> or we pay inflated prices for goods and services to maintain wage floors. [snip] Paying inflated prices for goods and services is regressive as it's a burden that falls equally on the rich and the poor.
Not regressive if the poor are earning more because of a widely deployed wage floor (with obvious caveats).
> Not regressive if the poor are earning more because of a widely deployed wage floor
It's a leaky system because the unemployed (as well as minors and retirees) don't benefit from this and still end up paying higher prices. Wouldn't it be more effective (not to mention simpler) to let the market drive down the cost of labor to its minimum possible price, and then letting richer people subsidize poorer people through progressive taxation and redistributive welfare?
Yes, driving wages to zero is obviously progressive taxation!
Until the US becomes a member of the EU... Then it would be OK to tax the US poor, because that would be progressive taxation (because the US poor are much richer than the EU poor, tax the "wealthy" US citizens to pay the poor EU citizens?)
It absolutely is. We use the market to drive the price of goods to zero (this is why milk, bread, and clothing is so cheap). We are simply applying the same thinking to the price of labor as well. Humanity is collectively better off for it. We should absolutely aim to drive wages to zero. Why artificially inflate them?
In the (perhaps distant) future, all goods and services are provided by automation and machinery, and humans wouldn’t work. All wages would essentially be zero by then.
Not regressive if the poor are earning more because of a widely deployed wage floor (with obvious caveats).