Talk:Minimum wage

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Developed countries with no minimum wage

As you can see in the above map, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Iceland don't have a nationwide minimum wage, and instead set it in a social corporatist tradition. This has a benefit in that wages can be fined-tuned to maintain the competitive advantage of certain industries, but requires that business and union associations sit down in the first place.

THIS. Certain libertarians who offer those countries as proof of that with no minimum wage salaries are higher ignore that part (and since they're against unions and would prefer every employer negotiating with the boss their wages it's easy to see why).

Germany at least has introduced a minimum wage; I'll update the article in consequence. --Panzerfaust (talk) 11:40, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

One issue

The strongest argument I've heard against increasing minimum wage is that it doesn't really aid the people it's supposed to help: in the United States, for example, according to this, 62% of those in poverty in 2014 did not have a job at all and another 27% were under-employed (part-timers, seasonal jobs, ec), and so the increase would only affect about 12% of those in poverty (presumably rounded figures given they add up to 101%). In the meantime, any price rises from increasing the minimum wage would affect 89% of those in poverty negatively.

Is there a decent counter-argument to this anywhere? Nog Bogmire (talk) 23:00, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, good question. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 03:10, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

The problem with that argument is that minimum wage and employment are two different things. After all, those who don't even have a wage logically won't benefit from minimum wage hikes. In addition to raising minimum wage, we should also be aiding employment too (mind you it's pretty difficult to even get a job in the first place). The price increases, if any, seem to be modest, and I don't think minimum wage in of itself is the reason the costs of living are getting more and more untenable in the U.S.. --It's-a me, 🎄LeftyGreenMario!🎄 03:20, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

It's not so much the problem as the argument's exact point, as far as I can see. Minimum wages aren't the only reason prices can go up and employment can go down, but however mild the effect may appear, it's not helping either, at least in those two areas. If you can get everyone a job, then you can use a higher minimum wage to effectively alleviate poverty to an extent (though there's a limit to how high you can push it of course). But if there's a big chunk, even a majority of poor people without a job, then higher wages aren't gonna do those people any good. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 07:02, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

"Empirical evidence is mixed."

Yet the rest of that subsection seems, to me, to point toward benefits outweighing the costs of raising minimum wage. Contrary studies are said (in the passage) to have publisher bias and the Luca study is said to be very limited in scope.

Also, uh, the "quotes" section. A lot of these pertains to income inequality. While it's strongly related, it's not really about minimum wage in of itself. I think we can trim that section, as it's pretty verbose. --It's-a me, 🎄LeftyGreenMario!🎄 02:59, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Robert Reich Destroys Minimum Wage Myths should be given a look at.--BruceGrubb (talk) 15:02, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

The Washington Example

The section entitled "Washington - the real world example" has some logical fallacies.

• Calling it "THE" real world example indicates it's the one and only real-world example or at least the most definitive conclusive example due to use of the definite article.
• The example is cherry picked. It's an unscientific sample size of one example. There are other examples like New York City in 2018 and 2019 that went the opposite way.
• The data only looked at unemployment, not total economic health like total earnings from hours worked and non-wage benefits.
• Most importantly, the data ignore the effect of other forces on employment. For example, money from outside Washington pouring into Washington due to the explosive growth of global companies like Amazon and Microsoft during the 15 years period cited. That was economic growth that had nothing to do with Washington's legislative policy.

The section should be dropped or should be enhanced to include a broader sample size of jurisdictions and data sets beyond just employment rate. Dropping it is probably preferable because any attempts to pick specific examples will be prone to the cherry picking fallacies. Falling for cherry picking is typical for complex systems like the economy where several forces can affect an outcome. In such cases it's best to treat single examples as anecdotal and instead rely on survey studies of several jurisdictions over several time periods that (when possible) control for other confounding variables. The current form sounds like diet fadders (another complex system you can't just boil down to one variable) who are like "The French live a long time and eat a ton of cheese, so therefore cheese's saturated fats doesn't negatively affect heart health." ^{— Unsigned, by: ‎72.172.10.128 / talk / contribs}

Problems with your changes thus far. Firstly, you insist on citing a paper from the NBER Working Paper Series, which even Wikipedia admits is neither peer reviewed nor reviewed by the NBER board. Secondly, however accurate NBER is, I'm wary of using a private think tank, as they have been known to have conflicts of interest in other cases. Thirdly, you speak of companies playing bait and switch with their employees pay as if it were an outcome that was were set in stone and not the heads of said companies just being idiotic and selfish dipshits. The videogame industry (for example) is full of these kinds of tricks to "cut costs" without cutting the biggest source of those costs, the executives' paychecks. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 03:13, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

None of the bullets above have anything to do with the NBER or companies. I also cited New York State government's own numbers for New York City going the opposite way. The critique of this section is that it's the purview of pseudoscience to cherry pick one example that itself has flaws and then present it as the defining "proof" for one variable in a highly complex system where controlled experiments are impossible. So let's delete it and focus on broad trends. If we want to cherry pick then go graph the federal minimum wage from 2001 to 2010 along side unemployment rates and it gives the impression that they correlate. That is just as nonsense as cherry picking this Washington example since both ignore broader trends that were more strongly affecting unemployment than minimum wage. Regardless, it's obvious that low value work will follow cheap labor whenever it can, and anything that causes wages to increase will encourage some employers to move mobile jobs to where it's cheaper. Otherwise manufacturing jobs would never have fled the US to China. In instances where a minimum wage hike is observed to have almost no effect on employment levels, Occam's razor would point to the mobile low value work had already left and all that remained was immobile low value work. Otherwise we have to jump through hoops to explain why one type of wage differential causes jobs to flee to China, Mexico, etc. but another type (minimum wage) has no affect on unemployment. The reality is minimum wage sometimes does effect and sometimes does not effect unemployment, depending on the unique circumstances of the local economy. Let's not discuss the economy with over simplifications like fad dieters do with diet ("The China Study" and other woo). 72.172.10.128 (talk) 14:46, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

"Regardless, it's obvious that low value work will follow cheap labor whenever it can, and anything that causes wages to increase will encourage some employers to move mobile jobs to where it's cheaper. Otherwise manufacturing jobs would never have fled the US to China." Ah, the dreaded capital flight... Which can be better explained by the fact that corporations will seek any opportunity to cut costs and corners. Further, your assumption that such behavior won't happen regardless of whether or not the minimum wage is raised or not is quite fallacious, given that it's to the benefit of corporations to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, using as little effort as possible. Finally, you still haven't addressed any of my points from my first comment. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 15:13, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Slavery was a $0 Minimum wage

Slavery was a $0 Minimum wage - since abolishing that we have seen incredible technological-labor progress. Where is the incentive to create labor-saving-machines when labor is free forever? ^{— Unsigned, by: 2601:646:9a80:ea0:c14e:f301:8460:b29b / talk}