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Comment by FussyZeus | Hacker News Reader

> The USA went 149 years, from 1789 to 1938, with no federal minimum wage – so yes, America has gone longer without any hike than just than the 10 years since 2009.

You're (likely deliberately) omitting a ton of context as well as presenting a bad faith argument in general. Of course there were no minimum wage increases prior to the minimum wage. I also suspect there was no highway funding increases prior to the New Deal, does that in turn mean we shouldn't fund infrastructure now?

> Many economic experts, ignored by this article, consider no minimum wage to be the optimal level.

I'm sure they do, economic experts are the only ones who still think trickle-down economics is a good idea. Our economy is exploding, and our current problems are far more social, so maybe we should be listening to the sociologists and put the economy on the back burner for right now?

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Do economic experts still think trickle down/supply side economics are a good idea? It seemed to be a controversial issue among economists in the 70s and 80s. From what I could find, the modern consensus among economists is that tax cuts for the wealthy isn't effective at increasing GDP. (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reform-2 http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reforms )

The kind of experts gojomo is thinking of are still resolutely convinced that they're correct, and no facts will change their mind about that. Like the people the tobacco lobby used to wheel out to tell you that they were confident smoking was actually not dangerous, or the same handful presented as offering an "alternative" explanation for global climate change, they are fiercely resistant to the obvious conclusion from the available facts, and I don't really need to care whether that's because they're they're actually paid not to look at the obvious or they're not smart enough to see it.

Not trickle down, but Laffer (the guy the Laffer curve is named after) worked for Donald Trump in his 2016 campaign, and currently blames Barack Obama for the Great Recession.

Laffer's curve is 100% real, it's also 100% irrelevant to real world economics. It's as though after explaining about relativity and why it's impossible to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light, a physicist turned around and told you that therefore they are confident that it's impossible to move at more than a walking pace and so Olympic sprinters don't exist. And then an entire political party pretended to believe them because it would make very wealthy people even richer. The analogy breaks down there actually I guess. Also the part where loads of people die in miserable poverty, that's not really in the physicist analogy either.

As an outsider (I'm Canadian), I find this debate to be interesting. From my perspective, the American project is one that emphasized individual liberty, with only a small set of powers granted to the federal government by the constitution. It was expected that helping others would happen via voluntary means (churches, charitable organizations, etc.) rather than compulsory ones.

In that context, you could look at the data on inequality and still make a principled argument as to why a federal minimum wage is undesirable.

If that is true, which, as an american, i don't really care if that was the goal of the american project, it has demonstrably failed and we should act in the interest of human rights.

put otherwise - some people are working 2-3 jobs in order to feed, house, and clothe their children and it still is not enough. i have no ears for any principled argument in favor of the current state of things.

How has it demonstrably failed? America is the wealthiest, most successful, most powerful country in human history.

We're definitely the wealthiest. Our power is slipping thanks to awful foreign policy, and success is limited. We've been successful in generating massive amounts of wealth, but our standard of living isn't great compared with many other countries, and despite our wealth, our middle class is shrinking, and we have more homeless than ever, many of whom are veterans. And that's not even going into how a huge amount of our wealth can be directly traced to extremely exploitative attitudes and actions concerning other countries.

There's a lot to be proud of but there's also a lot to be ashamed of.

The American Constitution was created to expand the powers of the federal governmet (replacing the prior Articles of Confederation that existed prior). Since the creation of the constitution, the federal government has seen an increase in scope; driven in large part by new deal policies and an (absurdly) broad definition of "interstate commerce".

Under both the articles of confederation and the current constitution (with and without amendments), the idea of limited federal government was not personal freedom, but state's freedom (eg. powers not given to the federal government are given to the states).

Arguably, the strenthening of the federal government led to more constitutionally protected individual rights, as it led to the bill of rights being interpreted as restricting states as well.

The constitution (including amendments) does place strong limits on what states can do to curtail individual liberty, a topic that's covered extensively in The Federalist Papers. So I don't entirely agree with you on this.

This is a misunderstanding. The Federal government has a small set of powers because almost all legal and political power is vested in the individual States, which have most of the remit and authority of sovereign countries. Americans have always lived under the expansive social policy regimes of their respective States, which vary widely. It is only in the 20th century that the Federal government started dabbling in social policy at all.

Every State I have ever lived in had their own unique minimum wage laws. The Federal government is more like the EU, much of its policy function is to harmonize the laws of the States. Americans have almost no interaction with the Federal government; the laws they live under, the taxes they pay, and the social programs available to them are almost always specific to the State.

Didn't you just make the same argument for why a federal minimum wage would be unprincipled?

I wasn't trying to make a point per se, just clarifying a common misconception about social policy in the US. The policies that exist or not at the Federal level tell you very little about the policies Americans live under; at best, it bounds variability of policy.

That's fair, although those boundaries are pretty foundational to day-to-day life in America.

relying on churches to provide charity puts an emphasis on crowds rather than individuals

if you don't at least pretend to be Christian, or if you're say, gay, or like abortions, you lose access to many charitable funds, reducing your individual liberty when the rubber hits the road

Its unfortunate the non-Christian crowds don't emphasize charity. I agree that lack sorely tests individual liberty.

>Our economy is exploding

Does this mean growing, shrinking, improving, or failing? I have seen people argue for each of these points right now, and I think they all believed their own arguments.

DJIA grows: yay that means things are good!

Outstanding student loans grow: The bubble is about to burst!

Medical bills and insurance premiums are hampering everyone: Shrug

Highway comparison doesn't work.

There was no highway funding before the New Deal because there were no highways.

There were wages in 1790. They chose not to implement a minimum wage, but they could have if they wanted.

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Regarding "trickle-down economics", this isn't a real term anyone actually argues for. It's a sneer term created for the purpose of strawmanning libertarian economic positions to make them easy to attack. Not sure why this became such a meme, or how so many people seem to not realize that they're attacking an Emmanuel Goldstein. But it would be good if you stuck to criticizing positions that real people actually hold.

Yeah, I mean it's not like the Romans had to levy any funds to build roads all over their empire. /s

We were talking about highways in the sense of the things built in the New Deal.

You're talking about roads.

These are not the same thing and I think you're playing dumb about it (or at least I hope so).

> Our economy is exploding, and our current problems are far more social, so maybe we should be listening to the sociologists and put the economy on the back burner for right now?

You seem to have misunderstanding about economics and sociology. It seems you think (I am guessing) economists only care about economy growth, and sociologists know how to make social improvement. This thought appears also embedded in other comments.

It is wrong in many levels: 1) economists care about social improvement in general, not just in economics indies. However, many times economics indies are the best measure of general social improvement.

2) sociology is not supposed to be a discipline about making social improvement, before it's taking over by far left scholars.

3) sociologists usually do not know how to make social improvement in general. sociologists seem to understand the problem facing specific group of people, and they seem to know specific methods to make specific improvement, but they usually do not know how to make social improvement in general, because their social change program also never include cost analysis, and also never address side effects, unintended consequences, etc. They may know how to improve the life of a few people, but all their analyses do not care what cost to the rest of the world.

4) our economy is "exploding" in America

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