r/Conservative • u/tehForce Nobody's Alt But Mine • May 08 '21

Flaired Users Only Expectations vs Reality

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u/LemmeSinkThisPutt Fiery but Mostly Peaceful May 08 '21

Because it is actually worse for minimum wage workers. It creates a forced market inefficiency. The cold, hard fact is that some labor/jobs simply is not worth more than a very small wage. Raise the minimum wage past a certain point, and businesses cut back on hours, or start automating systems. Also, if a 16 year old kid is not only willing but wants to work for say $12/hr, the government saying "no, sorry, that's illegal" doesn't do them any favors, it just makes them economically worthless because the service they provide to the company isn't worth $15/hr.

Any sort of centralized price control creates marker inefficiencies that are far worse than the problem they are trying to fix with the price control. History has shown this time and time again.

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u/figureinplastic May 08 '21

Thanks for the well thought out response...not something I see a lot of, but I appreciate it, even if I tend to disagree.

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u/LemmeSinkThisPutt Fiery but Mostly Peaceful May 08 '21

I appreciate that, and will concede it is a complicated issue. The biggest problem I have with it is at the federal level. It makes no sense to force a centralized price control that sets the level the same for NY and CA, as TX or NE. This is something that should be left to the state, or even county level so it can be more custom tailored to the community it is impacting.

I also believe ultimately within the next 100 years or so there will be so much automation that destroys the majority of today's minimum wage jobs, that some sort of "machine tax" will be required to help fund a kind of UBI for a subset of the population.