I'm not comparing hte minimum wage to sodomy, I'm explaining that your logic is flawed. The fact that they've been around for a while doesn't mean that they work as intended or are a good thing to have around. And no, medical benefits for employees are not treason. Forcing a company to give it's employees benefits is a bad idea, but still not treason.
Minimum wage laws are not just now becoming a problem. But, since you want an explanation, I'll give you the simplest of the three. If you want further proof, you'll have to gimme time to make the tables and graphs.
When you enact a law that forces employers to pay their employees more money, the company can't afford to hire as many workers for the same amount of money. In order to maintain a profit (ie. stay in business), the company has to either fire workers or raise prices. Most companies will do both.
The workers who were fired in order to cut costs now end up making nothing. Nothing is generally a lot worse than not enough. Tell me how you expect them to live off of no income.
As if that's not enough, as companies increase prices to cover the rest of their costs, those additional unemployed people will now be able to buy even less off of what little savings they have. Also, the workers who were kept on who are now making somewhat more now have to spend more in order to buy things. This means that any extra money they receive from minimum wage doesn't actually buy them any more or better stuff, so it's as difficult to live off of as what they were making before.
When the minimum wage is eliminated, yes, wages for many workers will fall. However, more workers will be hired, so production will increase and the cost of producing everything they're hired to produce will go down, meaning that prices will go down. People currently making at or near minimum wage would be able to live as easily, if not more easily, once prices fall, even if their wages fall.
Need the more detailed explanations?
HAHAHAHAHAHA
You've never owned a business, have you?
I have. This is bullshit.
First, you don't hire and fire workers based on the cost of hiring them. You hire them because you need bodies to do work. The number of employees is based on the amount of work you have to do. Period. You fire workers because they are incompetent or disruptive.
If your company is in financial problem, you cut expenses. Where you can, you rearrange the operation to be more efficient, or you jettison products or services that can not support themselves, or you reassign work to third parties that can do it less expensively. This reduces the number of bodies you need.
If you are an asshole - like a wall street brokerage house or a take over specialist or a go-go entreprenuer looking to make a killing taking a business public - then you trim the hell out of the payroll to produce a better balance sheet so you can convince the analysts that they should recommend ma and pa stick their life savings into your stock.
Most business owners, and having been one I am intimately acquainted with the beast, would, if you lowered minimum wage, look at that as an opportunity to line their own pockets. Most of them looked for ways to exploit their own employees. They are greedy little bastards. I was constantly amazed at how callous some of my collegues were towards their employees. (Some employers are fair and honest, but just some.)
The concept of raising minimum wage causing prices to go up is erroneous. Sure, the price of pizza might go up, from $8 to $8.25. But oil going up 25% would add more to the price of pizza. And the price of automobiles and refrigerators and houses wouldn't budge. Nobody building those makes minimum wages. Lowering minimum wage would mean that millions of people would have less income. And the price of cars and refrigerators and houses, and even pizzas wouldn't go down, until people stopped buying them. And that would drive some companies out of business and then, because there is less competitiion, prices would go back up.
And as for "The workers who were fired in order to cut costs now end up making
nothing," which fucking country do you live in? America? This is a welfare state in case you haven't noticed. Not that I know exactly what that has to do with with argument, but there are a hell of a lot people not working who live better than people in Somalia and Iraq and places like that.
My bottom line is, in a world where statistics and graphs determine the outcome of economic events, you are exactly right. Ina world where greed and envy determine economic events, you are exactly wrong.
Get out your charts and graphs, Prickly, and let's go to the war!
::starts tacking mattresses to the walls in anticipation of Prickly's assault::
Whhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
