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Countries with a social-democratic (Sweden, Norway) or conservative-corporatist (Germany) welfare state traditionally do not have minimum wage laws, because relatively strong unions and a somewhat robust social safety net have the same effect - you won't find someone willing to work for less than social security benefits which creates a lower bound.

As soon as these states move towards a more liberal welfare model (USA, UK) , they have been forced to offset the worst excesses of the labor market with mandatory minimum wage laws. I think the last was Germany, which recently introduced mandatory minimum wage in 2017.

Norway have selective regulation, mandatory minimum wages in certain trades and low income occupations.

> minimum wages in certain trades

My understanding is that these come from private agreements, not legislation. Are you saying that there are a handful of industries where there is actual legislation?

No. You can't say legally employ a cleaner for less than their occupation minimum wage. They don't have to negotiate for it or be in a union, either.

https://www.arbeidstilsynet.no/en/working-conditions/pay-and...

Collective bargaining agreements are private agreements, aren't they? I meant that the legislature and regulators me not decide the wages; and your reference seems to directly indicate that.

I linked to the state regulator website that enforces minimum wages (among other occupational regulations).

The countries you cite are able to have a minimum wage of zero because it's coupled with a robust social safety net (sometimes along with other backstops--Norway, for instance, is heavily unionized). This pairing is important, and is absent in the US.

There are about 40 countries without a minimum wage. I cherry picked countries that most people on HN would recognize since I'm assuming people would not know much about the economies of Tuvalu, Tonga, or Rwanda.

Not sure what your point is anymore. Are those examples of countries without social welfare and no minimum wage? That seems to strengthen the point above your comment.

They are unrelated; countries need a social safety net regardless of what the minimum wage is.

You might even argue that the higher you make min wage, the more important social services are, because you have taken away the ability of low-skilled workers to support themselves.

On the contrary, places with a robust social service net don't need as strong labor protections, as they're able to decline to sell their labor.

You’re right - in that direction they are related. Since a safety net is always needed, there is just no good reason to have minimum wage.

> I don't believe there are any situations where people are better off when a third party eliminates economic opportunities for them.

This is just hyperbolic. This would throw out all labor laws, safety laws, worker protections, unemployment benefits, and child labor laws.

Your fundamental assumption is that labor economics works like an economics 101 course. It doesn’t, that’s why it has it‘s own field of study. As an example, free markets depend on equal information and workers don’t have the same information as employers, so their ability to negotiate isn’t nearly as robust as you imply. Also, many companies enjoy a monopsony on local labor which distorts the traditional relationship between supply and demand. Those are just two examples.

It isn’t inherently negative if your hourly wage is increased but number of hours decreased. Doesn’t that give you more economic freedom? You can use that extra time for leisure or fill it with other hourly work. You might even make the same on fewer hours, which sounds like a win for low wage workers.

I’m not sure why you are redirecting to another study on minimum wage while also trying to “debunk” the Card & Krueger study instead of commenting on the substance or data in this article. Do you disagree with the headline or any of the analysis presented within?

While no system works exactly like models do, there is nothing magical about the economics of labor.

Free markets do not depend on equal information. Almost every single market has some level of asymmetric information, and yet markets function. Plus it's not like a lot of information is hidden by minimum wage employers, almost every single job description will include expected wages in the description. It's fairly easy to map a skill set to wage earning potential. The ability to negotiate is mostly affected by the ability of a company to find substitute labor.

Almost no companies in the first world are monopsonies, this is just flat wrong. Almost all real world monopsonies are based on government procurement. The classic example being government purchasing of military equipment due to civilian bans on ownership. (the government is the only one who can buy a fighter jet)

My economic freedom is dependent on the decisions I can make, not the amount of money in my pocket. By raising the minimum wage you are removing the ability to sell my labor at a rate lower than the minimum wage. This limits my economic freedom.

The real affects of a minimum wage increase are not uniform. As stated above, more experienced minimum wage workers benefit to the detriment of less experienced minimum wage workers. Some people will benefit, but the data shows that most people will be worse off in terms of take home pay.

This article is garbage. The conclusion it comes to is not based on any relevant data contained within the article and has not made any persuasive argument to back up their claims. There is no analysis in the article, just stating a bunch of facts and hoping that people don't understand correlation and causation.

The reason why I point to Card & Kruger is due to the fact that every single justification for the raising of the minimum wage is hinged on the validity of that paper. The paper is wrong and it's causing our most vulnerable populations to live in poverty.

This article isn’t a justification for raising the minimum wage, it is a commentary on how the arguments against raising the minimum wage have proved false in the recent wave of minimum wage increases. You seem to ignore that to attack strawmen and throw arguments at the wall.

Monopsonies certainly exist, it’s why we study them in labor economics courses.M and why economists write reports about their existence. [0] Buyers and sellers having equal access to information is a foundational aspect of free markets. [1]

[0] https://eh.net/encyclopedia/monopsony-in-american-labor-mark...

[1] https://www.thebalance.com/market-economy-characteristics-ex...

To quote the conclusion of the article.

"Opposition to higher minimum wage laws is increasingly based in ideology and orthodoxy rather than real-world evidence, economists say."

The article does not make a persuasive argument or provide any relevant data to prove this point. At best there are quotes from two economists and takes that as consensus. I would want to see at least a longitudinal survey of those who oppose the minimum wage and why in order to make that statement.

I didn't say that monopsonies did not exist, but that they are extremely rare. I think that "many companies enjoy a monopsony on local labor which distorts the traditional relationship between supply and demand" would be considered a fringe opinion by most professional economists. Even the article you've linked does not agree with that statement.

"Monopsony does not appear to have been important in company mining towns, a standard textbook example, or in markets for teachers and nurses, early suspects. In fact, the largest plausible estimates of monopsony exploitation to date are not for blue-collar workers but rather for professional athletes and possibly college professors."

Information dictates the efficiency of markets not their ability to exist. In reality there are plenty of asymmetries that can exist within functional markets. Trade secrets for example, are quite common in industry and give advantage to firms that can keep them. Markets can develop in surprising places, for example kidnapping is a surprisingly orderly business when you consider the circumstances.

Those same researchers went back and added a ton more nuance to their findings: They Said Seattle’s Higher Base Pay Would Hurt Workers. Why Did They Flip? https://nyti.ms/2AmgaNr

Broken in to 3 groups, high hour min wage, low hour min wage, and new entrants, both the high and low hour workers were better off and it's inconclusive how new entrants were affected, though there was a flattening of hiring new entrants.

There was also a lot of push back on the original paper which failed to account for a lot of cofounding factors.

To compare the US model with any of those countries is laughable at best. First of all, most,if not all, of them made long term investments in their people in terms of education, which took decades before they could reap the benefits.The economies transformed into service and high end manufacturing. Secondly, they do have very strong welfare systems,that take care of pretty much everything. Public healthcare is free( through taxation) or inexpensive. These factors create society,where people aren't desperate to lose jobs because they won't be able to go to hospital or buy food. That's why they don't and won't work for a fraction of what it costs to at least exist in those countries.

> you force them to have a wage of zero

This is false, and it is misusing the language to make your point stronger. A wage is what you get in return for working. A wage of 0 is work with no payment. Minimum wage does not allow that.