I have survived my second annual thinning of the herd

[BlackCat]

Why the **** does this make any sense? If you recognize the damage of the minimum wage to the point where you create an exception for everyone it actually harms, you may as well get rid of the whole damn thing.

Are you seriously saying that a country can only prosper through low wages and that minimum wages are a killer ?

[Al B. Sure!]

So that means that this...

Yes.

The real point, however, is that most minimum wage earners (in the US and Canada, at least) are not the heads of poor households; rather, the typical minimum wage earner is a high-school student. Alleviating poverty by raising the minimum wage is idiotic.

IS WRONG!!!!!

[Dinner]

Perhaps that is because in California it is only profitable to higher older, more experienced workers? Since you are forced to pay them more per hour you may as well get something for that investment.

Possible, but unlikely given my In-N-Out example. It seems the American kids, much like yourself, are often lazy spoiled kids who can't be bothered to get off of their asses for less then $10 per hour while the illegal or legal immigrants NEED any job they can get and are willing to work for even minimum wage.

[KrazyHorse]

Easily solved. Just make the minimum wage granted for high-school students and say double it for others

And then you will actually start to destroy employment among the least skilled...

[Al B. Sure!]

KH is suffering from Kuciwalkerism/Hauldren Colliderism... aka spoiled rich syndrome.

KH, do you happen to know a single person making minimum wage? Hmm? Man who thinks he's too good to step foot into Brooklyn and has only heard tell of Queens?

[Hauldren Collider]

Possible, but unlikely given my In-N-Out example. It seems the American kids, much like yourself, are often lazy spoiled kids who can't be bothered to get off of their asses for less then $10 per hour while the illegal or legal immigrants NEED any job they can get and are willing to work for even minimum wage.

I got paid $9.50, and now you're on the list as well. This thread is a real jackpot!

[BlackCat]

Yeah, it could be interesting to see HC trying to survive fro $5 an hour if he even could get a job.

[KrazyHorse]

So that means that this...




IS WRONG!!!!!

Interesting. I rescind my comment. However, I do wonder about this:

http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2010/11/minwage.html

Economic families in Quebec: 2006
Low-income families Families above
low-income threshold All families
Total 448 700 (13.1%) 2 979 100 (86.9%) 3 427 800 (100%)
In employment 193 900 (8.4%) 2 105 300 (91.6%) 2 299 200 (100%)
Minimum wage
or less 27 900 (13.5%) 178 200 (86.5%) 206 100 (100%)
$7.61/hr - $8.99/hr 44 200 (18.2%) 199 100 (81.8%) 243 300 (100%)
$9.00/hr - $9.99/hr 34 100 (17.3%) 163 400 (82.7%) 197 600 (100%)
Less than $10/hr 106 200 (16.4%) 540 700 (83.6%) 646 900 (100%)

This says that the chances of being a minimum wage earner are barely affected by conditioning on being from a household under the poverty line (data is from Que.)

[Al B. Sure!]

Yeah, it could be interesting to see HC trying to survive fro $5 an hour if he even could get a job.

It's $7.25 now. It was $5.15 back when I was a minimum wage earner.

[Whoha]

No, you should realize that econometric techniques that purport to discover something via boneheaded analyses like a naive cross-state comparison are worthless.

Nonsense. By raising the minimum wage above the slacker reserve level you get more people into the employment market, build their social network, and most importantly keep them there.

[BlackCat]

I got paid $9.50, and now you're on the list as well. This thread is a real jackpot!

Yep, and you have a wife and three childrens to support ?

[KrazyHorse]

KH is suffering from Kuciwalkerism/Hauldren Colliderism... aka spoiled rich syndrome.

at spoiled rich.

By the way, I've worked for minimum wage before. And until I was 29 years old I worked for a money wage of less than 12$ an hour.

[BlackCat]

And then you will actually start to destroy employment among the least skilled...

No.

[KrazyHorse]

No.

So demand curves do not slope down? Do you enjoy inhabiting this fantasy world?

[Kuciwalker]

Are you seriously saying that a country can only prosper through low wages and that minimum wages are a killer ?

1) Minimum wages don't help anyone who makes more than the minimum wage (i.e. the vast majority of workers!). The policy is not one of prosperity; the purpose is to make some very poor people a little bit less poor.

2) Minimum wages do help the people who are employed at the minimum wage - presumably they would earn slightly less if it were repealed. Okay, it is helping some poor people.

3) Minimum wages actively hurt anyone who would be employed but for the minimum wage - these people are even poorer than the group in (2)! So helping some poor people comes at least partially at the expense of even poorer people.

4) If, to alleviate the problem in (3), you make exceptions to the minimum wage for people who commonly fall in that group, then you have effectively repealed the minimum wage.