RE: Minimum Wage Economics and the Debate for Humanity
There is a far superior alternative to minimum wage laws. Universal basic income. A UBI of $1000 per month would be effectively a wage increase of $6 per hour for anyone working 40 hours per week, higher for those working part-time, and it would be a net increase in income for 8 out of 10 households instead of affecting only those receiving lower wages than the minimum wage.
UBI would thus allow for the elimination of minimum wages, which would remove market distortions. People with basic income could work for less than the min wage, if they really wanted that job. For jobs people don't want, those employers would need to pay more, or invest in automation instead. Both are outcomes we want.
UBI is also something both the right and left can get behind, instead of only the left. Basic income is not left or right. It's forward.
Cheers!
I like that alternative. I prefer funding these things voluntarily, rather than through a government mechanism where typically they'll use most of it on initiating war or paying their own debts, and then give some crumbs to the supposed cause. But that aside, ya, this makes much more sense than a wage law.
If we want everyone to have basic means of survival, then it's best to accomplish that directly. If economics doesn't matter and we're just going for the humanitarian outcome, you may as well not require people to work at McDonald's to be able to live.
And then you don't have the distortions of companies who provide the things we need going out of business from the artificially high wage.