know who support the minimum wage do so because they believe it is an economically efficient way to increase equity in society.

Where does this idea that jobs are scarce come from? Scarcity is not the human condition, abundance is. Corporatism causes scarcity when the fat cats get government to do their bidding.

Jobs aren’t scarce because of government intervention in the market, they are scarce because capital is finite.

PS: scarcity is the human condition, it's the first rule of economics.

 

[jclay2]

I can’t speak for mainstream progressives, but the intelligent people I know who support the minimum wage do so because they believe it is an economically efficient way to increase equity in society.

Well they don't seem very intelligent to me? Just saying.

 

[Fox McCloud]

I actually backed a progressive into a corner about this, but he still engaged in self-contradiction to support his argument.

He said that it was ok for it to increase unemployment because it would give some an increased amount of wages (the ones who "need" or "deserve it", he said), and those who were unemployed could just exist on welfare.

Generally speaking though, your approach is good, but semi-intelligent ones will say that that doesn't exist in the real world.

 

[Kregisen]

The minimum wage argument is one of the easiest to debate.....

Someone in here mentioned Walter Williams, who has a great article on the minimum wage.

Peter Schiff has also brought up excellent points on it as well.

1. Why don't fast food places have real silverware? Perhaps because at $7.25/hour it's not worth it to hire extra dishwashers, but maybe at $5/hour it is. What happens to all the kids who don't have any job experience yet and want to earn some while gaining some extra cash? How are the poor supposed to get richer if they can't find a job to push them up the economic ladder?

2. It causes huge amounts of unemployment... minimum wage hike in the mid 90'shttp://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/against/against.htm

Economists have studied the job-destroying features of a higher minimum wage. Estimates of the job losses of raising the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 have ranged from 625,000 to 100,000 lost jobs. It is important to recognize that the jobs lost are mainly entry-level jobs. By destroying entry-level jobs, a higher minimum wage harms the lifetime earnings prospects of low-skilled workers.

minimum wage hike a couple years ago... http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19065

Increasing the minimum wage was meant to raise the living standards of millions of Americans holding unskilled, entry level positions. But it may have led to the elimination of 550,000 jobs -- opening the possibility that such wage levels should be revised, suggests a new study from Ball State University.

Who are the people who get fired first? The poorest, the least qualified, the least experienced....statistically minorities, very young and very old, and the poorest.


3. The higher wages is just increased costs for businesses which pass on most of those costs to the consumers, who in this case are the poor, because the lowest paying jobs are in fast food, grocery stores, etc, where consumers are much poorer.

4. It destroys wealth. Wealth is someone's value on an item. Trading increases wealth. Hiring an employee increases wealth because both the employer and employee are better off afterwards otherwise they wouldn't have done it. By prohibiting hiring people under a certain rate, you destroy all wealth that would have been created.

5. Even to the employees minimum wage laws do help, the amount of help is extremely deceiving. If the employer is forced to pay a hire wage, they will simply decrease benefits and/or hours given to the employee. So even the winners (employees not fired over wage increases) are not necessarily winners either.

6. Barring an employer from hiring an employee at a mutually agreed wage is an attack on the freedom of association. If we don't have the freedom to associate with eachother, what freedom we have left? None.



That's about it off the top of my head....the points aren't in any order either, they're sort of all scrambled. If any of you ever get the chance to debate some dumbass on this issue feel free to use any of these points, because they can't be refuted.

 

[HOLLYWOOD]

Keep in mind that the higher employers are forced to pay minimum wages for the minimum jobs the money has to come from somewhere. Well, the money is not going to come out of the executive's pockets... it will come out of middle class/mid-level employees pockets. It can also mean reduced benefits, reduced making funds to 401Ks, etc.

Minimum wage mandates don't effect the elitists at the top... just everyone else below them that will sacrifice. For the Small Businesses 2/3s of the American economy, it has an even further determent on business and growth.

Oh, but government must also use the people's wealth or stick them with debt, to save the 15% of mega-corporatism businesses too.

Minimum Wage: Failure
Minimum Corporate Welfare: Disaster

Looking at the latest US Treasury's statements... with the record earnings and wall street gains and then all the TAX CREDITS and CORPORATE WELFARE. Corporations have paid LESS in corporate Taxes so far in FY2011 then they did in FY2010.

All this Government induced welfare has to stop... The Roman Empire did the same to quell the masses and maintain control... what did it lead to? Collapse

 

[loveshiscountry]

Wouldn't minimum wage hurt the people who make just above the new minimum the most since prices will rise and their purchasing power diminishes the most? I'm just going by what happened when FDR was in office and set wages.

 

[amberjack]

What if..

Ok I'm not really an expert on any of this, but the minimum wage question presented by the original poster started me down the thinking process. So thinking aloud:

Let's assume that in the year 2000 supposed company was making $50 an hour and that the minimum wage is $10.

Assume we have a non-fiat currency where the government was artificially trying to devalue the currency by.. say 3% a year.

Assume that there's no lag time between earnings/wages/inflation rate* for easier calculations:

Adjusting for inflation the company would be making the following:

2001: $51.5/hour
2002: $53.05/hour
2003: $55.09/hour
2004: $56.74/hour
2005: $58.44/hour
2006: $60.19/hour

Let's stop here at 2006. Again, assuming no lag time, the company should be making $60.19 after 6 years.

Thus, if after 6 years the minimum wage was not adjusted for, the company could now hire 1 extra person. But the standard of living of each person would obviously lower.

In the example of $50/hr profit and $10 min wage, it would seem that after 3 years, the min wage could indeed be set to $11 and the company could maintain the number of employees.

From here it's fair to debate whether it's right to have minimum wage workers maintain their current standards of living (in the face of a non-fiat currency that's being constantly inflated), or if there should even be a minimum wage at all..

Anyways, I really welcome more in depth analysis because, again, I was just thinking out loud.. problem solving and all that is fun! ^_^

------

*I understand that there's lag time between inflation and wage increase, but eventually the inflation should trickle into wages. Heck, minimum wage increase might even be something that FORCES wages to be adjusted for inflation:

Imagine if the employer was forced to have an $11/hour min wage.. in order to maintain 5 employees, the employer must raise his cost from 50 to $55. If this is done after 3 years, the market would fully support this due to inflation (assuming 3% inflation).

 

[AZKing]

All you need to do is just give them a practical example, and ask them to explain the effects. For example...

If a business makes $50 profit / hour, and the minimum wage is $10, they can effectively afford to hire 5 employees. If the minimum wage gets raised to $11, how many people can the business afford to hire?

Still 5, they just have to raise prices on consumers

/troll

I debated this in a poli sci class once. It's definitely difficult to refute this logic.

 

[silverhandorder]

@ earlier poster about inelastic jobs. These jobs would pull resources away from elastic jobs and as such you will get lesser profits hence higher unemployment in other areas of economy.

 

[Fox McCloud]

Still 5, they just have to raise prices on consumers

/troll

I debated this in a poli sci class once. It's definitely difficult to refute this logic.

Came across this, once, too; his only counter was "Well, we're used to paying higher prices, so it doesn't matter". He totally missed the point that even if raising prices were the atypical situation, the higher prices would impact demand, and thus lower profits for said company....thus still putting a pressure to lay off someone.

 

[teacherone]

Came across this, once, too; his only counter was "Well, we're used to paying higher prices, so it doesn't matter". He totally missed the point that even if raising prices were the atypical situation, the higher prices would impact demand, and thus lower profits for said company....thus still putting a pressure to lay off someone.

and proving that the minimum wage is itself inflationary.

 

[nayjevin]

Where does this idea that jobs are scarce come from? Scarcity is not the human condition, abundance is. Corporatism causes scarcity when the fat cats get government to do their bidding.

Jobs aren’t scarce because of government intervention in the market, they are scarce because capital is finite.

PS: scarcity is the human condition, it's the first rule of economics.

Here's what I mean by that, perhaps you can explain my misunderstanding in economic terms.

I live alone on an island. I have no food. I go out fishing with my hands, but I can barely get enough to survive. So I invent a fishing pole. All of a sudden I have more food than I know what to do with, and so does everyone else who comes after me. So it is with any technology. But if a government comes along and says only one kind of fishing pole can be used, and it's not mine, then I'm back to square one.

 

[Catatonic]

I actually debated my professor and classmates on minimum wage the other day. The prof. said history disproved my theory, Haha. Others seemed to admit it causes unemployment, but insisted it still made people better off overall.

The question that shuts them the hell up - if someone is willing to work for less than minimum wage, voluntarily, how can you justify using the threat of violence to keep them unemployed?