Siteadmin, Check users, nsTeam1RO, nsTeam1RW, nsTeam1_talkRO, nsTeam1_talkRW, oversight, Administrators
30,650
edits
Changes
You very seldom find poor people testifying in favor of the minimum wage. The people who do are those who receive or pay wages much higher than the minimum.
Minimum wages also distort the equilibrium for non-wage benefits, potentially causing employers to provide less training, uniforms, opportunity for promotion, and pleasant working conditions, both as a way of offsetting their losses from the wage increase and because the excess labor supply from unemployment lowers the disincentive for turnover.
Minimum wages also distort the equilibrium for non-wage benefits, potentially causing employers to provide less training, uniforms, opportunity for promotion, and pleasant working conditions, both as a way of offsetting their losses from the wage increase and because the excess labor supply from unemployment lowers the disincentive for turnover.
==Economic views==
[[Milton Friedman]] said that minimum wage laws hurt the very people they are supposed to help, that is, the people with the lowest incomes. In one example he gave, it was a form of [[protectionism]] designed to help northern textile manufacturers at the expense of textile workers in the south.
:I think the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse. Take, for example, the minimum wage, which has the effect of making the poor people at the bottom of the wage scale—those it was designed to help—worse off than before.
: If you really want to get a feeling about the minimum wage, there’s nothing more instructive than going to the Congressional documents to read the proposals to raise the minimum wage and see who testifies. You very seldom find poor people testifying in favor of the minimum wage. The people who do are those who receive or pay wages much higher than the minimum. Frequently Northern textile manufacturers. John F. Kennedy, when he was in Congress, said explicitly that he was testifying in favor of a rise in the minimum wage because he wanted protection for the New England textile industry against competition from the so-called cheap labor of the South. But now look at it from the point of that cheap labor. If a high minimum wage makes unfeasible an otherwise feasible venture in the South, are people in the South benefited or harmed? Clearly harmed, because jobs otherwise available for them are no longer available. A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.<ref> [http://jeepers1.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/a-1973-interview-with-milton-friedman-playboy-magazine/ 1973 interview]</ref>
==Political views==
==Political views==