"They'll just raise prices if thy raise the minimum wage."

[Mister Agenda]

Which is funny, because I'm guessing Alpha Male's job description is either Janitor or Handyman.

Those are perfectly honorable occupations.

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$1 a week? Just think how much the greedy corporate criminals could make then!

Off of Americans? Nothing. It's hard to fill a job for ranch hands at $20 an hour because it's intense work. No one will work for $1 an hour because if that's all a job is worth, we either won't do it or will automate it. $1 a week is probably an exaggeration anyway, in some developing countries a $1 an hour would be considered good money, though. Even in a country like that, you can make much more money if you have valuable skills. Strong East Asian countries have common pattern of sweat shop to power house. I think it's possible to skip the sweat shop phase, but it would require enormous outside investment, like paying competitive compensation to send people to school.

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There are always risks and ill effects in every policy. But there's no statistical evidence that it has much of a hazardous effect in the long run and actually quite a bit of counter evidence. Just look at our history in the US. When the minimum wage was instated and wages increased it helped create one of the most profitable times we have ever had (winning the Second World War helped too).

Historically, it has been our practice to raise the minimum wage in small increments when the economy was in a strong growth phase. As long as growth was greater than the costs of raising the minimum wage, the economy would continue to prosper. One thing about a dramatic increase in a slow growth economy: it would probably settle the matter.

Only since the gap between rich and poor has been growing again has the economy sunk nearly as low as it did during the Great Depression. I say you're duped because unless you're super rich, you're fighting on the wrong side. You should want more equality in pay too unless you're already on the high receiving end.

Minimum wage has little to do with income disparity, which I don't mean as an argument against it. The vast majority of workers are making more than minimum wage, and raising it to, say, 10.10, won't make much of a dent in that gap, which has much more to do with the top 0.1% percent getting richer than the bottom ten percent getting poorer. Much of what drives the top 10% is inflation (mostly in terms of stock options and other deferred compensation) for CEO compensation. It pays to have friends among the directors deciding your compensation package, especially if you're in a position to influence their compensation down the road. This practice basically allows them to loot their companies.

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You have to remember that a minimum wage makes it illegal for a person to sell their labor for a price which is less than that specified by the government. Minimum wage is a restriction on an individuals freedom.

I see it differently. I see it as restricting one person or small group's freedom who would otherwise even more so restrict the freedom of many, namely all the employees of that one person or small group. So actually minimum wage is expanding the freedom to pursue happiness for many people and not really hurting anyone's pursuits, except perhaps an individual who's sole desire is to consume as many resources for personal gain as possible. But to modify what one prominent Republican once said, "Corporations aren't people, my friend."

Almost all studies have shown that minimum wage hikes lead to decreased employment of economically disadvantaged people: especially black men under 25. Purely unintentionally I'm sure, such hikes have a tendency to come when employment of this demographic is increasing.

Who else is going to close it? The compassionate Wall Street executive?

Isn't it more of a question of how than who? That executive can always automate a task that gets too expensive. It's just a number: at X per hour, use people. At X+Y per hour, use automation. People respond to incentives, but a lot of the time we have no idea what we're actually incentivizing. If disparity is what you want to fix, the best way to do it is to take from the rich and give to the poor, not try to micromanage the whole economy.

Wait, so what are you advocating, that we treat ex-cons like slaves?

He's advocating giving them a fighting chance at becoming employed. You can't MAKE an ex-con work for you, you can't hire them for less than they'll agree to. If they'll work for you for six dollars an hour, that's a strong indicator that they'd rather work for six dollars an hour than be unemployed...or they're sizing your business up for an inside job. Six an hour is a lot less than I'm making now, but I'd prefer it to being unemployed. It would give me some kind of income and a chance to prove my labor is worth more or at least something to keep me going until I can find a better job (another consideration of employers when making offers is the odds the person could easily find better-paying work).

As a hirer myself, I find the uncertainty of the economy is a big drag on the economy currently. People are sticking with their jobs, my area is entry-level workers and I haven't had to replace anyone in over a year. They're afraid to take a chance on finding better work, and that sends a signal to the bean counters that they can be chintzy on annual increases. If people won't leave if you only give them a 1% raise, why (to an accountant) would you give them a 2% raise? And when my people don't move on to bigger and better things, I can't give new people a chance to get on board with my company, which is a large one with plenty of opportunities for advancement. I don't give people with no work history or special training 10.10 an hour, though. I do offer more than I got when I started.

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I'm thinking about how this negative income tax coupled with no minimum wage would work.
So everyone gets subsidized by the government to make a minimum salary. At the same time corporations can pay as low as they want. What will happen is the corporations will pay $1 an hour and the government will pick up the rest of the tab.
This smells like corporate welfare.

One simple way to avoid that would be to combine it with a minimum wage, adjusted annually for inflation. It doesn't have to be all one way or the other.