WallStreetVixen
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Re: Study: The 2007 minimum wage hike cost more than 1 million jobs during the recess
The minimum wage is an arbitrary price floor set to prevent employers from paying for labour below a certain level. All it means is that it is illegal to hire an employee who earns an hourly wage below that arbitrary level, with certain exceptions. That's it. You can't tie it to inflation, nor would it make sense to do such a mundane thing. It's not tied to the cost of living. If you want to make sure people have the ability to feed themselves, there are plenty of intelligent ways of doing that aside from indexing the minimum wage to inflation.
There's that phrasing again. "Supposed to."
Why do people keep declaring that minimum wage isn't "supposed to" let you feed yourself?
The minimum wage is an arbitrary price floor set to prevent employers from paying for labour below a certain level. All it means is that it is illegal to hire an employee who earns an hourly wage below that arbitrary level, with certain exceptions. That's it. You can't tie it to inflation, nor would it make sense to do such a mundane thing. It's not tied to the cost of living. If you want to make sure people have the ability to feed themselves, there are plenty of intelligent ways of doing that aside from indexing the minimum wage to inflation.