The continuing battle on minimum wage ignores the obvious, that the minimum wage gambit is about the union contracts already in place, that provide for an increase in the wage for the union workers based on minimum wage increases.
Separate from that, entry level workers are not looking for the wage that will make them able to support a family and live a life, they are looking for a start.
I had a simple little job as a young person–certainly nothing to keep me going for my life, but also something that allowed me to get going.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369072/facing-minimum-wage-truth-thomas-sowell
Anticipating those who might not be as impressed with Thomas Sowell as I am, let’s assume Thomas Soweel understands price and wage controls and how it screws up the free market.
As my friend Richard Farina, lawyer and important economics player in the past, has pointed out many times–Sowell is so efficient with his writing that some people fail to see the magnitude and importance, the prescience of his analysis.
Sowell reminds us:
Yet, despite such anomalies, it is surely no coincidence that those few places in the industrial world which have had no minimum-wage law, such as Switzerland and Singapore, have consistently had unemployment rates down around 3 percent. “The Economist” magazine once reported: “Switzerland’s unemployment neared a five-year high of 3.9% in February.”
It is surely no coincidence that during the last administration in which there was no federal minimum wage — the Calvin Coolidge administration — unemployment ranged from a high of 4.2 percent to a low of 1.8 percent over its last four years.
I think the best way to explain this to the uninitiated is to point out that the true basis for the economy is one hour of unskilled labor. Whatever that costs determines the cost of everything else. Labor is subject to the same basic laws of supply and demand as any commodity. If the supply of labor increases or the demand decreases the price has to drop to achieve equilibrium. If the price is artificially raised then demand will drop and supply will rise. The inevitable outcome is a glut of labor AKA unemployment. Eventually the resultant inflation would devalue the currency until equilibrium is reached, but the feds never keep their hands off the market long enough for that to happen.
The bottom is the bottom, no matter how high the rest of the boat rides in the water.