A $15 minimum wage would hurt those it's meant to help
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- čas přidán 13. 01. 2016
- Economics: Is raising minimum wage to $15 a bad idea? Professor Don Boudreaux explains why raising minimum wage actually hurts the economy instead of improving an employee's chances of maintaining and getting a job. Learn more: www.learnliberty.org/
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Your resource for exploring the ideas of a free society. We tackle big questions about what makes a society free or prosperous and how we can improve the world we live in. Watch more at bit.ly/1UleLbP $15 minimum wage
The problem is not wages the problem is the inflationary monetary system which causes the continual increase in costs of things people need to live.Low incomes are a symptom of the disease of fiat money.
The real solution is to stop central banks from the endless money printing which enables the governments to do it's unlimited spending.
Thank you! I'm getting real tired about being the lonely voice to bring up this point. Inflation is the source of this issue.
+EDTHEWATERGUY That is a good point, but it still doesn't disprove the negative effect of a mandated minimum wage.
Ideally, both the mandated minimum wages and centralized banking system should be abolished.
TheAznsenzation
That is true but there is zero debate that money printing and government spending has caused massive inflation in healthcare,housing and education.Three of the main reasons people are broke and need a raise.
TheAznsenzation
"Money printing has much less of an effect on the money supply than you think. Government spending also has much less of an effect on inflation. The cause for inflation is almost always because the price of a commodity used in production skyrockets"
Not true. The literal definition of inflation in our economy IS the printing of money. By printing more, they inflated the money supply, which LEADS to an inflation in prices. If you create a million/billion extra anything, you have inflated that thing. In this case, they are inflating our money supply, which affects prices... inflation.
The true definition of inflation is an increase in the supply of money which usually but not always,leads to higher prices in areas that money flows to but you can also have some things go down in cost at the same time.To say the inflation rate has been low is ludicrous.Like I said earlier,just look at the cost of housing,healthcare and education.
All a result of massive money printing (inflation). Things like oil are going down in price because of high supply and low demand are not a legitimate example for low inflation.
How about the inflation argument? Excessive CEO pay? The middle class continues to shrink and the wealth gap increases. A one income household could support a family in the past, but now even at $50,000 a year it is very challenging because the cost of living has skyrocketed so much. Wages should be consistent with the rise of inflation although the government mis represents these numbers.
+thecooler68
Well the CEOs didn't print all those money. You know what I am saying.
+thecooler68 The increase in the wealth gap is entirely due to central bank policy (central planning at it's worst) and is a completely separate and very involved discussion. I completely agree that inflation is a terrible problem and I wish people understood that it is one hundred percent manufactured by policy. In a free society with no central planning, prices would 'fall' every year. Inflation is deliberate government policy.
CEO pay is not excessive, such pay is because the voting shareholders honestly believe they are getting their money's worth in terms of increased company profitability as a result of hiring the person they got. If they did not think this, they would not offer the pay they are. If you took the pay of the highest payed CEOs and divided it equally among their employees, in most cases that would amount to little more than a one or two hundred dollar Christmas bonus. That would be nice, but what would not be nice would be the pink slips many employees would start receiving that they would not have otherwise received, due to less competent management from the top.
Supply and demand baby, single family homes could support a family because only one of them went to work. Now that women work, the supply of workers went way up. A culture that supports either having a stay at home mother or stay at home father would help manage the lack of jobs. (Though individuals can’t do this, it would need to be a huge change)
Just to add to this, when business owners are forced to let go of employees to keep cost down, the employees that are still employed have to work twice as hard to make up for the lack of staff. And that can be really stressful and physically hard for those employees. And to make matters worse, when all min. wages go up, the price of everything goes up. So in the end, those employees are still working for the same value of money that they were before, but now they have suffer more for it.
I can understand that. There are times when, where I work at now, I have to load two skids from two different lanes. It can be hard to keep up sometimes, as sometimes I'll get lucky and get a fast lane and a slow lane, but there have been times when I've had two fast lanes, and it gets hard to keep up. I mean, you could be putting a sticker on one box, and you look back, and there's like four or five boxes on the other lane needing stickers as well. True, it's not as bad as other situations, but given how early in the morning I have to wake up, and how long I work, it can take a toll on ya.
Foxboy 614 So you work in a warehouse? I feel for ya. My sister used to work for FedEx, and now her back is messed up pretty bad. She'd push herself too hard trying to keep quota.
I'm currently a seasonal temp at Technicolor. I help load the boxes onto skids so they can be shipped out, or fold the boxes closed so that they can be taken to another section of the wing I work at so another group can handle them. Some days it goes really slow, but others it goes by what feels like 10 miles a second. I may be exaggerating, but it does feel that way at times.
Australian Unions did not understand it.
Well here's an idea, why not get rid of the capitalist pigs and run these busniesses democratically? We don't need owners.
How can something so simple, explained so well, here, be so misunderstood by so many?
I think we need to raise something first before minimum wage
The imagery with the balloons as jobs, the employees holding them, the needle as the minimum,... That was just brilliant!
Well, it's presented as simple but with little to no thought, anyone can agree with any argument. I want to tackle one thing in this video, for instance. He states a study (paid by Republican Neo-Cons) that states that boosting minimum wage kills jobs, but no other sources. On the other hand, I can find another study (paid by Democratic Socialists) stating that the overall increase in wage has had almost no real effect on employment status since the 1800s. I haven't done any extensive research yet, but I can say this, I don't know what's right or wrong yet and these cute cartoons do nothing but talk down to us to prove their point. If it's misleading or a false premise then it's not "something so simple" as much as it is that we the people they are lying to are "so simple".
@@CoolDudeProducts If you enjoy videos of debates, you can find one online with Russ Roberts about the minimum wage that is somewhat good. If you want detailed reports, not just simplified explanations, they aren't hard to find. What I think you will find is that, when the minimum wage is raised, but not significantly above the prevailing minimum market wage, it has little effect on overall employment levels in that area. However, these reports rarely recognize the effects of closures, people getting work in other areas, etc. Still, good hunting!
On a side note, there is a very straight forward proof that even the government knows that the minimum wage makes the least productive people less hirable. The mentally disabled are exempt from it. If the minimum wage didn't hurt the least capable people's employment prospects, that exemption would be cruel, not humane. Similarly, the history of the law itself, which was to designed to keep cheap black laborers from out bidding white workers in the north, also illustrates the proof that the law keeps people out of the workplace. There are dozens of facts like this that all add up to the same thing - this is a way for the meddlers to gain political points at the expense of the least skilled and experienced people in America, who are being told this is all for their benefit.
If you want another interesting/odd source, of info, look for a video by searching for "Peter Schiff Daily show truth". Just skip the first 6 minutes. It is an informative explanation at how dishonest the Daily Show is and some interesting information about the minimum wage from a famous hedge fund manager.
Because it's obviously not accurate.
A 15usd minimum wage will work for a short time, but you'll eventually be right back where u are
Not true stop spreading lies.
Not true a 15 doller wage yes will increase inflation but bot enough to make it the same and small minimum increases over time
finally.... someone who gets it.
the force is strong in this one
We NEED to change things while it's worth a little more and stop being slaves to the wealthy
@@Reynoldsrobert I've never got a job from a poor person.
What do you think? Should we raise the minimum wage? Join us for LIVE discussions of the minimum wage debate Friday, January 15th at 1:30PM (EST) and Tuesday, January 19th at 2:30PM (EST) on Periscope: www.periscope.tv/LearnLiberty
I personally believe that increasing automation will inevitably drive large swaths of the population out of nearly all low skilled jobs. There's no law of economics that says the number of jobs needs to be greater than or equal to the number of humans on the planet.
+Kyle Silver You are right and you are wrong. You are right that increasing automation will drive increasing numbers of low skilled workers out of jobs, but that is entirely due to the minimum wage not giving them access to yet other jobs. In a free society such automation would cause prices to fall, such that the lower wage low skilled people might make would still buy as much as they used to be able to before the automation. Sadly central bank policy (that is central planning of the worst sort) is to not let prices fall, so this benefit does not confer in our current society.
You are wrong about there being no law of economics that would create jobs. Again, in a free society where the government was not trying to regulate and micromanage everything, there would be an infinity of potential jobs. The only question would be whether or not people would be willing to work those jobs for the wages being offered. A free society would have full employment in that everyone who was willing to work would have work. They might not be making as much as they would like, but virtually nobody makes as much as they would like, we all want to make more than we do. The trick to making more however is simply to be 'worth' more, increase your job skills, work harder, work smarter, etc..
+Anthony VP I did not mean to imply that people would not be replaced by automation in a free society. They most definitely would. However in a free society other jobs would be available, albeit likely at a lower wage, as in a free society there is literally an infinity of potential jobs. A free society however also does NOT have a government deliberately manufacturing inflation. This is the real killer with automation.
In a free society, automation would result in lower prices for the goods and services the automation is providing, usually substantially lower prices. The overall effect is that prices would fall faster than the lowered prevailing wage the displaced workers get, meaning despite it all, everyone would still be better off. Minimum wages (and other regulations) however mean that displaced workers cannot easily find new jobs because it is illegal for them to work for lower wages. Simultaneously the deliberate government policy of not letting prices fall but instead to manufacture inflation means that the benefit of the lower cost goods and services of automation does NOT get passed on to the low paid workers.
Automation in today's world is only a problem because of government. It would not be a problem in a free society.
There are two possible solutions, one is almost impossible, and the other is highly improbable. The impossible solution is for the government to wake up, understand the realities of economics, repeal minimum wage laws and the regulations that impede demand for labor, and stop the insanity of manufactured inflation. The highly improbable solution is to institute a basic income guarantee, which is an entirely different discussion.
+Anthony VP Basically it is a result of infinite needs and finite means. There is an infinite need for massage therapists (for instance), but most people have finite means to employ such services. If the overall prices for goods and services fall but they fall faster than people's wages, then people will have more means to pay for things they could not previously afford. It is precisely there that the new jobs come from. With those extra means, people hire more massage therapists, and every other sort of job that is not suitable for replacement by automation.
+Anthony VP "Message therapists have to go to at least 2 years of college..."
Part of the solution is to get government out of the way. It is completely absurd that someone wanting to offer massage to people should be required by the government to pay a college for two years. The whole point of pretty much everything I have written on threads to this video is that the problem is one that is manufactured by government and the solution is to get government out of the way.
I used massage as an example. I am quite certain that if I were to use some other example, you would nitpick that too. I have better things to do than to argue nitpicking.
I just did a report over the same topic, I had almost every one of your topics in it!
+McKinley Mickelson We hope your report went well!
+McKinley Mickelson
Be sure to comeback here after you get out of college and have to pay student loans, house loans, car loans, mandatory purchase of health, car, and house insurance.
At witch point you'll be interested to know these people doing talks on how lazy and entitled millennials are, in their time a full college tuition rarely exceeded $5,000 and there was no mandatory purchase of anything.
But truly baby boomers were entitled, they ran up prices to keep living big, put the country in debt, and plan to retire on your generation's labor which they reduce the size of it with birth control.
But then if you ask them, minim wage should go away and so you just have more jobs!
As if thermodynamics would be violated and now there was more money out of nowhere!
Ramiel yes. exactly. Prices went up because the government got involved. Those college graduates went to school under the assumption from the government that they would be able to borrow money, go to school, graduate, and then find a high paying job for a degree that no one cares to hire someone for. And by the way. the government is planning on a student loan forgiveness, which will cost taxpayers at least $100 billion dollars. How long do you think our country will sustain itself at the rate of government spending contributing to the national debt? why are we giving 200 million dollar's to France for a shitty deal? if you were in debt and say your first cousin from New York calls you for a loan to pay for a monthly car payment, wouldn't you think to yourself no?
Been trying to tell people this for years and they don't see it right now still as its happening.
When I was working at a home improvement job, they started reducing employees through attrition and put a job freeze. This not only made us work twice as hard but, we heard complaints from customers of customer service dropping drastically. Our company started employees way above the minimum wage.
I also agree with many comments about trying to explain the disadvantages of increasing minimum wage to $15 and it fell on deft ears.
When did you start the home improvement job and where
Sounds like you were understaffed, not over-payed.
I literally explained this to someone yesterday and they told me i was brainwashed when it's basic economics 101
@Matthew Guyton Hes basing his arguments on old neoclassical ideas. Look at Empirical data about jobs losses and job creations. European countries have great data
@@kingsleyobayuwana No, actually he's not. The research is literally overwhelming (in all countries) that minimum wage laws are entirely harmful to workers and result only in disemployment. The empirical data completely bears this out. Only a tiny handful of methodologically unsound "studies" (card & Kreuger; Doucouliagos & Stanley; Dube, et al; the London "study") pretend otherwise.
@@FletchforFreedom So what’s your solution? Keep the slavery wage to make sure the rich get richer and poor get poorer forever? What a moron you are. A boot licker for the rich.
@@angelgjr1999 I am not responsible for you being a blithering idiot (as anyone using the imbecilic phrase "slave wage" must be). In fact, your entire reply is idiocy from beginning to end. First of all, it is economically impossible to underpay workers. Workers in the (abundantly evident) competitive market for labor are paid the risk adjusted marginal revenue product of the labor services they provide or, in layman's terms, what those labor services are *actually worth.* The way to increase one's pay is to increase the value of the labor services provided (which workers do all the time with education and experience). The result of this is that the market makes the rich richer and the poor ... *RICHER.* (the Marxian concept of "exploitation" having been completely debunked - along with every other aspect of Marxism - more than a century ago. When someone with your degree of aggressive ignorance calls me a "moron", I simply consider the source. You're pathetic.
@@FletchforFreedom People are underpaid though. Look at teachers and people who work in preschools. You really think 4 years of college is worth 30k a year? No. You think firefighters are worth 25k a year? They’re worth much more than that. At to that the fact that the rich will outsource the job just to save some money.
You are indeed a moron, for being a worshipper for the rich. How do you think Jeff bezos became the richest man in the world? He owns a monopoly market and screws small businesses.
It is very possible to underpay workers. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a magatard try to argue that it’s impossible to underpay workers.
Morons like you are the reason why the USA is behind every other industrialized nation.
This is true, as an employer if the minimum wage increased I would probably have to fire an employee and do their job myself or pay the other employee to work extra hours. And the employee I would fire is the younger less experienced employee.
Graham Green
If they only increased minimum wage on larger businesses then I would still have to increase my wages in order to compete for good employees.
Graham Green
I dont waste my time playing the blame game.
Graham Green
You get nowhere just by blaming people for problems. The issue is much deeper than any one or group of individuals, no single person or organization is to blame.
+RubberJunk1
Then you need to do another business that is more lucrative.
Anybody that pays minimum wage which is already low, really is subsidized partially by that person's family and the government.
Think about, if there was no program for food stamps or the worker had a family, you couldn't be in business...
Your business is artificially created or sustained by government subsidies in the form of food stamps or nice parents feeding your employees...
"Then you need to do another business that is more lucrative." Quite possibly the most stupid thing I have ever read, and ive read 50 shades of grey.Ramiel
I don't agree with Federal Minimum Wage laws. I do think that each state should have its own minimum wage however. 15 dollars in Tennessee where I live goes a lot further than 15 dollars in LA or New York. Each state should take into account the average cost of living in its area, and set a living wage based on that. The job economy is fairly strong where I live, and wages are competitive, but I can't speak to other areas of the country.
Also, lets not pretend that these massive corporations can't afford to pay their workers more. Wage stagnation has been an observed reality for the last 30 years, whilst CEO compensation has skyrocketed. Don't tell me they don't have the money. Yes, it would hurt smaller businesses, but along with minimum wage reform we can also opt to reform business taxation to relieve the burden of taxes on the business while increasing the buying power of the average citizen.
each state has its own minimum wage as well as cities, for example the minimum wage for the United states is 7.25 USD per hour that is the lowest any city can have but California has a minimum wage of 10.00 USD per hour so in this case California doesn't need to worry about it as its own minimum wage is way above the national minimum wage, furthermore the city of San Francisco has a minimum wage of 13.00 USD per hour which is almost double the national minimum wage and still significantly higher that the state. What the nationwide minimum wage does is it guarantees a certain standard of living for all working Americans, you have probably heard in political speeches how families have received an increase in wages in over a decade, this is the method in which the government ensures that people aren't taking a full-time job and still aren't able to make ends meet.
in terms of my opinion on the matter $15 seems a little high given that its more than double the current standards while in some areas $15 is an appropriate minimum wage it may not be everywhere so it's probably not the best idea, $10 would probably be more appropriate. that being said I'm for a higher minimum wage.
The problem isn't whether they CAN pay a higher minimum wage, it's whether they would WANT to.
I've never heard someone address that it is not a static number. It is a negotiable wage, but if you start at $10 you land at $8.50 and make no progress.
In my opinion, I agree. The federal government should have a guarantied minimum standard of living wage. Then each individual state, county, then town. I don't know how this would, should, or could work. It's just an idea.
avatarofcloud agree😁😁😁😁
Been pointing out the same fact to many people since the start of the movement I am still a minimum wage worker as a student I studied and understand what raising minimum wage would do. The problem is to make people convince the theoretical prediction because naturally it seems you are making more money but in reality you are not you are just getting the feeling that you are making more when the value is worth less and less.
Meanwhile as a student your bootlicking the rich and willingly accept that you will live in strudent debt for years to come because you actually believe businesses cant afford 15 dollars an hour meanwhile
A mcdonalds in norway can pay 20 dollars an hour (non minimum wage) as well as benefits like healthcare and paid maternal leave and still be sucessfull
But you mean to tell me busiensses here like fast food who get more revenue due entirely to american diet cant afford its workers a living wage
If you cant afford your workers a living wage you shouldnt be in business pure and simple
If your a worker working as a store manager and your in the same boat as us
Do us all a favor and speak the fuck up
Oh yeah and salaried jobs at fast food resturants can fuck off
They take up much needed hours for newer members who some of which join because they actually need work
Then you have the fact that
Most americans are underemployed and have to work multiple jobs just to feed their family
Fucking stop ok just stop bootlicking the rich corporate pricks
This isnt true, yes the price may rise abit with the added cost of production, but most firms( especially ones that sell price inelastic products) will not want to increase there prices as people will stop buying/go to competitors. So the minimum wage is just really re distributing the money in the ceos pocket and putting more in the workers. Obviously if u put it two high it wouldn’t be great but a high minimum wage is not a bad thing
Elastic*
Minimum wage isn't supposed to support a family. It's just entry level for inexperienced people to get a foot in the door.
+vexx506 But unfortunately, minimum wage is used to support a family and unless you have another plan to help those in need, this may be the best way to help them out.
+oisin skinnader Very few minimum wage workers are the primary source of income for their family.
+oisin skinnader
I have a solution that will exponentially decrease the amount of people supporting a family on minimum wage. Bar single mothers from applying for welfare. They must have a spouse. Boom instant 2 parent households.
+oisin skinnader This is a straw man argument. Why does he need a plan to help those in that situation?. Nearly all of those people are in that situation because of decisions they make. They choose that situation, getting them out of it is like forcing a way of life on someone. If you only make minimum wage, don't start a family (you choose if and how and how many forms of prevention to use in case one method fails). If you are still making minimum wage after a short amount of time, then you are doing something wrong or you are at the wrong job. Again, you choose the amount of effort you give that job or stay at a job with no potential to improve. I've been in the situation of raising a family and losing my well paying job. After a few months of searching for something in my field, I got a job at minimum wage. Within 3 months I was being promoted. I later found something in my field, but the hard work I put in at a low paying job got me out of minimum wage fairly quickly.
+oisin skinnader No, actually, it isn't and even if it were how is putting them out of work :the best way to help them out"?
Thank you for getting back to your core competency!!! Keep up the great work!
You should have talked about inflation and the Fed. There wouldn't BE a minimum wage debate if that were rectified.
there's also the fact that if you raise the wage, then what happens to those already making that minimum? they'd have to be paid more for their time then as a consequence no? where will that extra money come from? out of thin air? this doesn't happen in a vaccum, and people don't grasp that.
ajk Those who made the minimum wage before it became the minimum see no wage increase typically. It's a slap in the face to those that worked for years to get raises, and now a person with no experience makes as much as they do.
+omar suarez But, of course "they" won't "go from 8 or 9 to 15$"; they'll either see a 50% cut in hours to go with that 80% increase or find themselves on the unemployment line (going from 8 or 9 to 0) as has been the case every time in the past. How will you pay your rent when a price floor set above the value you can provide reduces your income to zero?
+omar suarez Ah, yes. There is nothing more monumentally ignorant of economics and even the most basic business concepts than the notion that employers hire as many workers as they need to run a business and that doesn't change based upon the price for labor. Businesses will happily employ as many people as will make them money ... and not one that won't. It really is amazingly inept. That hikes in the minimum wage have resulted in nothing bit disemployment, most notably job loss, is an absolute fact. You really haven't the slightest clue what you;re talking about.
I hear this and the Idea that supply drops off a lot, but if everyone is making more why would supply drop? Why can a business never take a bite out of profit to make it so that you can afford to pay your car note and rent? If you are for less and less being distributed you are safe in your argument but if you are for better distribution this is one of the only methods to force that kind of change.
I like how the exact opposite happened in 2021. With a record level of people leaving their jobs for greener pastures, not only did it become hader to actually land a job, but starting wages actually fell for a few months, and only some companies are adjusting to higher than before the pandemic.
What this tells me is that some companies care about short term profits at the expense of everything else, and are thus too irresponsible to govern their own minimum wages. Either the wage must be mandated or the companies should be allowed to fail. You simply cannot have both.
Yup!
Companies that are dumb enough to do that wouldn't survive in the economy long anyway. Choose the latter. You're exactly right in that it's *some* companies, but employees and people looking for jobs have choice, too, and most people aren't going to look at a job for $1 an hour cleaning toilets and be like "Yup, sounds liveable to me!"
@@danielplainview2584 I am currently working a job that pays so little that I need to borrow from friends to afford my rent, because in my dad's words, 'some money is better than none.' So long as the unexpected happens and people are desperate, low paying jobs will always exist. Their instability comes from the fact that people like me are putting out applications daily for higher paying jobs, and as soon as I get one, the chances of me staying with this company are near zero.
I dislike how people fail to realize that it doesn't matter what the companies think, a company can't just say "oh i want to save costs so I'll pay employees 1$/hr", the market ensures that won't happen because there are other companies willing to pay more. If wages didn't rise maybe it has more to do with the fact there's idk... A virus killing millions, creating shortages, lowering demand, and causing lockdowns?
@@Alejandro-ti5cp Ah yes, well in that case, if the company can no longer afford to pay their employees, then it should be allowed to fail, and if it happens to every business in a sector, then the entire sector must be allowed to cease to exist. But we don't live in a free market, we live in a 'too big to fail' market. This results in a situation where large companies can hemorrhage money until the cows come home, while smaller companies struggle with those artificial market forces.
The end result is that if the large company can make a cheap product with disgustingly cheap labor, then so long as a few people are willing to work said wages, they will crush more sensible businesses with bargain prices, forcing the smaller businesses to follow suit or go bankrupt.
Of course, you can only undercut so much before workers balk, but if you do it slowly enough, or let inflation do it for you, hardly anyone will notice until it's too low to pay rent and buy food at the same time, and at that point, good luck finding a business that pays more than a dollar above said mega-corporation's starting pay.
Trying the same thing over and over again will never lead to a different result. Instead of advocating for a higher wage, we can lower taxes, remove regulations...etc. I completely agree with this video.
Lower taxes doesn't work for big businesses. They need to pay higher taxes since they are recieving more.
@@gregbaxter2942 you are the idiot...the more money consumers have to SPEND....the higher consumption and the more workers are needed! TAKE A FKN CLASS!
This guy does not talk about inflation. He says raising minimum will increases prices but cost of living has increased for years with no change to minimum wage since 2009. When you're living under the poverty lowering taxes will only give you a couple hundred dollars a year increase. A possible solution would be to increase the wage alongside inflation. (Progressive Increase)
This showed up as a commercial for a COMPLETELY unrelated video, but it was so interesting I actually ended up watching the whole thing.
Some ppl just don't understand how an economy works. It wont matter what min WAGES are it will always revert to the same situation in time.
I’m making 14.60 when I first started for a care giver...and I was getting ¢40 more when working for a farmer
Raising the minimum wage to 15 an hour is like using duck tape on a leaky pipe.
the problem is no one us fixing the pipe so we keep having to use duck tape.
@@I77AGIC thats because everyone's lives are different. Some because of decisions we make . In order to fix this problem this country would have to dictate everything we do so we can make a decent living . A single parent living in California would have to make over 30 an hour with just one kid .
@@I77AGIC think about it . How often does the average American actually finish school and have kids when they're ready and no get divorced? It's not very common. So these kind of decisions are the reason why people are struggling because of past decisions we made. I'm sure there are other uncontrollable factors but this is the vast majority. Some people are with their jobs for years and never move up and complain about not making enough. You are allowed to find another job but some people are afraid of risk and sacrifice.
@@I77AGIC what people want is for businesses to accommodate them when something happens. If a young lady starts her job let's say at 15 an hour and that's more than enough for her . She's single with no kids , then 8 months after she starts working she finds out she's pregnant, should the company be responsible to give her a raise over a decision they had no control over ? Now that 15 an hour won't be nearly enough . Now what ? People want a livable wage but want to make decisions to put them in a bind and they want the businesses to make sure they have enough. If you can't remember to not put onions on my burger , you really think 15 is ideal for minimum wage ? It should be up to the company.
it's duct* guys
If a minimum wage hike ever worked, then it would have worked the first time.
who said it was supposed to be a permanent fix? it has worked every time unless you think it's some magical permanent cure
@@I77AGIC Except, of course, the (accurate) point was the fact that minimum wage laws have *never* worked (unless you mean aiding pandering politicians and helping unions by reducing competition). Not one have pay levels risen as a result - not ever.
If min wage had kept up with inflation all these years we would not be having this discussion.
With inflation, it Should be 21 bucks a hour
@kerryphillips1 most good and services are mostly produced my tech, and machines. but you need people to run those machines, answer questions, and make shoppers want to come into the store. As humans we have personal connection when talking, to a person that works at a store, then buying a product from the machine or looking for answers online.
Most of the minnimum wage people, make money from the labor.
My opinion is one of the biggest problems of the United States is this is basically a country for rich people. There are a lot of people that live comfortably and then some and They don't care how much things cost and greed exist
Minimum wage contributes to inflation.
@@damonmiller8118 Alas, your opinion is completely inconsistent with reality. The free market has been the most effective anti-poverty program ever conceived by the mind of man and, pre-shut down, worler compensation had never been higher 9and by a significant margin - the "stagnation" myth having been long disproved), unemployment, particularly for minorities had reached record lows and poverty levels had reached their lowest level in decades and likely hit record loes in 2019 (data published in Septhember)/ In addition, the US has the wealthiest "poor" in tyhe world, living better than the middle calss in most of the rest of the world (including Western Europe). The whole rich-get-richer-and-poor-get-poorer meme is utter BS.
The title of this video is asking a question, yet the video itself it CLEARLY one-sided and not objective. Excellent job in tricking me to watch it. Well done👏🏿
Except it *isn't* "one sided". It's factual. I mean they could have included the claims of the Economic (sic) Policy Institue or NELP or PERI or CEPR of Michael Reich;s drones at Berkeley bt given the fact that they have been endlessly debunked, what's the point?
It's only "one sided" in the sense that it takes a look at it from an economics perspective. Many of the things it talks about are based on economic fundamentals, stuff you'd learn in an introductory course.
There are other problems with the US's economic system, but the lack of adequate wages at the bottom of the rung isn't necessarily that. It is inadequate, yes, in terms of basic needs - and that's a problem, for sure - but raising minimum wage isn't the answer. Why? See above video.
(My solution to the problem):
The answer in my opinion should be a public, universal, and unconditional income floor, provided by the public. The more colloquial term for this is universal basic income. It's solves the business problem of minimum wage described in the video, as UBI is not provided privately, but publicly, and it also solves the other problem with minimum wage from a worker standpoint - they have the means to provide their basic needs.
You may think that this is just welfare, and you'd be right - to an extent. It's welfare, but unconditional. This gives the recipient much more power - and freedom - over how they use the money, such as the ability to start small businesses. This is perhaps UBI's greatest strength, as it's ironically pro-capitalism, despite it's social roots.
The common objection to UBI is that is has the opposite effect of what I just described - it makes people lazy. This is remedied by the other core feature of UBI: it's universal, which means that everyone gets it, no matter their status, class, income, whatever. In a more tangible sense, if you don't have a job - you get UBI. But if you do have a job, you get UBI plus the wages/salary you get from the job. Because UBI stacks with wages, it therefore also incentivizes people to look for work - because then they'd get more money!
If you'd like to learn more about UBI, there's a man you may have heard of who piloted it during his Presidential campaign, Andrew Yang. He talks all about it on his podcast 'Yang Speaks', which is on CZcams. I highly recommend you visit it if you'd like to know more.
I started out making $7.25/hr and I had to work my tail off to earn my current wages. How is it fair that I had to work my ass off to get paid more yet other people think they should get handed a higher wage without having to do the work that I did? That is completely unfair.
So no one else has to slave away their lives the same way you did or do you want the misery to continue be perpetual ?
It’s 2021 and I’m still trying to explain this to ppl.
No, a higher mininum wage law would be good.
Because this video is propaganda and BS. And you are obviously a sheep. Watch David Pakman or Thom Hartman videos on minimum wage and maybe you'll actually learn something useful.
@@thealiachekzaifoundationof3822 What we need is a Maximum wage. No one should make more than a million a year.
i want to be able to live, why should i deserve not to be able to live
@@GODemon13 u are a socialist and a communist u know that. if people coundnt make more than a million dollars a year america wont be the number one leading economy
Im curious about the whole
"Raising the minimum wage will raise all prices"
Isn't that already happening but minus the pay raise? :/
That is likely from a separate, but related issue of inflation caused by loans and debt and money printing. But increasing the wage doesn't fix those other problems. It tries to, but it doesn't solve the cause of that kind of inflation.
The increase of prices isn't due to only one cause. the increase of minimum wage is just ONE of these causes because the wage of the employees are part of the cost of production of a product or service. If the wages increase, the final price will also increase, they will not reduce their profit because if you work for no profit, theres no logic in working(For example: imagine that you have 10 thousand dollars and invest this in a business, you expect to get your 10 thousand dollars back *and more*, right? Because if you just expect 10 thousand back, why would you work in the first place? You work to get more money that you invest.)
Guilty King Not really. The minimum wage hasn’t increased in a while now. It’s not keeping up with inflation like it used to decades ago so now ppl are severely disadvantaged if they support families with minimum wage compared to before.
Cutting off the lowest rung of the employment ladder is the best way I've heard my current situation described. I'd happily work for £5 an hour. I'm at the bottom of the ladder, it wont be forever, and it's better than the fuck all I'm getting now.
I'm in process in being fired due to the increase in min. wage. Fuck. i have never understood how this video is not common sence.
Of course a 30% hike in minimum wage after 10 years of zero movement is going to cause massive upheaval. Do it like more developed countries such as Australia where minimum wage grows consistently by roughly 2% per year or so. Enough to keep on top of inflation plus a bit extra, and employers can plan for it. This video presents only the most superficial arguments on this topic..
Thank you! The argument that paying people a living wage is bull because it’s for kids coming out of high school as a first job is bull. When people have kids to feed and there’s no jobs because all the good paying jobs are overseas and people say work harder is dumb. Give everyone enough to survive
Ultimately, it is about the cost of labor versus the value of labor. No matter how small and incremental the law changes are, once the wage floor is set above the value provided by certain jobs, those jobs will be eliminated.
Minimum wage has seen benefits, but unseen costs; and the costs are always greater.
Here's another reason it's bad.
I started working as a construction contractor at $15.
You mean to tell me that I, who does labor, should be paid the same as some kid doing pizza delivery?
Maybe, perhaps, your pay should scale with the uplift?
@@AnotherLotte It won't scale, that's the problem. By raising the minimum wage you are causing inflation. The minimum wage is usually increased due to inflation. If companies are paying workers 7 and a half dollars more for the same job, you seriously think that it's not going to cause them to lose profits? When this happens, you seriously think companies are going to automatically upscale wages? And if the market eventually does upscale, due to inflation, the $15 dollar minimum wage will be worth the same as the $7.30 minimum wage. There are no positive effects from this.
@@posingagenda2445 As opposed to the inflation that has already taken place since this video was posted, we've been going through inflation regardless of this. There's been a 6.5% increase in inflation since this video was made, that's almost an entire dollar of a difference when looking at $15. $7 was worth a little more than a dollar more in 2011 than it is now. If you're telling me that we shouldn't increase to keep up with inflation then you're _actually stupid._
Also, thanks for necro-ing a 2 year old thread.
@@AnotherLotte Stop getting so angry about this dude. Do you always get this angry when someone challenges what you believe? We all know there has been inflation since this video was released. Increasing it to $15 is not a sensible policy, in my opinion. We can increase it a little, but I think that to $15 is not a good idea.
@@AnotherLotte I also said in my first comment that increases in minimum wages are due to inflation, so I don't know why you were attacking me.
I can see that happening at the very beginning for a short lived wave but long term wouldn't it allow more people the ability to pay for the $4.00 drink than the $3.00 drink due to the amount of increase in money that would go into circulation?
Only minimum wage would increase, the middle class citizens would still make the same lay
But inflation exists. Technically the minimum wage has been gradually decreasing.
Yeah so that's why you get better jobs and don't waste your life making minimum wage.
@@3P1C_G4M3R5 I don’t think enough people understand this. If they want more money they have to get a higher paying job crazy right?
If you took the orginal minum wage it would be equal to $3.25/hr in today’s money
@@3P1C_G4M3R5 Funny enough. People are doing that with a Labor shortage and these same economists say laws need to pass to encourage people to work those shitty min wage jobs.
Thanks for posting a really good video! Very interesting and accurate!
I read a lot of the comments over the past coupla years & its interesting that nobody mentions that the 1) The federal minimum wage was never raised as the inflation rate & cost of living increased, 2) The massive profit margins of most corporations & large businesses already afford to pay higher wages without raising prices IF they REALLY wanted to & still be very profitable, 3)The paychecks at the top for the people who set their own market value in comparison to the workers actually do the work customers pay the money for, & 4) Prices are already above what's affordable for most people, which eliminates spending maybe for Starbucks but not for $5 milk, $5 gas, $3 bread, $10 medication, (just like after oil costs forced price hikes but, interestingly enough, never got reduced as oil went back down… ijs) just the frequency or amounts- something that could be avoided by having more people with more money buying more so businesses make up the profit without raising prices.
Just decrease the wages so no one can afford anything and business are are forced to reset the prices of everything to be cheaper.
-Theoretically the Best Macroeconomic solution 👌
I completely agree with everything in this video. The one thing he left out is that people already above $15 will see no substantial increase in pay. Right now I make $20.50 an hour. I have been at this same job for 15 years and worked hard learning new skills, also making sure I was on time everyday, just so I could get ahead. Now if they raise minimum wage to $15 an hour I will only be making $5.50 more than someone with no skills, and no job history. I have a family, a car payment, and mortgage to pay for. There is no way I should be that close in wages as say a 16 year old with no responsibilities. Everything will go up in price to compensate for the huge spike in minimum wage. Their well being will stay about the same, while mine will get much worse.
If you're making $20.50 an hour in a job you've worked for 15 years - OUCH! Not sure how that's "getting ahead". I honestly don't know how you afford a car, family and mortgage on that. I mean, there's this saying called "gotta move on to move up" - but whatever you want to do. And your concern with inexperienced people suddenly making only $5.50 less than you - that's called "divide and conquer", meaning getting middle/lower class people to complain about each other, as opposed to the company that's screwing them. In other words, you're doing EXACTLY what the CEOs and upper class want you to do - staying loyal to a company that's probably screwing you, while complaining about those a little bit below you.
It is a simple law of supply and demand. The more you charge people for the same thing, the less people are going to buy it.
Someone needs to try living on $15 or less an hour before they arrive at this conclusion
I agree. But I am for raising mininum wage to $18 an hour & I wish people didn't call it a liberal policy because I am otherwise, far right.
I agree , I wish someone would do a challenge where they live for a month on a state's minimum wage
He literally explains how 96% of workers make more than the bare minimum. A company pays the worker based on their value to the company so they dont lose the worker to competetors. you people are too foolish and closed minded.
@SveskaLooks like someone didn't watch the video. The vast majority of workers are already being paid over the bare minimum so what's to complain about? raising the minimum wage would only hurt small businesses.
@Sveska Some jobs aren't worth $15 an hour, and some peoples work ethic sure isn't worth $15 an hour. Minimum skills = minimum wage. You're a brainlet who lacks critical thinking.
Just to add a question as well, what happens to the employee who was hired at minimum wage3-4 years ago, is a great employee, and now after the 3-4 years of hard work, is making $15 an hour? Will their wage be doubled as well, or will they now be making what an entry-level employee would make? Seems like a domino effect will cause businesses to cut jobs then.
Then that employee will likely demand a better salary, and businesses will have to raise it. Leaving them with even less money to hire new workers.
I mean we are going to have to raise wages at some point. Prices are only going to go up and in about 5-6 those who work minimum wage may have to choose between food and shelter.
Raise wages based on the individual alone instead.
Someone NEEDS to show this video to Bernie Sanders...
He doesn't believe in logic , its racist or homophibic or whatever lol
He'd get a great laugh. This is one of the more amusing propaganda videos against paying a living wage.
Strange how corporate profits have skyrocketed but they can't afford to pay workers more.
its never a matter of of if a liberal owned company can pay its employees more....its a matter of they will never ever do it because it cuts into their profits.......because liberals can never make enough money to be happy. Look at walmart....once the best place in America for customer service and to shop.....but as the company grew they became so obsessed with trying to make more and more and more profits because being the richest company in the world just wasn't good enough for them.......so what did they do....they laid off employees.....began to refuse to offer benefits to new employees......basically took away all benefits for employees that Sam Walton began that made working for them great .....and they took them away......now Walmart is easily one of the worst companies for customer service in the world and you are lucky if you can even find someone working in the store who is able to help you at all........or on the phone...and even online its hard to get real customer support in a reasonable manner of time. Walmart is now in danger of loosing it all as Kmart once did because why would I deal with being treated like trash by the over worked underpaid walmart employee who is trying to do 4 peoples jobs by themselves when I can just buy elsewhere like Amazon and say to hell with Walmart and their greed.
the minimum wage where I am is $8.05 and I'll be happy to earn that when I get a job
Depending on your location and the cost of living
Not only is raising the minimum wage a bad idea, the very existence of a minimum wage is absurd.
It simply contradicts the basic laws of supply and demand... it benefits nobody.
+j6663000 just like child labor laws benefit nobody. If a kid wants to work, who is the government to tell him he can't???
+Jack Thompson
...what are you talking about?
Did I say anything about child labour laws?
+Jack Thompson if a kid wants to work of his own free will, then why shouldn't they? I grew up choosing to work in my grandpa's shop and I'd do it all over again if I could go back.
+j6663000 It benefits the politicians who pander to the ignorant so as to buy their votes with stupid promises.
+j6663000 child labor laws are absurd.
It simply contradicts the basic laws of supply and demand... it benefits nobody.
really really bad idea. I am in uk... gypsies here who can barely speak english and have no qualifications whatsoever, who can barely even read or write, can get 7.1/h. I am looking for a very hard job in computer assisted design... how much can I get? Barely 8-10/h. Somehow, it's still easier to get a job in a warehouse.. strange
Love the video, keep up that dank work my boi
Thanks!
"1.4 million jobs were destroyed in the late 2000's when the minimum wage rose across all 50 states by an average of nearly 30%" seems to be the entire basis for this argument.
I wonder if anything else happened in the late 2000's that would have affected the national employment rate... hhmmmmm...
KingBobXIV haha true
KingBobXIV actually the Great Recession had very little to do with employment or job loss. It more so affected stock shareholders and banks that were giving premature loans to people that were unable to pay them off. This massively affected investors using ira’s, individua and index funds, and the real estate market.
@@keynight7513 than a lot of people lost jobs.
@@keynight7513 so... a lot of people lost jobs for a reason other than wage increase?
kEy NiGht Do you understand how deflationary cycles work? You can't be serious believing that the GFC didn't cause job losses and demand destruction...
Prices will go up anyways because of inflation, just as they have for the past few centuries.
Increasing the minimum wage just allows your local Walmart employee to go home to an apartment rather than a box on the side of the street.
No it doesn't. It doesn't help them. The minimum doesn't just increase their wages. The cost imposed is equally as bad to the supposed benefit. If you're getting paid minimum, then your labor is factually worth less. If businesses still profited off of your labor, then they'd of already risen your wage because of competition. The reason they're not is because your labor doesn't produce much of a profit. Forcing them to pay you more will make you a detriment to the business. They're not gonna keep you.
@@austinbyrd4164 I disagree, You're not paid based on how much value you produced. You're paid base on how difficult it is to replace you. The cost of living will rise regardless if minimum wage stays the same or not. Just look at Singapore, they don't have a minimum wage law or capital gain taxes but yet inflation has risen the cost of living greatly over the last 40 years.
@@deadcell1 Because of their central bank.
You shouldn't be paid based on how much value is produced. That value also needs to go towards the creator and management of the business on top of investors. Again, mandating the minimum doesn't help. It prices those of lower skill/capability out of the market because their labor is valued less than the wage mandated. In cases where the profits produced by the workers are still valued after the rise in wages, businesses have to make up the cost elsewhere. Such as benefits, working conditions, prices, and the quality/quantity of goods and services.
@@austinbyrd4164 exactly! Their central bank. How much more so is the USA when 40% of the money supply was printed in the last 12 months?
@PLAYSTATION 5 I've already explained that the money supply expanding is because of the central bank. Created by government. This doesn't take away the simple fact that the minimum does have the negative effects mentioned. Negative pressures on benefits, working conditions, prices, and the quality/quantity of goods & services. And/or discrimination against those of lower skill/capability.
Btw, inflation does increase wages. The bad thing about it is it discourages savings, inflates financial and asset bubbles, misallocates resources, and builds artificial dependencies on wrong price signals. Like how everyone buys a house. Why? Because it goes up in value. Then you sell it. With deflation this wouldn't happen. But that's a whole other topic.
But prices will influx regardless, if we matched minimum wage with inflation minimum wage should be around $25 an hour. Inflation will happen regardless
The script and animation for this video are the best yet.
+Zachary E. Thanks! We're glad you enjoyed it.
The stimulus check was also a good indicator: Out of the 2.2trillion, only 300billion or 1/7 of the entire stimulus were Delivered to the individual. Raising the minimum wage will have a similar effect; for every $1 that goes to raising the minimum wage, $7 will be attributed to things that will eventually create inflation in costs. In Total, your higher minimum wage will have less buying power.
Raising minimum wage does not increase the national debt and it doesnt put pressure on the fed to print more money
@@lst9701 don't confuse national debt with economy, but it does play a factor. why, because we also trade and invest with other countries,
and they do the same here. employeers are looking to grow a company,
workers are there to help grow that company, but depending on what that company makes or does, that company will be able to pay the employees what that company is worth in terms of investment.
if you work on cars for a living for example, or you help make cars, well a mechanic can make anywhere from $11 to $13 dollars an hour, which by today's standards would be around $19 to $21.
but a person who helps put a Toyota Corolla together, he might get $25 or $30, plus benefits. dept has to do with barrowing, but our government isn't the only one that racks up dept, we do it as well.
McDonald's paying $15 an hour, and they can't hire enough people! I thought you said they would be firing them???
McDonald’s is not paying people$15 an hour lol
@@MaxSnowDude maybe not in your area, but in the whole of NYS they are.
@@Reebister I’m learning about this rn. It’s called a tight labor market where workers are refusing to work. So you’d expect by raising the price floor (minimum wage) there’d be a surplus of workers,
But many workers see this as an opportunity to get a new better job and maybe $15 doesn’t cut it for McDonald’s workers
when they’ve been hearing $15/hr since 2015
Tbh that’s my take
@@MaxSnowDude yup. Although it's not been $15 since 2015, rather it was set to get to $15 in the coming years in 2015.
But that's my whole point, the video was wrong turns out raising the wage didn't cause people to lose jobs because they are still trying to hire people not fire them. It had improved lives not worsened them.
@@Reebister I agree. This video is pure propoganda
If raising the minimum wage worked, we would have only had to do it once.
The problem with raising the minimum wage is suddenly $15/hr becomes THE MINIMUM WAGE. So anybody currently living at $15/hr will now have to now live on minimum wage. The very thing current minimum wage earners are angry about having to do. Everybody else has to deal with the cost of this as well. Then those making $15/hr will be right back to being mad again... Meanwhile, the entire economy suffered to give them their fools wish.
communism in a nut shell, everybody equally poor, except the government having caviar everyday
Hailey Caine capitalism is unsustainable
Have you heard of freaking inflation
Arizona just passed the minimum wage proposition....
That's just great.
Cost of living in arizona is high, so it makes sense why... Having it in the entire us is what doesnt make sense
@@kostamersini7809 well you’re acting like minimum wages doesn’t affect prices
@@jackie-sh5of well it really doesn't when its on a state to state basis... inflation is already a thing in the us
@@jackie-sh5of yes they dont.
Denmark has a high wage. Most people make more than 15$ an hour.
Yet if you look... Macdonalds sells their burgers only for 10% more.
in San Diego minimum wage is 10.50, and food prices have skyrocketed ever since
No it's not.
+Steven Chanthavong the problem is that the top 1% AREN'T actually paying the amount of taxes we think they are. As top income earners they should be paying roughly 30-40% income taxes, but as Warren Buffet states in this article, he and most others pay under 20%: www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html Billionaire Nick Hanauer, for example, says he only pays 11% which is just slightly lower than Mitt Romney's 14%. This is insane. Obviously this isn't the only contributing cause to outrageous inequality in the US but fixing it would definitely help.
Also, most people think that all our work is being outsourced to other countries with cheaper labor, which is true in many cases, but if you look at modern technologies like the iPhone for example, 56% of the revenue goes to Japan & Germany -- 2 countries with a comparable cost of labor -- whereas only 6% goes to the US. Why is this? Because Japan & Germany produce higher quality of work. And why is that? Because Japan & Germany prioritize high quality, affordable education for ALL their citizens so they can stay competitive on a global scale. If the US had a more intelligent workforce there wouldn't be a need to outsource jobs. You should really watch Inequality for All.
Also, a gentle reminder that there actually are 4 national candidates in this election, so if you agree with historical Republican economic policies I would advise a vote for Gary Johnson. Just please don't vote for Trump. The amount of damage he could cause to foreign relations is unimaginable.
+Zach Trease Please explain why we should accept an opinion piece by a non-economist (whose assets are protected from the taxes he supports via his foundation) and a complete economic illiterate? Why should the top income earners pay 30-40% on their incomes (when no one is, the long debunked "my secretary pays more" idiocy notwithstanding)? On what basis do you have a problem with "inequality"? Are you suffering from the delusion that inequality in a market economy is somehow harmful?
+Giordan Diodato what has the 1% not paying taxes have to do with the fact that a raise in the minimum wage has led to food prices skyrocketing?
+Giordan Diodata Except, a) the 1% pay a seriously disproportionate percentage of taxes and b) "more money in the flow" will not change the value of labor which is the only thing that determines wages.
Minimum wage earners are the most likely to spend all of their income. The same dollar in the hands of a very wealthy individual is likely to get squirrelled away. The wealthy have that right, but more importantly have that privledge.
In many jurisdictions minimum wage workers need two or three jobs in order to make ends meet. If wages were set to the local living wage and/or some effort was made to make housing affordable the worker-to-job ration would approach one-to-one.
Consumers are the ones who ultimately employ people. If a coffee shop had no customers it could not employ any baristas.
The effort to set wages to the local "living wage" is done by the employer to attract employees. That's why hardly any jobs actually pay the minimum wage. In fact looking back at these posts from 2021 we clearly see NO employers are paying minimum wage except in very "progressive" places that jacked up their min. wage above the average. None of this increases what employers are able to pay, which usually determines what they pay.
All interactions between two or more parties, including employee/employer, should be 100% consensual. The minimum wage is the use of force to alter the terms of an otherwise mutually consensual agreement. To support the minimum wage is to support the notion that some individuals have less rights than others.
It's an unfortunate trend in public opinion that individuals lose their rights if they decide to form a business.
+MrSeagull People who haven't formed a business don't have the right to pay less than minimum wage either.
littlebigphil True, but proponents of minimum wage seldom think of those people. All they see is big, faceless businesses and not the individuals who own and operate them.
+MrSeagull Spoken like a true Adam Smith follower. Do you actually buy into that bullcrap? When an employer has 50 applicants for 3 job vacancies, they have more power than each of these individuals and both parties are aware of it. When it has 3 applicants for 50 vacancies, the situation is reversed. Both cases affect employment terms immensely, and does give a competitive advantage and in practice additional rights to a party.
Raising minimum wages simply because some activists want it instead of a response to inflation is a terrible idea, that's entirely true, but some basic cornerstone that gives an income which allows minimal comfort is necessary.
Without it, untrained hirelings would work 20 hours a day for a loaf of bread, as was the case during early industralization.
The status quo isn't terrible. There's no real point to straying from it drastically to either direction
There is no such thing as one party having more power over another in mutually consensual agreement, it doesn't matter if demand is in jobs or employees. The nature of price and value and its relationship to supply and demand are natural forces that arise through voluntary exchange. Just because one side finds themselves in a more favorable environment than those they deal with, does not mean that the other side is suddenly stripped of their ability to consent.
Do you have a source for that "20 hours for a loaf of bread" statement?
Sure, during the initial infancy of industrialization, people worked for considerably less than what we accept today, but that's because the only other alternative was going back to the farm and scratching out a subsistence lifestyle. To them, it was a step up and a means to improve the quality of their lives. As wealth grew, and the quality of life improved, so did the demand for productive labor, which caused an increase in the price (wages) of such labor - all without use of force.
In a sufficiently developed economy, no business owner could hope to attract and maintain any sort of productive employee without a compensation package to attract them. No matter how much they may want to lower wages, that same force of markets I mentioned above will compel them to price competitively, or they will fail.
At the end of the day, your "Status quo" (which is not sustainable long term) involves force and threats of violence to maintain.
+Lenin Vladimir Spoken like a true economic illiterate (hardly surprising given your nom du guerre and avatar). When an employer has 50 applicants for 3 job vacancies, they have not an ounce more power than any other actor in the marketplace. The position you’ve taken has been long disproved (and is, to use a phrase from here “bullcrap”). None of the circumstances you describe have any impact whatsoever. Nor is there the slightest chance that pay levels would fall (or “untrained hirelings would work 20 hours a day for a loaf of bread” which was literally *never* the case since the beginning of Industrialization or at any other time in history). Not even Engels' 1844 fairy tale claimed that.
The condition you are describing is called “monopsony” in which a multitude of job seekers results in disproportionate power for employers. I has been thoroughly disproved. Rather, because employers compete for labor, the price (pay levels) of labor services are bid up until they reach the risk-adjusted marginal revenue product of the labor services provided, or, in layman’s terms, what those labor services are actually worth [Marx’s compression of wages theory has been long debunked - along with the rest of Marxism]. Attempts to “underpay” workers results in competitors, acting in their own interests, stealing those workers away in order to make more money and leaving the original employer with prohibitive turnover costs. This has been empirically demonstrated.
As for conditions before the minimum wage (or other government interventions or the rise of union power) - that is, when the only factor was unimpeded capitalism, workers experienced a massive improvement in worker compensation (real wages quadrupled in the 19th century), working conditions (child labor was effectively eliminated beyond the family farm) and prosperity particularly for the poor and workers. Educate yourself.
Can someone please tell me what the piano song In the background is? Thank you!
this is one of the few ads that actually got me not to want to push the skip button.
This ad bothered me to be honest, since it basically was grasping straws at every point. Especially the "1.4 million jobs were destroyed in the late 2000's". The housing market crashed under the Bush administration, and they're stating it as if a 30% wage increase did this.
Minimum wage is a good way to preserve a class system in the job market by preventing people of lower class or less ability from having a job. By requiring a minimum wage, we ensure only people of a minimum caliber will be allowed to work, and people below that threshold are effectively stripped of the right to have a job.
It's like requiring people to buy a minimum value house or a minimum value car in order to keep people of a lower caliber from having those things.
+gilbet "Minimum wage is a good way to preserve a class system in the job market by preventing people of lower class or less ability from having a job. " Bingo! And the jobless "helped" by the minimum wage then collect hand outs and vote progressive! win win!
+Richard Lee, I think you are assuming that working at McDonald's or Walmart at $15/hr as a cashier, for example, is a job a college graduate would want. High skilled workers would aim higher and get a job that gives them more satisfaction or mental stimulation. I don't see how the lower skilled would be crowded out of these jobs. An employer doesn't want an overqualified worker that will leave after less a year. It'd be a waste in basic training and leadership training.
The Great Romana not sure how your comment is relevant? The point you miss is signalling theory- now there is an over saturation of degree holders employers start looking for Work Experience in their employees... and graduates have to start with a job that requires no work experience, that is at McDonalds for that wage.
Richard Lee That's another factor, but there will always be people below them who can be discriminated against by having a minimum wage.
You could probably shut out everyone who doesn't have a college degree just by raising the minimum wage to $20/hour.
Or you could raise it to $100/hour to only allow people with doctorates and MBAs to be allowed to work.
Anytime you set a threshold, you're discriminating against people who are under that threshold. That's how a screen works. It's an easy way to screen our undesirable people. People who aren't "good enough", according to that measurement.
gilbet ironic that the "factory acts" in 19th century England, often cited by unionists as a "victory for workers", was actually the establishment (nobility teaming up with the precursors of the unions, the guilds) trying to keep cheap workers and factory owners from undercutting them and moving up the social ladder.
I work for a drugstore that makes more than 600 million a year.The company has 250 employes and the pay us 7.25 per hour how can you explain that?
low skill labor = low wages its that simple. The reason the drug company makes 600 million is because they are competing with all the other drugstore company's in pricing if they were to raise wages then they would have to sell product for more then people will go else where to get the best deal and there gos all that profit. You can never build wealth working a low skill minimum wage job no matter how many times you raise minimum wage because you are just raise the cost of living devaluing the currency.
Greed. I can pay you more but why should I?
@@Mohagrus yea that’s how buffoons like you operate just call it lower skilled labor handling very expensive drugs for lots of sick people who depend on them.
@@Mohagrus I got paid $9.25 an hour to give seniors their meds I was a Med passer basically I did a LPNs job for less they don’t want to pay a nurse over $20 an hour
@@suprmekai5 It’s only low skilled until you make a mistake that leads someone into a hospital.
Periscope followup: The point I was trying to make is that there are many downsides to raising the minimum wage due to substitution effect (it makes automation financially justifiable for example), BUT we are reaching a point were basic costs to engage with our government are now major expenses for low wage earners. In Detroit, a parking ticket costs $32 to process. You might be able to reduce that somewhat by changing suppliers for billing, but there is an limit. Do we really think a democracy will be sustainable when vehicle registration, parking fines and other costs are many times the minimum wage? Does it make sense to fine someone a day's wages for overstaying a parking meter by a few minutes? In Finland, they have a notion of a day fine. This is an income adjusted fine so you get the deterrent effect without impoverishing low wage earners. The rise of de facto debtors prisons is symptomatic of the costs of government being inflation adjusted (in addition to bloat) and pricing citizens out of the market for services. The goal should be a minimum wage that ensures that citizens can participate in society and pay for government services they need. We should be willing to have businesses drop out of the marketplace or change their delivery models to pay a higher base wage BECAUSE it prevents them from subsidizing their labor costs using government assistance programs and high turnover. I agree that it is annoying to arbitrarily raise the minimum wage out of misplaced sentimentality or sense of justice, but no matter how careful we are to control government size, government costs will go up. Market failure of government service delivery is essentially lawlessness.
+John Hritz "The goal should be a minimum wage that ensures that citizens can participate in society and pay for government services they need. We should be willing to have businesses drop out of the marketplace or change their delivery models to pay a higher base wage BECAUSE it prevents them from subsidizing their labor costs using government assistance programs and high turnover. "
An interesting argument but it suffers a fatal flaw. Back up a bit.
The reason that we have those parking fines at those rates is that the cost of government grows faster than tax revenue, so its a stealth tax on "speeding" or "parking" sinners. In my state in Australia, they set up speed cameras on "lucrative" routes for enforcement.
Rather than encouraging more government intervention (and having the old woman who swallowed a fly swallow something else), we should work for less government. This makes it more affordable for everyone... because those "government services" cost a taxpayer money, they weren't free, plus overhead, plus compulsion, plus rewarding inefficiency by preventing insolvency. People often talk of "market failure" but often fail to see "government failure." My contention is government costs don't always go up, if we realise that many of the "services" government provides are vote buying and unnecessary.
Very well made. I agree with everything mentioned.
Employer possess a lot more information/power vs employee, therefore creates inequality.
This is a bit older than what I usually respond to but that position was disproved long ago. The employer must function in a competitive market competing with other employers for labor services so the individual employer/emplyee negotiation is not what determines relative power. Here, this may help:
eh.net/encyclopedia/monopsony-in-american-labor-markets/
People need to recognize the full effects of raising minimum wage.
Another thing as well that doesn't get mentioned often I think is that in businesses with tiers of jobs also have to raise the wages on higher paying jobs. If you could make the same amount of money being a cashier instead of being their supervisor as an example. It's most certainly worth not taking on the responsiblity of becoming a supervisor from a logical standpoint. Who would want the extra stress of the job if you could just do less for the same amount of money. I'm sure there are some people who would like the job and would try to advance the corporate ladder anyway, but generally businesses have to increase the next level teirs jobs as well to keep entry level jobs from having a surplus and upper teirs from having a shortage.
Teachers (require 4 yr degree)make about $16 an hour depending on where you live. Why even go to college if I can work at Starbucks for the same amount of money? It's ridiculous
#3 personally is a good point. I started at minimum wage to get experience and i cant say id be where i am today without struggling those few years.
Less jobs for better pay is a bad idea, and will neglect oppurtunities for many.
7.25/hour is not a living wage. Imagine you're a single mother of one child, who relies on public transit, in a tiny apartment, earning minimum wage. You cannot possibly pay for rent, food, bus fare, clothes (remember, children grow fast), daycare, laundry, and your bills with $7.25 per hour.
Sometimes minimum wage workers are stretched even farther, when their employer only agrees to hire them part time (which many employers do because they don't have to provide worker's benefits) so to make ends meet, workers need to get a second job, which means they use public transit even more often. Not to mention: what happens if they get sick? Or they contract a terminal illness? How will they make ends meet when they don't get paid leave?
Matthew Love I agree with you, but the argument here is that minimum wage creates artificial unemployment at the bottom. It is absolutely the fact that minimum wage is awful to live on, but there are alternatives that can bring in income supplements while still maintaining full employment such as basic guaranteed income, direct income supplements, negative income taxe or government child support, and those are the win-win situations unions and workers should advocate. Right now, we are having an overpoliticized debate where the 15$hour movement propose a policy that they sell as magic yet don't dare to sell the counter-argument.
Guillaume Giroux yeah, maybe raising the minimum wage is like fixing your plumbing with masking tape, it works okay for a while, but you know its gonna break eventually, and when it does, it won't be pretty.
Matthew Love Maybe raising the minimum wage is the awnser too, it's just not a that easy decision.
Guillaume Giroux here's another thing this ad does not address: supply and demand are inversely proportional only in a perfectly competitive market, unfortunately big businesses like Wal-Mart have a monopoly in the labor market. Wage is relatively inelastic, so essentially they can hire workers at any wage and still get fair returns.
Matthew Love Yeah, and technically also, in a perfect market with perfect rational choices and perfect information, workers direct themselves where they get the best wage (so Walmart workers move to Cosco, for example), but we aren't in a perfect world sadly. That libertarian Chicago school taught always wishes for 100% rational thinking but it rarely happens, and sometimes also, these academics tend to be allergic to interventionism, even though, with some groups of people and their behaviors (but not all of them), state dictated work yields the most efficient result, whether these academics like it or not. But still, for the minimum wage, I still wish to find an optimal solution that maximises employments (even more so with teens) and addresses poverty via other means of redistribution such as child support. Ideally.
Here is something that most people don't think about. When you raise the minimum wage, prices will rise to adjust for the added expense of labor. Now ALL people are paying more for goods. Those that made above minimum wage did not receive a pay increase. Therefore, for all practical purposes, everyone that was making more than minimum wage has now just received a pay cut. Worse, those that were only slightly above the minimum wage may now have less buying power than before the minimum wage was increased.
I’m trying to explain this to my friends and I showed em this video
Lol I just did this🤣
What about the idea that the raise in minimum wage also increase spending leading to an increase in profit which might offset or overwhelm the increased wages?
+blaze armoru they must be paid using higher wages first, so you've got the equation backwards in a way. Also, now that the profit is gone (or shrunk), the items and services will rise, defeating any increase in spending since a coffee now costs $3 instead of $2. There's no magical way for employers to pay more without shrinking profits, and less profits guarantee less employment and expansion.
+blaze armoru
You are missing several key elements of the market.
You said it yourself with the word "offset", in order to offset the increased labour costs, one of the things that companies would do is raise prices.
With an increase in the supply of money from the consumer's point of view, the demand for goods goes up, as does the price.
You end up with inflation, and a net gain of ZERO extra buying power for the minimum wage workers.
Aside from (or in addition to) raising prices, companies would eliminate jobs in order to reduce the extra burden that a forced increase in labour expense would result in.
For example, if the minimum wage is raised to $15/hour, then every job where the marginal added value is less than $15/hour would be instantly eliminated/outsourced.
The least skilled, least experienced, least productive workers, including those who are entering the job market for the first time (the very people who the minimum wage is supposed to be helping) would be unable to find a job if they are unable to provide more than $15/hour marginal added value.
In the long term, things even themselves out... but the net result is essentially zero change to the market.
It's a pointless, political exercise.
You cannot stick your finger into one aspect of the market, and expect the rest of the market to remain constant... that is the nature of markets.
The minimum wage should be abolished all together, it simply does not make sense.
+blaze armoru The employer spends money on stuff 'and' spends money paying the employee. If the minimum wage goes up, to exactly the same degree the employer is now forced to pay the employee more, the employers spending must drop by exactly the same amount. The employer cannot magic extra money into existence. The end result is that forcing the employer to pay the employee more does NOT increase spending at all. It merely transfers the spending that the employer would have done to the employee.
Peter Cohen So what you're saying is that if the employer spends say 1000 on 10 employees, a raise in wages might make that 1000 be split among 5 people after 5 gets laid off or something?
That makes sense on the surface level such as needing to keep the gains on the positive side however does that change if the corporation is already getting much gains? Essentially I'm asking if it could be possible that the end result might be a shift in where the maximum gain might be somehow instead. One example I think is how the company Ford cut a work day out so more people would purchase cars. Not sure.
Edit : nevermind. I misread that shit. Aren't there extremely rich employers that don't spend proportionately to the amount of money they have?
+blaze armoru Wealthy people do not keep their money under a mattress. They either spend it for their own consumption (a very small fraction or they do not long stay wealthy), spend it on their own business or give it to other investors to use for their businesses (and get paid dividends from those businesses). They cannot themselves invent wealth into existence they did not otherwise earn, nor does it vanish. If the cost of their employing people goes up from say a minimum wage increase, the money they pay to those people has to come from somewhere. It will typically come a tiny bit from their own consumption, mostly from what they spend in their own business and some from what they invest in other businesses.
So yes, if the cost of the wages they pay goes up, it could very well result in them laying people off. More likely if the raise was small enough, they will simply not hire anyone new, hope someone quits, and not make any new investments in the business, then pray their situation improves. It is less likely they will lay people off and more likely that new jobs simply won't get created (if the increase was small).
My original point though was that no new spending enters into the economy as a result of an increase in minimum wage, that is a total myth.
Im curious,wouldnt raising minimum wage boost certain product demands as it encourages people to spend more money?
The success of free markets isn’t just that they produce higher wages. They also deliver goods and services at a lower cost than in socialized countries and states. Raising the minimum wage forces businesses to raise prices. A rising cost of living has a disparate impact on low and middle-income individuals and families.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Most people don’t think about the impact a high cost of living has in causing income and wealth inequality. A 27-year-old here in Sutter County, CA could buy a PPO health insurance plan for $156 a month before Obamacare. A 27-year-old today will now pay $382 per month for an inferior plan. That’s an extra $2,700 a year for health insurance. We pay $1.00 a gallon more for gas than the national average, $35 a month more for food and $365 a month more for housing. These higher costs are so small in relation to the income of the wealthy that they have virtually no impact on their spending, saving and investment habits. The wealthy are free to continue investing and building wealth. By contrast, these added costs exact a heavy burden on someone earning $50,000 to $60,000 a year. People in that income bracket almost always find themselves living paycheck to paycheck with little hope of building wealth and saving for retirement or their children’s college education.
What about the elasticity for the supply and demand curve for labor no mention is made of that and whether a lot of workers would be lost or a few.
+Andy Shay
How does that answer my question what was the elasticity of demand for labor, you can't just its $12 an hour, and why should I look it up, for an economics video they should be talking about all the pertinent points.
Fun fact: The minimum wage was actually designed to keep out jobs from minorities.
This video is just blatantly misleading. The evidence is favour of minimum wages causing employment losses is becoming weaker. This is why consensus among economists on this topic has shifted. Most studies showing employment losses are methodologically flawed. Going back to Card and Kruger in 94 we have started to get studies showing that the minimum wage in fact does not lead to significant employment losses.
Unfortunately your claim has been debunked but I agree
@@WOLFM0THER What has been debunked? Since this comment Card has won the Nobel prize in economics for this research.
@@noahgoris2234 i just told u lol
@@WOLFM0THER What? If you did that comment has been deleted or something how has my claim been debunked.
Thanks for educating me
Not well appreciated is the effect rising wages has on the cost of rental housing for lower income households. Owners of residential property will increase rents, siphoning off whatever increase in purchasing power the wage earners obtain. This occurs whenever general wage levels increase but is particularly the case for rental housing which is in scarce supply at rents affordable to those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Edward J. Dodson, M.L.A.
Director
School of Cooperative Individualism
www.cooperative-individualism.org
How about lower taxes then raise wages???
Exactly, the his what they should do, and relocate gov spend.
I believe in minimum wage based on local economics. Basically a monthly salary should be 3×s the average rent costs for a 1br apartment at minimum. That is generally a good calculator for living costs. Besides competitive wages have been a major factor for businesses like chick-fil-a and publix and they have been very successful in having quick effective service to draw in more customers.
Then lower cost of living?
I wish the cost of living were lower ngl I like to spend money
Maybe, and this is crazy but hear me out, Businesses can learn to manage their own employees, and hire new employees based on experience (if the job requires it) or lack of it (if it doesn't) making a $15 min wage not only up to current inflation models, but completely manageable from the business end of any business. Call me crazy but if giving your 3 employees a $2 pay raise breaks your business, then maybe your business is not doing so good. And if you employ a large number of min wage employees, then you are production level manufacturing and those min wage employees are probably temps...and if it still breaks your business then perhaps you are terrible at business management.
Is it a bad idea??? Uh, it don't do shyt😶you force employers to raise their wages, then they cut your hours so you still aren't making anything...
But they still need people working
@@SlongestKongest And? When the price of food or gas goes up and you can't afford it, do you just spend money that you can't for them or do you rework your budget to fit the new prices? You _need_ these things afterall.
It doesn't matter in the slightest.
Just do what we’ve always done keep the wages down let the cost of living go up.
Thank you! Thank you for this video explaining why it's a bad idea! This is exactly what the people needed to hear, but this will screw over the people who are demanding for it.
I loved the little animation of the white house throwing spikes at the workers.
One point I think that your missing is that small businesses will take a big hit. While large franchises like Mcdonalds and Walmart will be able to fire people small businesses wont be aforded such actions.
You realize that if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation it would be more than $15/hr right?
How can we "realize" a factual inaccuracy. The minimum wage, even it weren't entirely harmful, adjusted for inflation has never been worth more than $11.10/hr.
Those that spout that off fail to include ALL forms of compensation, like: unemployment insurance, work related injury insurance, vacation, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.
When you include all that, which were things not even offered to most employees 50 years ago, then wages are much higher now than $20 an hour.
If you took the orginal minum wage all the way back in the 1930s and convert it into today’s money it would be $3.25 an hour
What an absolute load of ideologically biased rubbish. If you are going to have an adult conversation about minimum wage like the rest of the world maybe look around and see other healthy economies talking about consumer confidence, lower default rates lowering the cost of lending and mandated wage growth improving living standards and growing the economy. All while having a lower rate of unemployment and working poor than the USA.
Other videos on this channel are very informative, so please stop including extremist ideological lies. Yes, extremist as these lies, as well as universal health care lies have killed more people than all terrorist attacks combined.
+Michael Wheatland You needed to put a colon {:} after "rubbish" as everything that follows is nothing but. Yes, if you look around the rest of the first world, you find that the correlation between a higher minimum wage and higher historical unemployment and a lower living standard is hugely positive. Mandated wage growth has never resulted in ... wage growth ... let alone better living standards or a growing economy. No minimum wage has ever stimulated an economy. It is economically impossible. And yes the universal health care lie - that it hasn't killed more people than all terrorist attacks (and any lack of insurance) combined is quite damaging.
Not to mention it will punish anybody above the new minimum.
If I made $16/ hr while the minimum is 7.25 I'm doing pretty decent. If it becomes 15 I am basically getting demoted and my efforts over the years is basically worthless. I'll pay more for everything but have no guaranteed increase.
Now assuming I'm a valuable employee, hopefully I can negotiate for say $22/hr now.
Everybody else will do the same or be worse off. Prices are going up or number of people on payroll is going down.
Then in the end the 15/hr will be worth just as little as 7.25 is today. Except we will all have to deal with problems before that new equilibrium exists.
Then we can listen to idiots whine for a $25/ he minimum and start all over again.
this video was so easy to understand
Fantastic work, Profession Boudreaux. Raising the minimum wage does even pass a basic sniff test. I continue to be confounded at how someone as smart as Robert Reich cannot see the damaging this policy will do to the very people he aspires to help. I do not believe him to be an evil person, so I just do not get it.
+Ed Kless I'd like to see Prof Boudreaux debate someone on this. It's quite easy to lay out critisims without being challenged on them.
+oisin skinnader I have no doubt Prof Boudreaux would be up to any challenge.
+Ed Kless Robert Reich is a career politician.
One of the most entertaining discussions I've ever had is trying to get a supporter of minimum wage hikes to explain why a particular amount like $15 per hour is necessary. It turns into pure circular argument that even those making the argument for hiking the wage admitted was silly.
You're seeming to forget another huge law of economics...when consumers have more money they spend it.
that isn't a law of economics amigo... try revisiting that chapter
Music is too loud in certain parts to hear you properly
Let's also not forget that raising the minimum wage reduces the value of the money you earned beforehand. If you earn $9 an hour for a loooong time, and the wages go up to $10 an hour, prices go up, and all the money you earned would be worth less.
Who told bullshit that a higher minimum wage makes the prices higher?
In denmark macdonalds workers get paid 23$ and 6 weeks paid leave. Nearly Everyone earns 15$ or more. Why is the price of a burger only marginally larger?
A bic mac costs only 10% more than in the us.
I'm 18
and perfectly contempt with $7.25 an hour.
because that's just a job. I know I'm not making a living with it.
if I decide I want more money, I'll work for a promotion. not throw a picket sign in the air
Are you still contempt, or ready for the picket sign
@@AbstractVader 23 now and cringing at this comment
Interesting points are made here.
Do you have this video in script? Like written out?
Probably. Why?