LogFAQs > #885790790

Smarkil posted...

So you're agreeing that it's better to let the market handle it than the government coming in and forcing businesses to pay more.

Ideally, yeah. When letting the market handle it means people work 40 hours a week and still starve, though, that's a problem. In that case, the system breaks down because employers have too much power (namely, they can manipulate people's desperation to pay them less than they ought to). It's not a free market when wages are an absolute necessity, because prospective employees don't have the freedom of choice that's needed for a market to be free.

That's why I'm a big fan of the idea of a basic guaranteed income. Mandating a higher minimum wage isn't going to be a problem for big corporations like the Walmarts and the McD's that always get cited in these cases, but it is for smaller startups that actually can't afford more than minimum wage for their employees, and that just breeds oligopolies. In contrast, if people are guaranteed to have enough money to survive, there's no need for any sort of minimum wage, and employers can set wages with the intent of being competitive in a proper supply-and-demand environment.

Smarkil posted...

Then I guess they're gonna have to figure their s*** out.

And why should they have to hate their life in the interim? America is not a poor country. There's no reason to expect people to content themselves with third-world conditions, even temporarily.
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