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To: antaresequity
Well if they are making $60/hour why should they complain about the cost of beer going up if the poor workers on the low end make $7/hr? I say this very unchristian. But, my Christianity and yours are sooooo different.
63 posted on 10/25/2004 7:39:16 PM PDT by philosofy123
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To: philosofy123
Minimum wage increases won't make poor workers $7/hr. It would make them unemployed. The correlation between wages and productivity is 0.996 - about as close a correlation as you can get. If they can't produce $7/hr, they won't be paid $7/hr.

Notice that the main champions of minimum wage laws are unions, whose members already make well above minimum wage. But if wages for unskilled labor (aka. unions' competition) are forced up, the unions can charge higher wages.

Think of it as Outback Steakhouse and the like lobbying for the government to set a minimum price of $8 per pound of meat sold by a restaurant. In that case it would be clear that they were trying to force fast food restaurants to increase their prices to unreasonable levels, eliminating them as competition.

Minimum wages do the same thing to the labor market that this minimum food price would do to the restaurant market - overpricing the low-quality goods to reduce competition against the high-quality goods.
81 posted on 10/25/2004 7:55:40 PM PDT by ElectionTracker
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