CBO: Minimum Wage Raise to Cost 500,000 Jobs, Boost Income.

The question is, what is the worth of that someone's labor? Its obvious that you're a proponent of the notion that markets determine value and therefore I ask you, why should markets alone make the verdict on the value of labor and why should that value be considered the actual, rightful value of that labor, even from an economic rather than moral point of view?

its cool i was beyond drunk at the time. But i dont think rasing the miniumum wage will have any real impact on costs of goods.

Raising the minimum wage does more harm than good. Companies don't have funds just sitting around to pay the increases. To adjust to the raise they cut workers to give the increase to others, automate jobs or pass the cost on to consumers. Look at how many stores have self checkout, ATM have made bank tellers obsolete, cashiers will soon join them, kiosks are now being used to order food. The fast food workers have been striking to get their salary raised to $15 an hour how many of the will still be employed if that happens. Minimum wage is a wage a person with no skills or work history makes when they first enter the working world. It is not to be a wage you live on but where you can learn the skills to move up the economic ladder. Only i.5% of the individuals make the minimum who are currently working.

@GazaAli: Joke post?

My assumption is that he's referring to the multiple valuations of a good or service.

One classic example is an industrial component, let's say a chemical that increases crop yields by $1,000 an acre. It costs $25 an acre to produce, but since they have a patent on the chemical and it provides an increase in value of $1,000 per acre to the farmer, they can charge $800 per acre application. When the patent runs out, other producers may rush in, pushing the price down to $35 per acre application. The value to the farmer hasn't changed, but that value to the producer has. Similarly, when there is more labor than demand for that labor (such as when the economy falters), the value of the labor to the worker can be pushed down while the value of the labor to the employer remains constant (or even increases). Since people need to work to live, even when there isn't enough work to go around, this can really push wages low.

This is a nice way to put it. I was referring to the notion that the market value of something is not the final and unquestionable value of it, and is not necessarily inherent to the commodity or service. In the case of labor as a commodity, other than what I just said, society at large cannot afford to allow same market rules of valuation to apply in a strict manner to labor, because labor is not just a commodity, its also the instrument of earning one's means of subsistence and being a potent member of society and public life at large.

@mattbbpl: Exactly...supply and demand. In both cases...