Why would you expect a person to be able to afford a family on minimum wage? Why would you even want that?
If you raised a minimum wage to that level, you would eliminate a lot of low-level jobs completely, and leave people who don't aspire or need this non-trivial level of achievement without jobs.
Nobody is going to propose that income should be capped 1000x minimum wage even though that is rational because wealthy people now have an interest in paying poor people more if they want to get richer themselves.
Amazon aside, I see the $15 argument more about making minimum wage, a concept we’re already engaged at a policy level, reflect reality. IMO if we’re going to have minimum wage in the US then we need to make it work for its intended purpose of requiring companies to pay people a living wage for their labor. If that were the goal we’d adjust minimum wage for inflation and cost of living since its inception and then require it to adjust every year as the value of the dollar does. In its current form it is more of an excuse for companies pay below a living wage.
Or even better, make the minimum wage $150/hour. Why not?
Or maybe you are suggesting that it should be lowered? (It's already above the poverty line for an individual in the US.)
I feel that minimum wage pushes companies to invest in technology and automation. Which is always good. Set the minimum wage at $50 and eventually no human will need to work for so less money.
Ideally minimum wage should be coupled with higher taxes on the wealthy, a generous social safety net, a job guarantee fronted by the state, and a sovereign wealth fund which pays out a minimum basic income. This would eliminate shitty jobs no one wants to do and get rid of business models which depend on them, which is a net win for everyone.
We should not make it more than $1000 per month. Very few would choose to be poor. It would put a lot of pressure on companies to pay decent wages, though.
I prefer UBI to phase out based on how much you make. You give everyone five dollars an hour. if I make 6 dollars an hour, UBI only pays me an extra 1 dollar. So there is no cutoff like with welfare today.
I think UBI would function as a replacement for minimum wage, in this case. Why would anyone take a job paying less than 5?
Given that the mean wage was only $43,460 in 2009, in order to raise minimum wage to $60,000 per year, your pay cut would be to minimum wage. The government would have to confiscate all income, supplement it with printed money, then redistribute it evenly across the population. In that kind of scenario, why would anybody do anything but the absolute minimum? Isn't that largely why the Soviet Union wasn't competitive? If there was no economic incentive for hard work, I'd wager many of the presently most productive people would optimize for work minimization.
Maybe it's time to enforce a maximum wage similar to how we enforce a minimum wage? Maybe maximum = 10000 * minimum? This won't stop people from amassing assets and power (i.e. we aren't enforcing a maximum number of expensive art you can own, or senators you can call), but might curb the inequality among wage workers and CEOs.
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