National Minimum Wage

Here's my debate and it is based around my recent post on the ideas board.

Its real simple, should or shouldnt there be a national minimum wage?

I dont think there should be, a minium wage assumes a person is capable of being productively efficient enough to be employed.

I'm actually going to coin the phrase 'efficiency discrimination' - some workers simply lack the abilities regardless of their efforts!

No.

Well it looks like I am out numbered on this one,
time for my back up argument...

er..
it prevents exploitation,
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Social benefits...
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That's usually what it boils down to. Sometimes people will make a reference to the labor theory of value and claim that workers should get everything, a la Marx. Your post makes me think you're joking, but somebody thought that the minimum wage is a good idea. Hopefully they'll show their face so I can take some shots at it.

Many people say the national minimum wage is flawed because employers just wont employ people if they dont contribute enough (a la Ryan) fair enuff,

But what if we look at where the minimum wage comes into effect, its mostly producing non transferable services such as supermarket workers or bar staff. Introducing a NMW forces these employers to hire staff and pay them a decent wage.

Aslong as the government keeps slack in the economy effects wont be inflationary and we have reduced the income distribution gap, fantastic!

So I take it if we raised the minimum wage to $30 an hour, we wouldn't see those jobs disappearing? Right. I've got three words for anyone who thinks supermarket workers are irreplaceable: automated self-checkout. Same deal with bar staff; increasing the cost of one factor of production shifts reliance to the other factors, reducing overall productivity while simultaneously creating unemployment.

You should be ashamed of yourself. Seriously. That is horrible economics. Do I really need to remind you that demand curves slope downwards?

Ive been doing research on self scan checkouts:

The most realistic implemenation I have seen involves four banks being monitored by one worker. This at most would mean supermarkets only require 25% of their current demand for checkout staff.

However checkout staff do actually get the job done faster, particularily on very long shops.

Supermarket customer service strategy highlights checkout staff as being the key area of improving a shoppers experience through interaction and being key personel for generating last minute buys or impulse purchases.

Checkout staff to automation in tesco's business model is 6:4. This is the ratio they believe is required for maintainin quality and security levels.

Furthermore both Tesco and Asda have highlighted the need to re-distribute staff across the store. Asda has recently highlighted that product availiabilty is now a key area for customer capture.


All this research was in response to a comment I overheard that all jobs will soon be automated (you know the usual doomsayers). In fact the nature of jobs just change thats all. Its also worth noting that the for supermarket staff, atleast in the U.K. pay and final package structure are far above minimum wage.

This is an indicator that automation doesnt mean jobs will be lost or even that pay will be reduced to compensate.

If pay is forced higher by legislation, it will almost certainly be cheaper to automate to a greater degree that is currently the case. Or rather, the costs will be the same as they are now, but they'll be cheaper than using the same ratio of workers to capital. Keep in mind the equimarginal principle. If stores were forced to pay $50 an hour for each employee, you can bet they'd be automating at a much higher ratio than just 6:4.

Same here. Where the minimum wage makes an impact, it will cause the problems I described. When it doesn't affect anything, it's just a waste of time. There is no way to win with price controls like that. This is why you see stores like Wal-Mart calling for a national minimum wage; it won't hurt them, and it's free PR to soften up the retards who hate Wal-Mart.

MY First Post here!

I'm not the poster, and though I'm not 100% convince of NMW, I'll take a shot at justifing it.

Let's say everyone down at the bottom end of the pay scale joins a union or better yet signs an exclusive contract with a company they create: crapjob.com. They could act like a monopoly in to maximise thier total wages by decreasing thier output. It would have all the same effects of NMW. Just like a monopolist might sell 10% less to squeaze a higher price out of the market and increase total profit, such a group might actually earn more working less.

Of coarse they're not actually producing more. Just like the monopolist they're just hurting other less organized groups in society. It's just redistributing income which some people have harm fuzzy moral feelings about. I wonder how it compares in it's effectiveness with progressive taxation.

In a nut shell. If increasing the minimum wage 5% only causes 1% of them to loose thier job, then as a class they will get more earnings.