
Almost Everything You Have Been Told About The Minimum Wage Is False - mrfusion
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/01/30/almost-everything-you-have-been-told-about-the-minimum-wage-is-false/
======
calciphus
This article starts out with some bad assumptions, namely that raising the
minimum wage would only affect workers who are "at or below minimum wage" \- a
group claimed to be 31% teenagers.

However, a more intellectually honest statistic would be to look at the
populations at or below a proposed new minimum wage (say $10/hr), which you'd
find is a much larger portion of the US population and a much smaller
percentage of teenagers.

~~~
lostcolony
It also discounts people who currently do not work, because the amount of
additional pay (after taxes and reduced benefits due to having a higher
income) is so minuscule compared to the amount of time they have to spend. If
the minimum wage was raised, it may lead to more people actually seeking work,
since they difference between not working and being paid welfare, and working
and having reduced welfare (maybe even going off it completely) is higher, and
this guy ignores that as well.

------
sebular
This clown is making a pretty myopic argument.

The weakest part by far (paraphrasing): "Since food service worker
productivity hasn't increased over the past 27 years, neither should their
wages."

So when you sit down at a restaurant in 2014 compared to 1987, you're paying
significantly more for your dinner. Why? The owner has higher operating costs
in 2014 than in 1987. Fuel costs more, which means the production and delivery
of fresh food to his restaurant is more expensive. Rent is also higher. This
isn't complicated, I'm basically describing the effects of inflation.

So even though the restaurant isn't any more productive for its customers in
2014, it costs significantly more, because the restaurant owner is passing off
his rising costs to the customers.

I'm sure if you pointed this out to Mr. Dorfman, he'd be fine with it. The
system works! But as soon as we suggest raising the cook's wages in proportion
with the owner's profits and the customer's bill, he gets enraged, starts
sputtering about government forcing business to give handouts to greedy lazy
bottom-feeders (who aren't actually poor, apparently?).

In reality, there's only one difference between the restaurant owner and the
cook: The owner has leverage to increase the amount of money he gets (raising
the price of a sandwich), while the cook doesn't. Neither the owner nor the
cook has increased productivity whatsoever in the past 27 years, and expecting
significant gains would be insane.

The restaurant industry has been around for millennia with only a handful of
major improvements to productivity, none of which have happened in the past 30
years. Yet somehow, this is solely the fault of the cook.

From the comments section, a telling quote from this imbecile: "Why is it
'true' that full time work should be enough to meet all your basic needs
(which is undefined anyway)?"

...you don't need an undergraduate Econ degree to answer that one. If you're
working full time and it's not enough to support your basic needs, you're
going to die.

------
treerock
>"Having established that the number of minimum wage workers is small and
shrinking, that most minimum wage workers are not poor, and that most of them
are young and working their way up the ladder"

Except it doesn't.

It says that 2.5% are on or below minimum wage, that's 3.6 million people and
doesn't include those on slightly above minimum wage, that would be affected
by the changes. That's a significant number of people.

45% of minimum wage workers are over 25 years of age, so not that young.

And I really don't know how Mr Dorfman thinks he has established that they are
'not poor'.

------
headbiznatch
Here - someone did the few minutes of Google searching and rational analysis
that Dorfman didn't have time for, you know, to keep this piece from being
complete bullshit.

[http://www.mathofpolitics.com/2014/01/30/poor-work-
counting-...](http://www.mathofpolitics.com/2014/01/30/poor-work-counting-the-
working-poor/)

------
Lendal
I was going to say this was just more partisan bickering, but at the end he
does offer a credible solution: Raising the Earned Income tax credit. This is
actually a good idea.

Unfortunately it won't gain any traction because it's not drama. I wonder how
we could make increasing the EIC a more exciting, dramatic and controversial
issue so the media will cover it.

------
joesmo
As another comment by calciphus points out, the data is completely wrong. Yet,
let's assume for a second that it's not. If so few people are affected by the
minimum wage, why would there be so much opposition to raising it?

