Less than 1% of workers make minimum wage. There are effectively zero opportunities to increase employment by offering wages below the minimum. If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because the employers think they are a net negative.
So minimum wage helps less than 1% of workers, at the expense of people who don't have skills valued at the minimum wage? Why are you confident that's a net positive trade off?
> If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because the employers think they are a net negative.
That's why I think that people should be able to work for less, for employers who think they are a net positive at a lower wage. It's better than the true minimum wage of zero.
It's not like the value of labor is discontinuous, such that it is worth zero if is worth less than a minimum.
> That's why I think that people should be able to work for less, for employers who think they are a net positive at a lower wage.
No. If someone cant land a job at minimum wage it is because employers think they would be a net negative at a $0 wage. There are a couple counter examples like walmart no longer being open overnight, but even then thats more because of theft than paying the employees. It is not hard to find a minimum wage job in the vast majority of the country. If you cant its because employers think you will do an exceptionally bad job. Every single adult has skills valued at minimum wage in the US, the question is just if they have a drug problem or mental illness or something like that. Those people wouldnt be helpful at $0 wage either
> There is lots of profit to be made at $10 per worker hour that can't be made at $15.
Sure, if you have decent workers. But decent workers can make $15/hr so you cant get them. If youre stuck with the people who cant get a minimum wage job you dont have anyone you can trust and you cant build a business like that unless youre amazon tracking everyone's metrics with a billion dollar warehouse system. (amazon also pays well over minimum wage)
Why is someone who brings in $15.10 of value to a company a decent worker but someone who brings in $14.90 of value someone that can be written off completely? Obviously, we can quibble over the exact numbers and how one assesses value. But that’s kind of the point, we should let people figure that out for themselves what they’re worth and what they are willing to pay other people for.
I understand that there are concerns with race to the bottom dynamics and ensuring a minimum standard of living, but there are better tools for addressing that than the minimum wage (a more generous EITC or negative income tax for example).
There are many vacant minimum wage jobs. I think the issue here is just that you overestimate the number of people who cant get a job because minimum wage exists. If you are a decent worker you are able to get a minimum wage job in this country, so if you cant you are by definition not a decent worker. Looking at the micro scale (employee only worth $14.90 to a single company) is largely irrelevant because there are plenty of other companies that find decent employees to be worth $15/hr. The level of incompetence you need to have to not be worth a minimum wage job to any company is so high that you are actively hindering business from being done.
If you’re worth $14.90 to the company they’ll likely hire you, even if just to free up someone who is worth $15.50. The people who wouldn’t be hired at $0 are what you need to solve to fix homelessness.
federal minimum wage, which is lower than many, many states, so stating this is a little misleading. It's also at or around 1% (for federal), not less - per this 2023 source: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2023/
