Re: Oh my Gawd! Carly!

On Apr 25, 7:25 pm, James Arthur <bogusabd...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Joel Koltner wrote:
Hi James,

"James Arthur" <bogusabd...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:XEoQj.42$TS5.4@xxxxxxxxxxx
When he did get a minimum wage job, local "living wage" rules meant the kid
earned enough to raise a small family, for bagging groceries. No wonder
they can't afford to hire many workers!

Rather than eliminating minimum wage laws, a better approach might be to
expand the "farm worker" laws to encompass more people? It's a hard
question -- while obviously most teens are living with their parents who are
supported by them, there certainly are older teens out there supporting
themselves largely or completely independently from their parents and as just
as "deserving" of the minimum wage as, e.g., some 40-year-old is.

Or maybe we just need to make it easier for teens to declare themselves as
independents: In college a few kids did that because they didn't qualify for
student loans or grants based on the buckets of money their parents had, yet
said parents weren't volunteering any of it to help the kid put himself
through school either.

Too many exceptions. Why not just let people work for whatever it is
they're willing to work for?

How about:
because it leads to most people being in poverty and a few being very
rich.

Why not encourage retirees to get out
and make some pocket change, and contribute to their health & society
even if they don't need the money?

How about:
because we will all be old some day and we don't want to die in
poverty.

Ditto for teens, or well-kept
housemates.

Mr. Adam Smith assured us long ago that it's quite impossible to work
long for less than a living wage.

Lots of people said lots of things long ago. I remember a book called
Mother Goose was written long ago.


[And it is, unless you introduce subsidies. Subsidized people
are willing to work for less because they can--it then makes
sense for them, with taxpayers footing the balance. Subsidies
drive down wages. But, then, they're still living wages.]

Only if you define "living wage" as just enough to afford the food to
get the strength to work another day.


So I don't really see the need for a minimum wage--it just restricts
employment, the training of future generations, and many who would
otherwise contribute.



Oh, and, of course, results in the export of low-valued work that could
be done here.

The high value work is being exported when that work involves
information. The burger flipping job can't leave. We will end up a
nation of burger flippers and all of the banking and computer science
and engineering will be elsewhere.



Cheers,
James Arthur

.

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