oh well montgomery burns and i are not pleased with this news. it turns people into criminals for paying people 5 dollars an hour for doing 5 dollar an hour work.

oh well. this will be all be paid for by the hidden tax of a quietly inflated currency. in the end, 7 dollar an hour people wil still only be able to buy at today's five dollar an hour.

it's something for nothing, i tell you, shennanigans and smoke and mirrors. but it does not fix the problem of poverty.

We've gone through this before, but given that the minimum wage has stayed static for a decade while inflation has not, today's five dollar an hour people are already making less than that.

it does not fix the problem of poverty

Nothing "fixes" the problem of poverty. But I'll bet if we polled America's minimum wage workers, they'd find your argument unconvincing by margin approaching 100%.

Jon, your response is like holding your fingers in your ears and singing "la la la I can't hear you" in the face of evidence, real evidence, contrary to your ideological conclusion.

But you know that already, and you've previously stated that you know what you know and no facts are going to get in the way of that. Anyway, I'm curious, do you turn down raises at work, so as not to inflate the currency?

lets just agree to disagree here.

but we can all agree that the goddamn war sucks away a hundred fold more from us than this or anything like this. we can all agree that the reputation of america left by george w harms american exports and products far more than anything a warm-hearted democrat congress can do.

Never forget my grandfather's advice: Son, never trust a southerner. Should you have business in Connecticutt, keep a hand on your wallet.

He also told me that evil people are not necessarily stupid. Make of that what you will.

Jon, I'm with you on this. The minimum wage is great news for those with jobs, but is a roadblock for those not in the workplace - the young and difficult to employ, and so further locks in poverty.

It also plays into illegal employment of undocumented workers - encouraging scofflaw behavior by employers while undermining any bargaining power of undocumented workers with respect to abuses.

In any case, my understanding is that this federal law applies only to federal workers, so it is just a pay hike to current workers and a further tool for the federal government to lure workers from the productive economy. Since the Congress, in theory anyway (little things like $500 billion in emergency spending on wars, and blackbox spending on military and intellegence aside), controls federal spending, there is little practical meaning to this vote.

Slouching Tom, you are incorrect. The minimum wage is not restricted to federal workers.

Anyway, I'm curious, do you turn down raises at work, so as not to inflate the currency?

I'm guessing the answer to that is no, but then his raises aren't mandated by the federal government, either. They're given to him voluntarily by an employer who thinks his services merit them.

lets just agree to disagree here.

Sure. And the Montgomery Burns line cracked me up.

I used to be opposed to the minimum wage. Then I had a job where thats all I was paid. Laboring 8 hours and coming home with less than $40 will do amazing things for your perspective on income inequality.

in the end, 7 dollar an hour people wil still only be able to buy at today's five dollar an hour.

If this is really why you are opposed to min. wage hikes, then how about this: we index minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index, that way it doesn't go down (in real terms) each year, like it did for the last 10 years, and it doesn't outpace normal inflation, thus not contributing to general inflation.

But of course, I doubt this is the real reason you're opposed to the "hike"...

This may or may not apply to Jon, but most libertarians aren't opposed to a minimum wage because of rational economic reasons. They are opposed because it's part and parcel of the grand ideology and once you start throwing away this or that piece of it, the whole thing comes unraveled really quickly. Therefore, one can never admit that the government succeeds at anything, that the evidence of minimum wage hurting low-income workers is non-existent, that Social Security has been wildly successful at lifting the elderly out of poverty, that Medicare is entirely more efficient than any private health insurance company in America, that our food and medicine supplies are vastly safer than they were before the FDA, etc.

HEH HEH HEH. I'VE TURNED INTO "ALL CAPS MAN!!" GRRR. ISN
T THIS OBNOXIOUS!?!? BUT SERIOUSLY, I AM OPPOSED TO THE WAGE HIKE BECAUSE I WANT TO KEEP THE POOR MAN DOWN, IN HIS PLACE. IN FACT I HATE POOR PEOPLE. F*** EM ALL.

NO, REALLY,

But seriously, I am opposed to it on a basic level: it is an abuse of State power that benefits, mostly, the political class, not the people whom the political class claim to help. MW is only a small and comparatively innocuous example. But it is still an example. It turns people into criminals who are not criminals. It threatens to lock businessmen in cages for failing to submit. It is still the initiaion of force against people who are only trying to do business and trade low wages for low-skilled labor.

State Power is my enemy. It is the enemy of mankind. Nobody kills more people either blatantly or indirectly than the governments that claim the exclusive right to rule the human race via the so-called "will of the people."

______________________

If this is really why you are opposed to min. wage hikes, then how about this: we index minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index, that way it doesn't go down (in real terms) each year, like it did for the last 10 years, and it doesn't outpace normal inflation, thus not contributing to general inflation.

But of course, I doubt this is the real reason you're opposed to the "hike"...

Posted by: HemlockEcho at January 12, 2007 12:16 PM

State Power is my enemy.

Unaccountable power is my enemy, whether it be government power or that of someone or some group with more money, connections, etc. than me.

Here in the US we have achieved, through a combination of luck and generations of hard, hard effort, a government that is pretty accountable as governments go. And it's immeasurably more accountable to me and people like me than, for example, the corporation that owns the chemical plant upstream and wants to dump whatever they feel like in the water supply, or that owns sweatshops and wants to drive wages down to misery levels, and kill or intimidate any workers who attempt to organize to bargain collectively.

In the case of the minimum wage, the government is acting on behalf of the lowest paid workers, who are generally in positions where it is difficult or impossible to organize or bargain effectively, in order to keep their real wages from continually dropping. I have no problem with such a use of government power.

Perfectly put M/tch M/lls.

Posner and Becker have a WSJ op-ed out on minimum wages. Some excerpts and commentary here.