> Minimum wage only really encourages
No, it also means those people are paid a liveable wage, as opposed to a pittance.
No, it also means those people are paid a liveable wage, as opposed to a pittance.
The lowest minimum wage I remember hearing about as a kid was $1.50/hr. I thought that sounded like a lot of money at the time, but I probably was not even 10 years old.
That would have been in the first half of the 1970's when the federal poverty line was around $2,500. So working full time, you'd make $3,000 or about 120% of the poverty level.
Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and the poverty level (2016) is $12,200. So still, a full-time minimum wage worker earns nearly 120% of the poverty level.
Source: Table 1, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p....
But jobs are just means to an end for most people. Why can't government aim to simply provide those ends?
The obvious counterargument is that the free market is more efficient. But the US government has shown itself to be very capable in providing some services to the entire country. The military has done a great job keep the country safe. There just doesn't seem to be the willpower to create the navy/army/airforce of food, shelter, healthcare and education.
I guess the issue is that it's hard to get elected if you promise to make things better 20 years from now.
I think you could interpret the US military's success despite "waste" to mean that a federal government can get away with a lot of inefficiency and still beat the "free market."
History already showed us what private military is like. I believe it's essentially feudalism and warlords. I.e. true poverty for 90% of the population. A powerful federal millitary that follows the laws of democratically elected officials gives people in the US historically unprecedented safety.
It's not clear to me why the federal government couldn't build a military-like organizations for addressing food, shelter, health care, and education.
The fundamental issue seems to be that the free market is the best means for deciding resource allocation towards those other goals. So why not simply implement UBI pegged to prices in LCOL areas?