The Bridge of Asses

[Perndog]

Minimum wage laws are there so businesses can't get by with paying workers too little. While it may be true that keeping wages up to $6 might prevent some people from working, removing the minimum might leave a greater number of workers unable to live on their new $3 or $4 an hour wages. $6 is not unreasonable for *any* kind of labor, and no one should have to settle for less.

The implicit statement and the flaw in the article is assuming that the worker has many different opportunities and can just find a new place to work if he's unhappy with the wages at a particular business. This is a nice theory, but in the real world, there are only so many places to work, only so many places in a particular area, only so many places that are hiring workers. I live in Minneapolis, and I couldn't find a job (full or part time, any shift) all summer because there weren't any available - all of the local open positions had been filled in April or May, before I knew I was going to stay in the city for the summer. I didn't get to shop around. I had to dig for absolutely anything and was prepared to take whatever I could get. With a minimum wage in place, at least I was sure of $5.15 an hour (assuming I got hired somewhere, which I didn't); without such a law, I might have needed to settle for $4.15, which would have added up to a pretty significant loss of money. I don't really care about the idiots who have families before they have marketable skills; they can starve. But from the perspective of a temporary worker and a student, low-wage jobs are not so abundant that I have the option of shopping around, and the lack of a minimum wage could only have hurt my income in the last five years.