The private sector won’t hire the additional 250K-300K new workers per month until we have adequate aggregate demand in the economy so they’ll hire new workers. Please explain to me how keeping the minimum wage static, or decreasing it, will help the situation?
First, demand isn't enough. The jobless want as much or more than they wanted six years ago when they were rich. The difference is now they're broke. So instead of demand what we want to do is increase incomes and spending.
Here's the thing to remember, people are different. Some people can bring in a lot of income to a company and some people can only bring in a little. Lowering the minimum wage would make it so companies could hire more kinds of people. Raising the minumum wage limits the people companies can hire so household incomes fall and joblessness soars:
This is often where ideologues switch from saying "my doctrine makes good things happen" to "the bad things weren't my fault" (or maybe 'correlation doesn't prove causality'). OK, let's notice that raising the minimum wage did not cause increased jobs, incomes, and spending.
Who do you think creates demand? We do, the American public, since we consume real goods and services by firms. Business don't create jobs, nor can they create demand without any consumers. We live in a market economy, and the the public exchanges money $$$$ for real goods and services, which make the consumers the job creators. What do you think would happen if people stopped spending for a week, a month, six months, or a year? This is obviously an extreme example of what's causing our economic problems today.
Also, I'd like to point out that Australia has a minimum wage of like $15.90/HR, that's like US $16.80/HR with today's exchange rate - give or take. Their U3 is like three points less than ours, yet their minimum wage is more than double ours. They also have a way lower unemployment rate for teens.
Minimum wage laws work pretty damn well in real world.
However, with that being said, the macro solutions, long-term, lie with increased deficit spending, not with an added burden to business, so some of the arguments make sense from a macro perspective, but we're ultimately talking public policy.
Here's the problem as I see it. Marginal product of labor decreases with increased unemployed, i.e, labor will eventually reach a point of diminishing returns like everything else. In theory, if we raise the minimum wage to <insert>#</insert>/HR, employers will employ people to the line whereby output of the least productive employee is </insert>#</insert>/HR. And then they won't employ additional people, but again, the real world tells us a different story.
We can solve this with a Job Guarantee, funded by Uncle Sam, but run by 501c(3)s, state, and local municipalities. This would solve the marginal product problem which keeps ringing in my head.
And we should:
A) Eliminate FICA
B) Medicare for All
C) Raise the income tax deduction
D) Increased federal spending on public works/policies which benefit the US
E) Free education for all Americans, including post-grad, for all Americans
F) Stipend for attending school
G) Give very American $5000 per year or give every state $5000 per capita.
My two cents, now I'm burned out.
