Michele Bachmann wants to eliminate the minimum wage. She says doing so would solve the unemployment problem.
Would her idea work?
Economic studies show that increases in the minimum wage are not related to increases in unemployment. Wage levels and employment levels aren’t linked. So, having a minimum wage reduction – or elimination of the minimum wage, shouldn’t do very much, if anything, to create jobs.
But let’s put aside the facts for a moment, and just think about the logical implications of Michele Bachmann’s plan to eliminate the minimum wage. Bachmann says that the minimum wage inhibits “job growth”.
By “job growth”, Michele Bachmann means the number of jobs. She’s not talking about the quality of jobs available to Americans, or growth in income. Bachmann seems less concerned with the quality of work that Americans are doing, and their ability to make ends meet, than with having Americans simply working. Under Bachmann’s plan, the creation of a million jobs that pay 5 cents per hour would count as “job growth”. The workers who took those jobs, of course, would not be experiencing any growth. They’d be virtual slaves.
A minimum wage elimination would, of course, enable a remarkable increase in corporate profits. Those increased corporate profits would come at the expense of the radical impoverishment of large numbers of workers across the United States.
Is that a policy that works? If you’re a presidential candidate funded mostly by corporate executives and corporate PACs and independent expenditures, sure, proposing an elimination of the minimum wage will definitely work to your individual advantage.
just who is this person(?)
sounds like she read MACBETH…and is calling on the evil spirits to unsex her and fill her with “vile”
michelle and palin would make a dandy pair running on the same ticket!
God help us all if people even think of thinking of voting for her (them)
So let me get this straight. If I want to make a contract to work for someone for 10 cents an hour, you feel that I, being an educated adult, need the government to protect me from that decision? When do I get my government issued butt wiper?
What needs to happen is that other people need to be protected from the consequences of your decision. If you’re a masochist and want to play at being someone’s slave, that’s your business. But, if the use of slaves creates a market condition in which it becomes impossible for workers to find jobs other than those that put them in the thrall of their employers for simple survival, that’s a risk to the entire society.
This isn’t really about what workers want to negotiate. It’s about what large corporate employers want to do with their power, and force upon working Americans, Stan. The question you ought to be asking is: If the only jobs I can find are from corporations that decide to pay me only 10 cents an hour, do I, as an educated adult, need the government to protect me from those corporations’ decisions?
You discerning voters may appreciate this:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/jimmy-kimmel-reveals-michele-bachmanns-story
Taibbi’s take on Bachmann:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/michele-bachmanns-holy-war-20110622
“So let me get this straight. If I want to make a contract to work for someone for 10 cents an hour, you feel that I, being an educated adult, need the government to protect me from that decision? When do I get my government issued butt wiper?”
1. If you are indeed “educated” and you wanted to work for 10 cents an hour, you’d be off your rocker and not competent to handle your own affairs. Somebody should certainly protect you from that decision!
2. If you were starving, you would be in no position to negotiate with anybody!
3. Because the creep that is trying to talk you into working for him for 10 cents is taking advantage of the government as well as your poverty and misery. He figures that whatever he doesn’t give you in reasonable wages, the big bad gub’ment will make up to you in food stamps, housing assistance, heating assistance. The bad bad gub’ment wage should always be high enough so that someone getting the big bad gub’ment wage no longer qualifies for food stamps, housing assistance, etc. Why should I, a taxpayer, be stuck paying more in taxes because some corporation is too stingy and greedy to pay their workers a living wage?
Did you sleep during American history class in high school? Or did you drop out before you ever got that far?
Excellent points, Molly. When there’s not a minimum wage, it’s the government – and eventually the working taxpayer, that ends up paying more. It’s a transfer of burden, not a liberation from burden.
I think who wrote the text should learn what fact mean…..
In the same website (http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/) you can find other results about the correlation between wage levels and employment levels.
“Wage levels and employment levels aren’t linked.”
I doubt that one can find this statement in “Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties”
If an economy put a minimum wage of $200 per hours, do you really think that it will not affect the employment levels?
I don’t think that there’s any evidence that a minimum wage of $200 per hour would affect employment levels, given that nothing close to any such minimum wage has ever existed.
Your extreme argument is like someone claiming that using a cell phone can cause arthritis because carrying 200 cell phones at once would surely cause extreme wear on the wrist joint. I mean, who could argue that carrying around 200 cell phones in one hand all the time, holding it up to your ear, wouldn’t cause joint damage in the wrist?