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...or required bottom level wages.

It always strikes me the more you artificially force wages up from the bottom, the worse the overall impact is on people. I have a handful of reasons why. None of these are economic theory in my major ... just thoughts.

1) Nobody wants to earn minimum wage. Whether it's $4 an hour or $40 an hour, nobody wants to earn the bare minimum... and that goes especially for people who aren't in what I would call starter hourly jobs.

2) Math simply doesn't math on keeping prices steady when underlying labor costs shoot up exponentially. Note, this is not some ethical conversation about profit margin and rich CEOs... that's not this. But if you take what used to be 10% of 100 and turn it into 20% of 100, that 100 has to go up to make up the difference in between.

3) raising minimum wages also raises supply prices indirectly. Same reason. The guy scrubbing clubs didn't just get more per hour. The vendor's employee delivering the towels and brushes to the bag room gets more. The guy loading that guy's truck gets more. The guy boxing the brushes gets more, and on and on.

4) therefore, it's not *just those money grubbing CEOs* keeping the working man down, it's all of the costs in between that also rise. Again, not saying there's no such thing as greed here (of course there is... nobody ever got rich by everybody else getting rich too)...

5) meanwhile, the rest of society - let's say they're salaried, educated, whatever... not working for hourly wages... their income doesn't change... buying power goes down... debt goes up... let's thrown on particular professions... like being a teacher. Would anybody disagree that teachers are absolutely necessary in our society? What's the point of being a teacher if you earn basically minimum wage and have parents treat you like shit, etc. etc.? We're already trending perilously close to that line as it is... and that's not the only profession that fits here.

6) so... what did we solve? We just created inflation and hurt the people who, as a whole, are the engine of the economy while not really helping the minimum wage guy because there's a mas-o-menos similar increase in prices they pay to offset the increase in wages they receive.

So... my feeling is minimum wage is bad for the economy as a whole. If employers were forced to pay what people are worth based on actual economic factors... supply and demand... Econ 101 shit... there would be a better chance of keeping both wages aligned with real purchasing power, and keeping prices aligned with what the majority of the population can afford.

Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.