> You're sayig that minimum wage robs people of ability to get a foothold in the economy? Please enlighten me how "getting a foothold" works for people that have to work several jobs just to barely keep afloat?
I explained why already.
(1) If their value to an employer is less than the miminum wage, then that's going to contribute to unemployment, because an employer would now rather pursue automation or some other solution, or simply go out of business. That's what happens when you fix prices. This robs those people of the ability to get that first job that they can leverage for better opportunities later, and pushes people to drug dealing (which pays worse than minimum wage most of the time) and so on. It is terrible for social mobility and keeps people stuck at the absolute bottom.
(2) Domestic unskilled labor is now uncompetitive with foreign unskilled labor. The government has effectively banned domestic unskilled labor from working those particular jobs which means manufacturing moves overseas and benefits foreign unskilled labor instead. This devastates communities that used to function on the back of manufacturing.
> What about if a bunch of people come together and agree this is a good thing?
Democratic != not authoritarian.
Internment of Japanese was done by democratically elected representatives, and it was authoritarian.
> keep slaves or indentured servants
You can frame it like that, and I can point to communities that have been devastated and people that are chronically unemployed because of these kind of supposedly well-intentioned laws that fix prices. Who has the real moral high ground?
1. If a business cannot pay its employees a living wage, it literally doesn't matter if you decide that "an employee's value is less than the wage".
2. If a business cannot pay a living wage, and has to cease existing or has to automate, let it cease to exist or automate.
3. "Cannot compete with third-world countries that offer shit wages and shit standards of living, and are ruthlessly exploited" really isn't an argument you want to present when advocating against minimum wage.
4. Price fixing !== setting minimum wage to a level that lets people, you know, live.
This is fairly ruthless towards the victims of this ideology - those that live in the communities left literally destroyed after manufacturers pulled out and those trapped in chronic unemployment.
You can use emotive and loaded terms all you want (slavery, indentured servitude, exploitation), but the real-world negative human consequences and rather racist outcomes of these ideals are on full display for everyone to see.
Sorry but that's moving the goalposts to safety nets. We're not talking about that.
Minimum wages still cause many of those negative human outcomes (chronic unemployment, lower mobility, rural towns full of unemployed people, and so on) even with safety nets. Safety nets + no minimum wages would provide a much better humanitarian outcome than safety nets + minimum wages.
And even if it didn't (which it does) this ideology is still responsible for significant human suffering and racist outcomes in the US right now, and is being pushed by zealots irrespective of this suffering.
This is fairly typical of ideologies, no matter the actual human toll, the ideological vision must come first. I suggest you to visit a town that has faced factory closures and see the actual human toll to make this all a little less abstract.
(1) If their value to an employer is less than the miminum wage, then that's going to contribute to unemployment, because an employer would now rather pursue automation or some other solution, or simply go out of business. That's what happens when you fix prices. This robs those people of the ability to get that first job that they can leverage for better opportunities later, and pushes people to drug dealing (which pays worse than minimum wage most of the time) and so on. It is terrible for social mobility and keeps people stuck at the absolute bottom.
(2) Domestic unskilled labor is now uncompetitive with foreign unskilled labor. The government has effectively banned domestic unskilled labor from working those particular jobs which means manufacturing moves overseas and benefits foreign unskilled labor instead. This devastates communities that used to function on the back of manufacturing.
Democratic != not authoritarian.Internment of Japanese was done by democratically elected representatives, and it was authoritarian.
You can frame it like that, and I can point to communities that have been devastated and people that are chronically unemployed because of these kind of supposedly well-intentioned laws that fix prices. Who has the real moral high ground?