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Comment by ghostpepper | Hacker News Reader

This is a general economic argument against any government-mandated price control.

People see someone making $6/hour and think that passing a law that minimum wage must be $8 means that person will now make $8, but technically the law only says "it is now illegal to pay that person $6."

Some businesses may be able to afford the raise and still turn a profit, but for others, if that person's labor is worth $7/hour to your bottom line, it is suddenly no longer a good business decision to keep them employed.

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It all depends on where their wage is on the cost/value curve. It's true that if the company is paying their employees close to their contributed value, increasing the minimum wage will put them out of a job, there often isn't a force that reliably pushes a wage near that point. Regardless of the value provided, if a company can get away with paying their employees less, then they will. The forces that determine wages have more to do with available supply of various skills than they do with the demand for the actual value provided.

not all companies of course, but as an aggregate, companies will follow this rule

It's worth noting that without a price floor, people will spend all of their time working just to eat. This can be seen all around the world in developing countries, for example where children shine shoes and scavenge trash to recycle for a quarter a day. Meanwhile the wealthy in those communities pay merely enough taxes to prevent a revolt.

So the minimum wage is really about deciding what type of society we want to live in. Do we want servants, or do we want opportunity? In developed countries, jobs below the minimum wage get automated or some form of government assistance pays for the jobs that can't be, for better or worse.

A better word for deregulation might be decivilization.

I don’t understand the connection you’re making between minimum wage and food prices

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