I think it's a clumsy solution even in the long run. There are better ways to achieve the same goal of making sure workers have enough to live on, I think, such as the negative income tax.
One of the downsides of the minimum wage law is that many people don't need minimum wage and are willing to work for less; teenage babysitters and busboys, for example, don't need as much to live on as an adult Wal-Mart worker with a wife, kids and elderly parents, but the minimum wage affects the employers of babysitters and busboys too - who can often least afford it. They therefore tend to respond either by breaking the law by hiring on the black market, or they fire their staff. Ever wonder why almost no newspapers hire children to deliver the papers anymore? Why pay a high minimum wage to a ten year old with a bike when you can pay it to an adult with a car who can do a route five times bigger?
One suggestion that has been put forward has been to expand child labour laws. There are already detailed rules for employers around how many hours a minor can work and what kinds of work they can do. This benefits adult workers by making them not have to compete with teenagers; if the jobs had completely separate classifications, you could have a lower minimum wage for the low-commitment, low-hour, highly safe jobs suitable for minors (ideally, large corporations would be prevented from having many jobs in this category), and a higer minimum wage for adults with families whose job absorbs more of their life. This is a flawed solution too, but at least one benefit of it is the reduction in harm to small businesses and households hiring occasional staff, and a clear recognition of which jobs should reasonably be expected to support a family.
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Date: 2007-01-05 04:10 pm (UTC)One of the downsides of the minimum wage law is that many people don't need minimum wage and are willing to work for less; teenage babysitters and busboys, for example, don't need as much to live on as an adult Wal-Mart worker with a wife, kids and elderly parents, but the minimum wage affects the employers of babysitters and busboys too - who can often least afford it. They therefore tend to respond either by breaking the law by hiring on the black market, or they fire their staff. Ever wonder why almost no newspapers hire children to deliver the papers anymore? Why pay a high minimum wage to a ten year old with a bike when you can pay it to an adult with a car who can do a route five times bigger?
One suggestion that has been put forward has been to expand child labour laws. There are already detailed rules for employers around how many hours a minor can work and what kinds of work they can do. This benefits adult workers by making them not have to compete with teenagers; if the jobs had completely separate classifications, you could have a lower minimum wage for the low-commitment, low-hour, highly safe jobs suitable for minors (ideally, large corporations would be prevented from having many jobs in this category), and a higer minimum wage for adults with families whose job absorbs more of their life. This is a flawed solution too, but at least one benefit of it is the reduction in harm to small businesses and households hiring occasional staff, and a clear recognition of which jobs should reasonably be expected to support a family.