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What should the minimum wage be, or should we not have one at all?

dkap

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minimum wage is a big topic right now and I'd like to see everyone's ideas.
 
Really the market should determine minimum wage.
I disagree with a flat national minimum wage because not all area's are equal.

by artificially increasing the minimum wage the government hurts places that can't actually support
itself. it also falsely increases prices more than what some people can afford lowering their pay checks.

if a state wants to increase their minimum wage then at least the voters can decide and should decide.
that way small town USA doesn't get busted and go broke.
 
Ideally, minimum wage would be largely dictated by national inflation, consumer price index (CPI) and the national cost of living in the US. As the CPI moves up, it normally does so in face of inflation or a rise in cost of living. The reason for a national minimum wage is simple; it bolsters the American dollar value nationally. If we were to rely on each state to provide its own minimum wage, the value and buying power of the dollar would weaken nationally due to the irregular currency values in various, internal markets.

What many don't seem to understand is that a minimum wage really only does one thing; give the American dollar buying power with the times. Inflation and the CPI ALWAYS creep upwards. They may level off, but they NEVER go backwards. Insisting on forcing people to work for a dollar whose value is less than what the CPI and inflation dictates, devalues the dollar. That actually means that more dollars are needed to make purchases. Think like Germany after WW1 as an extreme example.

Here's what minimum wage does NOT affect: upward costs of product and the cost of making said products. Those increases of price and cost of production comes from need and the price is determined, again, by inflation and the CPI. A minimum wage is in RESPONSE to those increases, it is NOT the reason for those increases.
 
minimum wage is a big topic right now and I'd like to see everyone's ideas.

At the very most, Federal law should require each State to set a minimum wage which could be applied State wide or vary by location and living costs within the State.
 
Ideally, minimum wage would be largely dictated by national inflation, consumer price index (CPI) and the national cost of living in the US. As the CPI moves up, it normally does so in face of inflation or a rise in cost of living.
The CPI is a measure of inflation and emulates a cost of living index. So your statement is the equivalent of saying “As the degrees Celsius moves up, it normally does so in face of temperature or a rise in heat.” Doesn’t make any sense.


Inflation and the CPI ALWAYS creep upwards. They may level off, but they NEVER go backwards.
Well that’s not true. The CPI certainly has gone down. Long run, yes, it trends higher (which is good), but it has gone down many times.

Oh, and just in case you think you know more than I do, I used to be one of the people who calculated the CPI. And I’ve studied all the other measures of inflation as well.
 
Really the market should determine minimum wage.
I disagree with a flat national minimum wage because not all area's are equal.

by artificially increasing the minimum wage the government hurts places that can't actually support
itself. it also falsely increases prices more than what some people can afford lowering their pay checks.

if a state wants to increase their minimum wage then at least the voters can decide and should decide.
that way small town USA doesn't get busted and go broke.
Not having a minimum wage would cause a race to the bottom. Employers speak with one voice but employees are disorganized.

There should be a national MW and the states can have higher ones.

The MW also drives supervisory salaries higher. In a country in which the top has grabbed a larger and larger share of national income, the MW is essential.
 
All it does is create unemployment and make white liberals feel good about themselves.

If Joe's labor is only worth $8 per hour and the minimum wage is $10 per hour then Joe cannot legally work.
 
Wages are going up on their own.,especially for low income workers.
A good business climate is the best antidote for low wages,
 
minimum wage is a big topic right now and I'd like to see everyone's ideas.

The minimum wage should be the price at which a person is willing to perform the task and the employer is willing to pay. The government has no business in personal matters.

BTW that is the actual minimum wage. Set it arbitrarily and people willing to work for less come here, or business takes their jobs elsewhere.
 
minimum wage is a big topic right now and I'd like to see everyone's ideas.

I didn’t see anyone giving a number of what the minimum wage should be.
Doesn’t raising the minimum wage force businesses to raise prices which could spur inflation?
Couldn’t raising the minimum wage result in job loss and small businesses going out of business?
 
Minimum wage should not be a career choice. It should be a stepping stone. Something to do while you're gaining marketable skills. But if we're serious about making unskilled jobs pay more, then we need to look at immigration, especially illegal immigration, and look at globalization. Because markets drive wages. If every other fast food joint is hiring cheap immigrant labor, your fast food joint will have to as well. If you really want to raise minimum wage, create a labor shortage. A labor shortage faced by every fast food joint. BTW; as we know from watching Dirty Jobs on television, Americans will do ANY job. They just won't do it for peanuts.
 
Having a conversation honestly about "minimum" wage would begin with updated and modernizing our understanding of GDP.
 
minimum wage is a big topic right now and I'd like to see everyone's ideas.

There's no need to rise minimum wages as long as people like to work on multiple jobs, right? So you can work all the time and have enough money if you get sick, etc.. flawless system.
 
minimum wage is a big topic right now and I'd like to see everyone's ideas.

I don't know the right answer, but I think that any minimum wage laws should only be set at the state or municipal level. There's no good reason for the Federal Government to be imposing this across the board.
 
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There's no need to rise minimum wages as long as people like to work on multiple jobs, right? So you can work all the time and have enough money if you get sick, etc.. flawless system.

Just get a better paying job.
 
Having a conversation honestly about "minimum" wage would begin with updated and modernizing our understanding of GDP.

How would you try to relate the GDP to the minimum wage?
 
Not having a minimum wage would cause a race to the bottom. Employers speak with one voice but employees are disorganized.
there is no evidence to support this argument. Without a minimum wage workers can work and negotiate their labor fairly. employers will not race to the bottom
as then they will have no workers. No one will work for lower wages. So employers that do try to race to the bottom will be eliminated by employers that won't.

There should be a national MW and the states can have higher ones.
then a 15 minimum wage is not needed. the minimum wage is fine where it is since states
and people can vote how much they want to increase their own spending.

The MW also drives supervisory salaries higher. In a country in which the top has grabbed a larger and larger share of national income, the MW is essential.

No it doesn't i have yet to receive an equal 50% pay bump when all of these places increasing their minimum wage.
not really as MW only increases the floor of which people live in poverty.
 
minimum wage is a big topic right now and I'd like to see everyone's ideas.

The actual minimum wage is $0, because unemployment exists.

If you wish to maximize the number of people employed, then you should

A) get rid of the minimum wage, and
B) ensure that public support to the poor or working poor don't discourage work below a certain threshold.


Otherwise people have to choose between low paid work and low paid leisure, and the latter will often win out.
 
Ideally, adopt the Scandinavian approach: no minimum wage, but strong general/global unions that consistently negotiate an hourly that's greater than the iconic $15: 5 Developed Countries without Minimum Wages

Same here, we don't have minimum wage.

If wage is too low for living, you can get benefits from government (so you reach income what's needed for living, including housing benefit). So basically other people take care of (by paying taxes) those who's not making enough money . Of course you can still be poor, but it means that you can't buy fancy stuff or going to eat at restaurants - you get what's really needed for your everyday life and if you're smart you can save up a bit too. Scary socialism, right?
 
The minimum wage should be whatever the free market decides..................
 
At 1:04 Friedman asks, "now how could that on net be an advantage?"

The advantage is it makes white liberals feel good about themselves, even though they are making society worse off.
 
minimum wage is a big topic right now and I'd like to see everyone's ideas.

A rural Oklahoma town's minimum wage is always going to be way too low to be a west coast metropolis' minimum wage, and a west coast Metropolis' minimum wage is always going to be way too high to be a rural Oklahoma town's minimum wage.

So really any discussion of a federal minimum wage should be what the minimum should be in the poorest and lowest cost-of-living places in the country only, with the assumption that other places else will have higher ones imposed at the state or local levels as they see fit.
 
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