dajo9 said:
Let's take these statements one at a time:
1.
"Mandating minimum wages would increase cost to customers"
This is more complicated and is one of the most common misunderstandings about economics. Prices for a product are driven by supply and demand, not by cost inputs. A cost inputs affect on supply (and price) is directly correlated to the competitiveness of the industry. Therefore, unless you are a wheat farmer or selling some other easily produced commodity, an increase in prices is most likely to be the result of higher demand generated from customers having more money. In other words, this is most likely true only if I am right.
2.
"Mandating minimum wages makes us less competitive on the world stage where it comes to manufacturing products that compete with those made abroad"
Minimum wages mostly affect retail in which the employee is at the final point of sale with the customer. It is not an international competition.
3.
"Mandating minimum wages is a market distortion, which adds to inefficiency"
This sounds good but is just a combination of words with no meaning. Wealth inequality is a product of efficiency. Underpaying your employees is efficiency from a microeconomics standpoint. Problem is, it creates macroeconomic inefficiencies.
4.
I agree with your take on raising taxes, but we need to do more to reward work in America if we want people working.
1. Not sure what the heck you are referring to. Supply is affected by cost of all units of production to bring final product to market (raw materials, labor, marketing, retail, etc) Raw material for a gold bracelet is more than an aluminum bracelet. Both jewelry markets are "competitive".
2. Minimum wages affect many more fields than just retail. Your comment made me think that perhaps you just want a retail min wage, but I suspect not.
3. Not just a collection of words that are meaningless. It's from a lecture in my international economics class. We studied all sorts of market inefficiencies, from taxes to min wages, to regulations to quotas to tariffs (which are taxes). Nobody is arguing for "underpaying" employees. The market shall determine what the rate shall be. If offered too low, workers will go elsewhere. We don't live in a one-mill town where the mill owners can exploit the labor force. What was that Sean Connery film? The molly macguires?
4. We can reward workers by lowering the input costs. That will allow them to afford more with their wages. We can reward workers by opening up new jobs for them to work. Minimum wages discourage some folks from offering employment altogether because it's too expensive for them. Let's get low skilled workers (teens) in low wage jobs and allow higher skilled people to march up the employment tree.
I've long been fascinated with these concepts. In college I worked at Bercovich Tobacco and Candy Company in San Leandro one summer. It was a warehouse middleman distributor to retail stores. We loaded trucks over night. I was not union, so I got $8/hr. The union guys working next to me made double. Did that makes sense?
My dad had a similar business in San Francisco. The company was going bankrupt when he bought it on the cheap. Shortly after he began and got things straightened out, saving people's jobs, the union workers struck. He was like "what the hell, you are going to run us under again?!" So one weekend when they were not present, he brought in trucks and moved all the inventory to a cheaper labor market several hours away. Those SF workers could either have their present wages or no wages, either thru bankruptcy or thru competition of others. They got the latter. Sorry, but that's business. Please argue why that was an unjust decision to move the warehouse?
