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Absolutely even George Osborn the UK Conservative chancellor realises that subsidizing Mc Jobs is not a good use of tax payer money.

I have no problem with say subsidizing training for Nurses and doctors but subsidize Liddle and Tesco' shelf stackers not so much.

Maybe employers should pay an additional tax on turnover equal to say 90% of the subsidy

If you give workers higher wages using the minimum wage most of the extra money they get comes from the place they work raising prices. Places that pay minimum wage, like Walmart, disproportionately have customers that aren't very well off themselves. Giving money from a household that earns $40k per year to one that earns $20k per year does make the country more equal but we can do better.

The money that goes into the EITC comes from income taxes and the top 10% of household pay more than half of the US income tax.

If we want to give money to working Americans we have to pay for it somehow. We can either do that explicitly and in a progressive fashion or we can hide the price from voters and let the burden fall repressively.

>If you give workers higher wages using the minimum wage most of the extra money they get comes from the place they work raising prices.

Employers are bound by the market when they set their prices and don't get to choose their price at random on a whim.

>The money that goes into the EITC comes from income taxes and the top 10% of household pay more than half of the US income tax.

Yes but for the most part those are just the middle class. The plutocrats pay fuck all in taxes. I do not want an MD with a networth of $10M (sweat of his own brow) subsidizing a Walton (who inherited his fortune). I want the Walton to pay the actual cost of running his goddamn shop.

Also frankly, I think minimum wage is besides the point. What should come back are strong sector wide unions like the ones that still exist in Scandinavia. The unions will take care to setup their own sector wide minimum wage and will be far more flexible in responding to the market and also the cost of living than the government can ever be.

> If you give workers higher wages using the minimum wage most of the extra money they get comes from the place they work raising prices.

...and then people will stop shopping there and go somewhere where they keep their prices lower by paying their executives more reasonably.

If you're going to make naive pro-big-business arguments then don't stop, follow the naive logic to its full conclusion.

Why couldn't that happen today? Presumably Wal-Mart could lower their executive pay and undercut Target in the current wage environment, and yet they don't.

If you raise the minimum wage, it will raise the costs of all businesses in a market by the same amount, assuming that they all have the same cost structure (same basic wage and worker efficiency). Usually that causes prices to rise uniformly.

> Why couldn't that happen today? Presumably Wal-Mart could lower their executive pay and undercut Target in the current wage environment, and yet they don't.

You're really asking why executives don't cut their own pay?

> If you raise the minimum wage, it will raise the costs of all businesses in a market by the same amount, assuming that they all have the same cost structure (same basic wage and worker efficiency).

They don't all have the same cost structure, so it would be rather silly to assume that.

There are many companies that are not gigantic corporations with overpaid CEOs. If you only care about Walmart and Target, then yes, prices will rise uniformly. But employee-owned cooperatives, for example, will be completely unaffected. Places that already pay their employees a living wage would also be unaffected.

> But employee-owned cooperatives, for example, will be completely unaffected.

Cooperatives (this will depend on details of structure, etc.) are often still subject to minimum wage laws, and of those that are, paying workers minimum wage as the only guaranteed payment with dividends/profit sharing/etc. on top is, as I understand, a not uncommon arrangement. So a minimum wage increase does increase the labor cost to the corporation (and, since wages are taxed differently than capital income, it has a net effect on the worker/owners, as well.)

Now, obviously, the effect on a labor coop or its worker/owners will be different than the effect on a traditional corporation or its shareholders, but there will not necessarily be no effect on the former.

Okay, that's technically true, but that's a distraction. My point is that increasing minimum wage rewards businesses who already paid a living wage.

Ultimately I've seen zero evidence that raising the minimum wage has any negative effects on the economy. There are only hypotheses about how it could affect it negatively, but economies are too complicated for us to be making decisions based on hypotheses without evidence.

You fundamentally misunderstand what a market is and why they are good.

The labor market is filled with many different types of people with many different goals. Who are you to tell a teenager they can't work part-time after school because the company can't afford to pay them whatever amount you believe is the amount to be paid?

Regulations are what cause the gross mis-allocation of labor and resources, when you distort the free interaction of individuals to buy and sell their goods and services you end up with perverse structures where an adult willing takes a minimum wage job at walmart if they can also qualify for food stamps and other government assistance.

Writing a law to tell walmart to pay their employees more doesn't magically fix reality. Laws don't magically make the impossible possible, believing otherwise is adolescent fantasy.

>Who are you to tell a teenager they can't work part-time after school because the company can't afford to pay them whatever amount you believe is the amount to be paid?

I wasn't making an a pro-minimum wage argument but rather an anti-EITC argument. But anyway, for your information teenagers are exempt from the right to a minimum wage.

>Regulations are what cause the gross mis-allocation of labor and resources, when you distort the free interaction of individuals to buy and sell their goods and services you end up with perverse structures where an adult willing takes a minimum wage job at walmart if they can also qualify for food stamps and other government assistance.

The market is not only about money and Wall St. branded financial products. The market is also affected by power and influence. Regulations are just another part of the market. It's the free interaction of individuals who choose to unite together as one, in order to influence the market to their own benefit.

Because after all who the fuck are you to think that you can conduct whatever business activity you like in other people's neighbourhood. It's only at their own discretion that you are allowed to do that. You don't get to benefit from their property right laws, and their courts, and the infrastructure they built and paid for, and yet expect to do as you please without any interference what so ever, even when you are obviously being detrimental to the neighbourhood that is hosting you, and allowing your commercial activities. Individuals exist but they function at all as modern businessmen only because society also exists.

Teenagers have a minimum wage, it is just different (lower).

I actually don't understand your second point, but markets can't exist without the rule of law; markets require a notion of property rights, how can anyone think otherwise?

In a well governed society laws exist to facilitate the exchange of goods and services, how can exchange occur if people cannot trust the contract they engage in will be upheld? As difficult as it might be for you to imagine, laws and arbitration can exist without a government which centrally plans the minutiae of everyday life.

Again, your argument seems to be that by the snap of fingers and the degree of those with power, walmart can just magically raise wages. That's a childish belief.

I'm curious where laws and arbitration exist without government which centrally plans the minutiae of everyday life?