Yay! The minimum wage is going up in many states! Now employers won't have to pay a premium to get desirable workers, and they can dismiss the undesirable workers at no cost to themselves!
You see, every worker is desirable to one extent to another. Some workers are more productive, some are simply more fun to work with, some are attractive, some are tall, some are male, some are white, etc. (I happen to be all six of these, natch.) Other workers not so much. When you put a floor on the lowest wage, the less desirable workers have no way to compete with the more desirable workers. So if the minimum wage is set low enough, hey, no problem, the less desirable workers can just charge less, and they'll still have a job. But when you raise it high enough that you have all these workers competing for the same wage, which ones are you going to choose? You're not stupid, you're going to choose the more desirable workers.
Being one of the more desirable workers, of course, I don't care if you raise the minimum wage. Go ahead! I don't care! Because I'm selfish!
But if you care about the less desirable workers, then you will be upset about having ANY minimum wage law. Justice demands that it be abolished.
posted at: 21:56 | path: /economics | permanent link to this entry