NYT endorses Obama's minimum wage proposal, but called for scrapping it in 1987....

And to all of their other available options. Would you prefer they had no job or fewer hours to show up for?

I'm amazed that the idea of minimum wage is still around given it's obvious links to increased unemployment, especially in low-skilled and temporary workers. I also cringe when I hear excuses like "a working family of 4 can't live on minimum wage". wow, really? Who said it was anyone's responsibility to support any kind of family on any kind of wage?

Plain and simple - if you raise the cost of something more than its value, like an employee, the employer will do a couple things:
- the cost of labor will increase immediately; to mitigate this the employer could do any combination of the following - keep the labor budget the same and cut workers by a proportionate amount of the raise, raise prices, or both.
- since all employees regardless of ability will now cost the same, the employer will retain only the most valuable, or at least the most responsible and the most likely to stay with the company long-term (e.g. keep older over younger workers, generally, the most experienced over the least, etc).

What does this mean? Up minimum wage arbitrarily, and unemployment will increase especially in those less skilled, likely the young.

For many years it has been a matter of conventional wisdom among economists that the minimum wage causes fewer jobs to exist than would be the case without it. This is simply a matter of price theory, taught in every economics textbook, requiring no elaborate analysis to justify. Were this not the case, there would be no logical reason why the minimum wage could not be set at $10, $100, or $1 million per hour. Historically, defenders of the minimum wage have not disputed the disemployment effects of the minimum wage, but argued that on balance the working poor were better off. In other words, the higher incomes of those with jobs offset the lower incomes of those without jobs, as a result of the minimum wage [See, for example, Levitan and Belous, (1979)]. Now, the Clinton Administration is advancing the novel economic theory that modest increases in the minimum wage will have no impact whatsoever on employment. This proposition is based entirely on the work of three economists: David Card and Alan Krueger of Princeton, and Lawrence Katz of Harvard. Their studies of increases in the minimum wage in California, Texas and New Jersey apparently found no loss of jobs among fast food restaurants that were surveyed before and after the increase [See Card (1992b), Card and Krueger (1994), and Katz and Krueger (1992)]. While it is not yet clear why Card, Katz and Krueger got the results that they did, it is clear that their findings are directly contrary to virtually every empirical study ever done on the minimum wage. These studies were exhaustively surveyed by the Minimum Wage Study Commission, which concluded that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduced teenage employment by 1% to 3%. The following survey of the academic research on the minimum wage is designed to give nonspecialists a sense of just how isolated the Card, Krueger and Katz studies are. It will also indicate that the minimum wage has wide-ranging negative effects that go beyond unemployment. For example, higher minimum wages encourage employers to cut back on training, thus depriving low wage workers of an important means of long-term advancement, in return for a small increase in current income. For many workers this is a very bad trade-off, but one for which the law provides no alternative.

February 15, 1995
50 Years of Research on the Minimum Wage [archive.org]

no, only to them not showing up. them showing up is not proof they have another available option other than not showing up.

no i would not prefer that. would you prefer everyone had a job that paid one cent an hour? if people showed up to it then that would mean they obviously prefer it to a $40/hour job, per your logic.

They could choose leisure, volunteer work, sleep, etc.

A $40/hour job might not be available to him, just like it's not available to most people.

Is one cent an hour realistic for everyone? Perhaps if it's an college kid looking to pad his resume on an unpaid internship (should we get rid of these too?) or a high school grad in an apprenticeship looking to develop his skills, both whom would anticipate earning much more in the future. But overall, I think people would get paid what they can negotiate with various employers. The only thing eliminating the minimum wage would do is ensure that there would be jobs for nearly all the unskilled, all at various price points.

But they would take $40 if it were offered. They take min wage cause they can't get anything better.

Raise the minimum wage to $9, and every entry level employ will get $9/hr. the ones that busted their ass to get raises will still be at the same pay.

good old cherry picking of evidence. ignore everything to the contrary and focus on one study, that's 20 years old, looking at 50 year old data.

https://prospect.org/article/minimum-wage-101

according to your logic, everything is an available option. all these people who showed up to mcdonalds today obviously preferred that to every other available option, which per your logic includes high paying jobs.

most individuals aren't negotiators. that shouldn't mean an individual should get paid a nickel an hour mopping floors. but of course, my earth language is just gibberish to your libertarian ears.

Wonder what changed....

Who said the government could do that (besides you)?.

It appears the supporters of the minimum wage think that way. They think that I can pay new hires $9/ hour yet don't tell me where I will get the revenue to do that. Instead of hiring a high school kid to clean kennels, at the same time giving him/her work experience and a display of aptitude working with animals, I will now have to stop hiring inexpensive labor to do unskilled work and make my technical staff pitch in to do all of the work normally done by high school kids or sometimes an adult without any work experience. Of course since we used to hire from within, that will have to change because there won't be any more previously inexperienced kids getting hired to become vet techs and even full technicians or give them the experience they need to apply to vet school.

The only people that think higher minimum wages are a good thing have most likely never run a business that operates on thin margins.

Or turn it around. Why not create a system where people work for nothing (lower wages create jobs, right?). In exchange, they get free room, board, medical care, and retirement for life, in exchange for irrevocably losing the ability to set the terms of their own employment. Think of the jobs we'd create then!