I'll throw in.

1. 14 years
2. First job was at McDonald's at $5.15/hr (NY minimum wage), followed by summer youth employment jobs through my county, highway dept. during college summers, and 4 years of college work study, all at minimum wage, which by then was $7.25.

For a 13 year old kid in 2001, minimum wage was big money. Now, I couldn't get by on minimum wage. I'm a pretty frugal guy - I take the bus for free every day (job perk), drive minimally, eat out probably once every two weeks, and keep my thermostat at 65 unless its below 0. No kids, one dog, one fiance who makes about the same as me, which is to say, not much. If my salary were suddenly cut to minimum wage, I'd be in a pretty tight spot.

What about setting an age limit on minimum wage? One prominent argument for minimum wage is that it does, in fact, provide a tremendous benefit to teenage labor, which is absolutely true, but isn't a living wage once you are living on your own. Why not legislate a higher minimum wage once you reach, say, age 21?

Damn krellin I always assumed you were like 60.

2WL - So...ummm...wanna sum up that 1. Total years worked, 2. Years on Min Wage?

@2WL - mid 40's

1. 14
2. 8

btw - Started at Min wage at Burger King in ~1984, and got a $0.25 raise after 30 days. Worker there about 6 months and then moved to McDonalds at a slight increase, and had more friends there anyway. Never worked for minimum wage again.

I will add this : I worked many, many years through my childhood on morning newspaper routes (before school during school year).- Detroit Free Press. Shared route with my brother, and did this for probably 7 or 8 years. We got paid by the paper, so I couldnt' tell you what an "hourly rate" was.

Seriously you worked for 30 days on minimum wage before getting a raise....

I worked for 19 months before I got off minimum wage, and the only reason I'm off minimum wage is because I'm getting tips. During this time of year, I'd probably make more some days if I made minimum wage.

Wow, 30 days? Whenever I'm not in school I've worked at Target, and the sum of my total wage raises since I started has been....maybe $0.50?

1. 3 years
2. 0 (Target treats us nice....though less nice than any other chain store around apparently. Friend started at Sam's Club about a buck over me)

I guess I'll answer formally.

1. 23 months
2. 19 months

So Puddle let me reason this out.

Let's say there are two kind of workers in the labor force - high wage and low wage. By setting a minimum wage, employers are comfortable in offering minimum wage salaries, since they know only 1 type of worker will apply for the job (low wage). But lets say there is no minimum wage anymore, and employers bargain with applicants for a wage. Since the employer no longer knows what type of worker (H or L wage) is applying for the position, they will offer rates based on Pr(H wage)*H wage + Pr(L wage)*L wage.

Again, no definites - its all based upon theory and it does depend where the minimum wage falls now in regards to wage demands and the shapes of demand curves. Its not certain, but I think its a possibility worth exploring

@goldfinger, you're assuming that the difference between high and low wage is so slight that they can apply for the same jobs. In practice this is not true, a low wage worker applies for one type of job and a high wage worker for another. Also within industries and firms there tends to be uniformity across wages, typically low wage workers are price takers, while high wage workers have some control over the price.

Also to clarify

1. 5 years
2. 5 years

I've only worked in Florida and in only two job markets, 3 of those 5 years was without a high school diploma so minimum wage was to be expected, and the remaining two on a part time basis alongside University. There simply aren't many non-minimum wage jobs, and those that do exists generally require so much time that schoolwork suffers.

'Survey:
1. How long have you worked (all jobs together)
2. Of all yoru jobs, how much time did you spend / have you spent at Minimum Wage?

Please be serious about this - it could be revealing."
180 hours
0 hours, starbucks pays 40 cents above minimum wage where I live.

Well, I only made it that way since game theory tends to break down when you make it too complicated and realistic. So, instead of "high wage" insert "$10 an hour" and "low wage" insert "$6 an hour"

Not so hypothetical: A bookstore owner spends an hour every morning sweeping and dusting, rather than paying someone $7.25 and hour to do it. A teenage customer says he will do the job every night for one hour, in exchange for $5.00 an hour pay. They agree this is fair pay for a low-skill and low-stress job.

Why shouldn't the teenager be allowed to accept that rate of pay if both he and the store owner agree to it?

The trouble with raising the minimum wage is that it causes the unemployment rate to increase, as it prices some workers out of the market altogether. That said I do believe in a minimum wage to prevent the worst cases of exploitation of the most vulnerable, but the minimum wage should be closely aligned with what the market would normally dictate anyway. Wages are prices, if you raise the price of something it will tend to result in less demand. Thus raising the minimum wage results in a less efficient and productive economy.

Alternatives to increasing the minimum wage:
Subsidized training for low skilled workers, tax credits, healthcare, subsidized childcare. There are other ways to redistribute wealth than raising the minimum wage.

Alternate solution is to forcibly starve poor people

"The trouble with raising the minimum wage is that it causes the unemployment rate to increase, as it prices some workers out of the market altogether."

Yes if you pay people nothing there will be no unemployment. And nevermind that they have to live off of government assistance to make ends meet while they're working these poverty-wage jobs. Let's have the government bail out these greedy corporations when it comes to paying their workers subsistence wages. Because that makes sense.

Raising minimum wage doesn't price anybody out of the market. That's absurd. These employers still need the same number of workers regardless of the wage floor. It's not like fast food restaurants can get away with not being staffed and still be efficient enough to meet lunch-hour demand.

Can Spyman or anybody else provide any *empirical* evidence that any minimum-wage increase anywhere actually increased unemployment in a visible way? Or is this just theory textbook nonsense?

And keep in mind the Spymans of the world in the USA are the same ones telling us to do nothing about 8% unemployment because it's all "structural".

"These employers still need the same number of workers regardless of the wage floor."

That's not true. If I am manufacturing a product and making a very high profit from that product, there will be benefit to hiring more workers, and producing even more of that product, possibly selling it a lower price (depending upon the demand curve), but the law of diminishing returns applies, eventually I will reach a point where it will not be economical to hire more workers. That point will be affected by the price of the workers. The more expensive the worker the fewer I will hire.

What is wrong with my logic?

"What is wrong with my logic?"

Employers hire the minimum number of workers they need and not a single worker more. They're operating at operationally minimum staffing, and usually below minimum staffing (see: hospitals). Which is why even during times of massive recession, like in 2009, you saw "now hiring" postings in fast food restaurants, because they're all below staff. So the notion that paying workers a few dollars more is going to cause fewer hirings is just garbage. If you dip too far below minimum staffing levels, you lose efficiency. You lose customers because people aren't getting a good product. Furthermore, by continually paying workers these low wages you're depressing your own profits, because fewer people can afford to buy your stuff. It's a negative cycle of low wages and low consumption.

Your logic is just textbook theory.

We have had this argument many times before. There is no consensus among economists that higher minimum wages decrease employment, theoretically or empirically.

All of you talking about "econ 101" are especially funny because if you had taken literally any microeconomics course beyond 101, you would have covered monopsonic labour markets, in which a wage floor can increase employment. It seems likely that industries where most min wage workers are employed (e.g., food services) display monopsonistic characteristics. To enlighten you people, I will search for my old post on this topic which shows why you guys are so off track in this discussion.

here's my post from last time, which shows why all u people parroting stuff about "econ 101" and "equilibrium wage" are so off base. this is especially for fasces, who somehow thinks that his one year of economics makes him an expert on anything to do with the subject: http://webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?threadID=1047647&page-thread=7

also I agree with whoever mentioned collective bargaining as a potential solution. if service workers were better unionized, that would greatly help the terrible conditions in the industry, and inequality in the US generally.

1. 18 years
2. 1 year

Why are we debating this as if the US is the only country in the world? There are tons of other countries that have a decent minimum wage and still don't collapse economically. Most of the developed countries in fact.

It's true that higher minimum wages get pushed into higher prices overall. However, those products get bought by all sorts of people, so the minimal increase in price is shared. And the benefit is that the purchasing power of minimum wagers is still decent. That's not even including social effects such as people on minimum wage who do not resort to crime as means of income.

I don't claim to know how all these factors combine and what effects on the bottom line are attributable to minimum wage (anybody have a good study on this?), but I'm sure that the wheel doesnt have to be reinvented in the US.

Would it be age discrimination to tie minimum wage to age? We can all agree that $7.25/hr is fairly generous for a zit-faced 16-year-old flipping burgers at McDonald's.

The average age of a min-wage employee is 29 in the USA.

@Gunfighter: Yes. Equal pay for equal work.

Source please, Putin?

I'll admit my knowledge is economics 101. I also appreciate that reality does not always match the theory. Just because there are exceptions to the rule, does not mean the theory has no basis in the real world.

"All of you talking about "econ 101" are especially funny because if you had taken literally any microeconomics course beyond 101, you would have covered monopsonic labour markets, in which a wage floor can increase employment."

I sense a degree of contempt for ordinary people who are only capable "of parroting Economics 101". I don't pretend to be an expert. I'll raise points as best I understand, but if you want to counter those points it would be better if actually present some arguments and explain the point you want to make.

I think most people understand that the real world is complex and that theory alone can't account for every conceivable circumstance... but surely there is *some* validity to Economics 101 or else there would a different economics 101.

Take your proposal: "a wage floor can increase employment"

Maybe there are circumstances where this is true. But which is more of the following is more likely to be true: 1. Increasing the minimum wage tends to lower unemployment or 2. Increasing the minimum wage tends to increase unemployment.