(November 6, 2014 at 8:04 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(November 6, 2014 at 7:56 pm)Heywood Wrote: An exaggerated minimum wage highlights the absurdity of believing a minimum wage can solve our social ills. If minimum wages add more buying power to some peoples pockets they have to hurt others. Minimum wage proponents would like you to think they only hurt the bottom line of businesses. This isn't true...minimum wage hurts the bottom line of businesses, but also hurts those whose labor is priced out of the market.
Look, I came in here to point out the absurdity of your argument: positing a scenario in which too much of a minimum wage can be a bad thing, does not say anything about the benefits of a reasonable minimum wage, because too much means "that amount which is excessive," and the argument in favor of the minimum wage is not the thoughtless "more money in da wage good!" caricature that you're actually arguing against with it. You're constructing a strawman there, and arguing poorly by failing to address the point at hand in favor of what amounts to nothing more than slinging mud.
Additionally, the argument you ended up making when taken to task on how poorly your overly simplistic snidery served you isn't even factually accurate; nations in which the minimum wage is high enough to live on aren't swamped with unemployment at a rate significantly higher than the US, and frankly, when I think of which situation is worse, the one which leaves people working and still unable to pay their bills strikes me as more impactful than the scenario you've concocted.
A minimum wage which is lower than prevailing market wages will have little or no adverse effects. If the economy in a country is particularly good, it is possible that full employment will exist despite the existence of a minimum wage. Your error is thinking a minimum wage has no effect or only positive effects when there are adverse effects as well.
