Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
You guys keep moving the goalposts.
*cough*
*cough*
In this thread? I've been very consistent about what I'm talking about. I made it very clear that I was talking about raising the minimum wage to a "living wage" level, even going so far as to ask for clarity about what was meant by "living wage" just to be sure there was no confusion of terminology. I have repeatedly stated that lesser increases to minimum wage are a different matter, but aren't relevant because they don't meet the requirements I was originally responding to. If your reason for increasing the minimum is to make it so that people earning that minimum wage can support themselves independently, then we need to look only at the effects of raising the minimum wage to that level.
My argument is in two parts:
1. Raising minimum wage less than that does not solve the problem at hand (people on minimum wage still can't support themselves).
2. Raising it to a sufficient level to solve the initial problem will create a number of other problems that will dwarf the one we're trying to solve.
Thus, trying to fix the problem of people unable to support themselves via their current employment via a minimum wage increase will not work. We should be looking at other solutions. For the record, I'm not saying that there are no people struggling to support themselves, nor that we should not pursue solutions to this problem. The only thing I'm saying in this thread is that raising the minimum wage will not solve this problem.
Is that clear enough? This isn't me being heartless towards those who are struggling. It's me saying that we should look at solutions that have a chance of actually helping those people rather than one that sounds good at first glance, but wont actually work. I'm more than willing to propose alternative solutions, but it would be a nice starting point for people to at least acknowledge that the minimum wage isn't the right way to go. It simply can't work. Ever. The word "minimum" should be your first hint why (and even just a passing understanding of macro economics).