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Friday, January 12, 2007

Minimum entry hurdle


How clever is this Henry Payne cartoon? Hey, good intentions are everything, right? Wouldn't an additional expansion of the EITC be more effective...

2 comments:

Oroborous said...

If there were no factors to consider beyond whether or not there was a minimum wage, then I'd agree that there ought not be a minimum wage.

However, people without jobs, at least in the advanced nations, have many, many resources to fall back upon. So being jobless isn't automatically the worst thing that could happen to one. But, those programmes designed to help the jobless often have pretty low thresholds for cutting off aid, due to earned income. Therefore, if a person gets a job, an action which will cause them to lose most anti-poverty benefits, then the job needs to pay enough to make the loss of benefits worthwhile. The current Federal minimum wage doesn't meet that test, for most people.

So, taking into account ALL aspects of poverty, joblessness, and wages, it seems to me that raising the Federal minimum wage to $ 7.25, or even to $ 8.00, is a net good.

Brit said...

The introduction and frequent raising of the minumum wage in Britain has been surprisingly non-disastrous from an employment point of view.