Re: Should the minimum wage be raised?
Not really an accurate comparison because Wal-mart has been doing that for years
You are correct. Walmart has been doing that for years. Specifically, they have been doing it for about 4 or 5 years. Since the
last time we raised the minimum wage.
Do you ever wonder where all those workers who used to work the checkout lines, but were suddenly unaffordable went? Do you really think that through the magic of the desire to have a free lunch (which is what a MW Hike is), they all found higher paying jobs elsewhere?
Because I worry that instead it look something like this:
?
The result isn't exactly unpredictable:
From the National Bureau of Economic Research:
...A sizable majority of the studies surveyed in this monograph give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries. Two other important conclusions emerge from our review. First, we see very few - if any - studies that provide convincing evidence of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from those studies that focus on the broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment effects. Second, the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups....
MW Hikes
hurt poor people. On top of the economic inefficiency and the restrictions on personal freedom, that is why they should be opposed.
There is regular cash registers in that picture and by the looks of that machine it only takes credit cards, the ones at wal-mart take both cash and credit.
:shrug: So you cut your lines in 1/3 and leave one guy instead of 3 to cover the cash transactions. Since you're paying more, you can also then hire someone better at math and with greater computer skills, meaning that you fire all three of your former low-education, low-experience-labor workers, and hire one higher-earning, higher-education-higher-skills worker. Then you can train him to also do some basic trouble-shooting for the card-reading machines, and you've saved money.
Sucks, of course, for the low-income, low-education, poor, who are now all unemployed. But hey. At least none of us are morally offended by them exchanging their labor for cash anymore.
