W/r/t <smallrant> it seems that the gender pay gap is one problem nestled into the bigger problem of stagnating wages for most Americans over the past half-century or so.
Just a little link on the minimum wage. http://www.dol.gov/minwage/mythbuster.htm (this thread is starting to drift a bit, sorry)
They should just make increases to the minimum automatic and then congress doesn't have to worry about appearing to harm businesses when they are actually not.
It's a good example of lawmakers doing something stupid that harms real people just to "appear" to be pro-business or fiscal conservative.
You also have the chronically unemployed in both the U.S. as well as places like France where it's livable to simply collect the government check.
Minimum wage shouldn't be a career. I have little sympathy for those who haves worked minimum wage for ten years or more. That suggests a lack of ambition, intelligence or both. Even the pimple faced 16 year old at Chick fil'a eventually gets promoted to team leader potentially in a matter of months or a year. Those who have worked minimum wage for 5 years or more, I'd be very interested in their work history, their criminal record, their tardiness, their productivity.
At a place like McDonalds, if you just show up on time consistently, you get raises. If you're a hard worker and express the desire there are plenty of assistant manager trainee tracks available.
Raising minimum wage isn't the answer -- taking away the incentive to be lazy would do more than throwing people an extra $2 per hour. The same bad decisions that got them in that situation are still the same bad decisions that they will keep making; unless there is incentive to stop.
Someone right now could go to North Dakota and get a job doing local truck deliveries paying up to $100k per year, some positions will even train. Working in the oil patch down in Texas and Louisiana offers high paying entry level positions that quickly end up paying over $100k.
My point is that there is always a way out of a minimum wage existence, the problem is that many people are content getting their free Medicaid, EBT cards and subsidized housing; so there is less incentive to move across the country or take a class somewhere or join a union apprentice program.
I am not saying end welfare or anything like that, but a safety net ought not become a way of life as it has for millions of people.
Sure there are some studies that say it doesn't. http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/157-07.pdf
But it's a point of contention with economists.
In any case your examples are a gross simplification based on anectodes and reduced to typical republican/libertarian talking points.
France is basically a socialist country, so there is a lot more going on there other than minimum wage. It's difficult to compare with other countries, because there are different tax rates and other social programs like free health Universal care that make the costs of being poor less.
But within the U.S., minimum wage varies by state, right? So PA has a $7.25 minimum while CA has $9.00. What is the unemployment rate difference between those two states?
Minimum wage has been increased dozens of times over the past few decades. There is ample history of what happens when it's increased, and I don't think there were massive layoffs every time it was increased in the past.
Raising the minimum wage is an answer, because without a legal lower limit, there will always be an incentive for employers to pay less and less. It's like gravity. You need a floor to stop the fall. And then you can build up from there.
If I can say, I don't think your statements about how easy it is to get a higher salary than minimum wage is correct for a lot of people. Perhaps you can't see yourself living at that level for too long, but there are plenty of people who work 2 and 3 jobs, hardly see their kids, are ruining their health, just to make ends meet. Can't call those people lazy.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Criticism_of_the_n...
You have to remember than increasing the minimum wages won't necessarily have an impact if current wages are already higher than the new minimum wage.
I remember reading that the new $15/hr minimum wage in Seattle (which is being phased in) will have almost no impact at first since very few folks are paid less than the new minimum.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/20/us-baker-hughe-res...
About minimum wage: do you know who really lobbies the hardest for increased minimum wage? Unions. Because they peg their base-line wages to the minimum wage. If they can succeed in getting the minimum wage raised, they can raise the pay for all of their workers who are already making 3 to 5 times the minimum wage.
They are fighting for a fairer wage for their constituents, and if such organizations existed for the majority of laborers, we wouldn't need a minimum wage.
But that's beside the point. A fair minimum wage is important because in 2013, 88.7% of American workers did not have a union to negotiate just compensation for them.
Now, both have to work just to keep a minimun living standard, and can only keep 1 kid... in daycare.
Also, families having only 1 kid were way too rare in the 80's, today, that's the norm.
This sentiment also seems to gloss over the contribution of stay at home partners. Just because they don't get paid, doesn't mean they aren't producing anything. Thus, the jump in resources from moving to double income is not the full amount of the second income.
The reason households "need" two incomes is because people want stuff.
Western Europe's heavy handed socialism wasn't as competitive as their light socialism is now.
America was the undisputed leader of the economically free world.
All the sudden by the 1970's, the US had to start competing more and more with the rest of the world. Our super high wages for unskilled labor just weren't competitive on a global scale.
Also, women moving in the job market actually lowers wages because the worker supply expanded greatly.
china wont stop, and capitalism will ruthlessly choose the cheapest route.