Why we need a mandatory living wage:

[Dystopia]

Another problem with raising minimum wage that I believe no one has mentioned yet is that it can cause people to be fired - You can force employers to pay a minimum, you can't force them to not fire someone - If they reach the conclusion that the new minimum salary is too much, they'll fire people - That's how it works

Slipped through the cracks, but I just have to say "and"? Perhaps we don't need 50 minimum wage burger flippers per square mile eh? Let em fire folks, that's just their business autocorrecting towards it's new market. Maybe that'll free up some labor for more productivity elsewhere, eh? If the margins on their model are to slim to allow a human being to live a life removed from poverty - I'd say it's a shitty business model. If they can't afford to hire enough people to even stay afloat, oh well, the service/product is clearly too expensive. We're subsidizing those hamburgers with our wage laws. Of course cutting them off of the bottle would be rough - hell, they seem to have forgotten how to even engage in business without a system in-pocket.

But, all of this hinges on my thinking that the market should work for us, not the other way round. If the market delivers me goods that can only be produced by breaking the backs of the less fortunate, It needs to be fixed, and I damn sure don't want to find myself on the shittyend of that market. I'm not going to be content with a system that does this just because I happen to be on the right side of the velvet rope (for now).

Maybe that wouldn't be a problem in the US - But in some European countries that possess a high (20% or more) unemployment rate it is unwise to allow more people to be fired - You nailed it by saying the market should work for our benefit and not the other way around