It's an easy position take take when you're a well paid developer and money problems aren't a concern.
I used to feel the same way, until I started my own business. I couldn't attract venture capital and I had to bootstrap the company. There was no way in hell I was using my house for a loan.
Early on I relied on people who wanted to stay relevant, but needed flexibility, and were happy to take a lower hourly wage. For example, a stay at home parent whose SO earned the majority of the household income.
My business contributes sincere value to a niche industry that otherwise doesn't get any attention or investment. It's been said by several in my industry that without my company, several hundred community news organizations would likely fail.
Today, I can afford to pay a living wage. But now I understand that growing a real revenue generating business (without artificially inflating a company via investment) is difficult, and often requires low cost labor in order to get to the place where you can afford higher cost labor. Try it and you may not be as idealistic.
My point being, I see both views as correct in principle. The hard challenge lies in reconciling them - letting good people craft better deals, while preventing malicious individuals from abusing their fellow human beings.
i do not believe that underpaying locals is a better option than off-shoring. even if the unemployment is high enough that people are willing to work for scraps, then i still believe that it is better for changes that allow me to actually pay local employees instead of taking the money out of employees pockets by paying them less.
the question should not be: how can we lower employment income so that you can hire more people. but how can we lower other costs so that small businesses can afford to pay people what they need for life.
so yes, i am trying for some years now, and i remain as idealistic as ever.
- Let's say I'm a 16 year old adolescent who's doing well in school and wants to take a part-time/weekend job to gain experience in the job market. My basic expenses are covered (I live with my parents). Should a business get to pay me less just because of this fact?
- I'm a wife of a rich man and have never had to work, but decided to try it because I'm bored. I know nothing but the finer things of life and my basic expenses are 10x what the middle class is. If a business has to cover basic expenses why are we not going to cover this claim of full expenses, what determines in a corruption-free manner whether a claim for a basic expense is valid, and what is an acceptable burden to a business owner to determine this?
- Let's say I'm a jobless struggling adult, sharing a cramped living space with 4 others including 1 or 2 who are drug addicts. A job would really help me get out of this situation, but company X is only willing to pay minimum wage. It's better than what I have now which is nothing. How is having this job automated away a reasonable alternative for me - because you don't want this employer to give me a job in the first place because it doesn't cover my expenses.
- Let's say I'm a customer of your business, and you decide to pass on the full cost of living of all employees to me. Your product jumps from $10 to $50. I'm not shopping there, your business closes, and your employees are now jobless. How does this help anybody?
Also, it always seems weird that whenever a minimum wage discussion comes up people jump in with these obviously contrived what if scenarios. How about we care about the real people that can barely/cannot afford food/housing/etc because businesses don't pay enough, rather than these situations with made up people.
Obviously depending on people to care out of the goodness of their hearts isn't working, if someone really cared about these people they wouldn't be in their situation. You can ask me or anyone else to care, you can even pressure them into appearing to care, but you can't really make them care, so this is a bad way to solve a problem.
If a good system that doesn't depend on emotions, media performances, or pathos can be put into place, it's probably going to be more reliable in the long run, and can mutually benefit both those in bad situations and those who would like to be able to walk in a city without getting asked for money constantly.
Hence it's very valid and good to ask what exactly entails things like "basic expenses" and use hypothetical situations.
Do you really think that?
Please show where this has happened.
WRT 4, regulatory intervention ideas like minimum wage only work and derive all their power from being universally. Even if, as in your example, my product jumps from $10 to $50 (which would be something unprecedented), all my competitors (within the country) face the same issue too! Their prices will have to jump by roughly $40 as well. The overall demand for the product category may go down, but my position relative to competitors remains unchanged.
This may not work well for goods that can be easily offshored, like manufacturing plastic widgets. But (with the caveat that I'm not an economist, and didn't study this in too much detail) it seems perfectly matched for physical-space services sector - something, which by very definition can't offshore, and also resists automation pretty well.
I see this trope a lot, but the point I think it misses is the customers of these businesses are often enough the ones making minimum wage. So raising the business’s prices to pay the higher wages just ends up in a self defeating loop for all involved.
If the solution to poverty was “just give the poor people money”, it would’ve been done already I believe. Sadly, societal problems are generally not easy to solve.
And this is why Socialist economies are so crappy and need minimal wage laws: they kill their startups before they even exist and have no competition on the talent market.
And then they wonder why they can't produce an Apple, Microsoft, Amazon or Google...
The problem with minimum wage laws is that they presume there are no other forms of compensation than wages.
Also, unpaid internships are legal in the US (at least federally) if they are primarily for the benefit/training of the worker and that information is made available upfront.