There may not be an easy fix, but there are a few basic steps that lead in the right direction. Have you had a casual look at the links I posted? The effect you automatically infer from higher wages is not quite as clear cut as you might think. The world is a bit more complex than Econ 101. My understanding, from the little I recently read on the matter, is that the argument against a reasonable minimum wage is about at par with supply side economics: steeped in ideology, not quite so in reality. You're right, there is no easy fix. But allowing employers to squeeze employees with below subsistence wages is allowing the powerful to prey on the vulnerable. And how do you expect the vulnerable to better their lot and better contribute to society? They're fighting tooth and nail just to stay above water. You want to give people a chance to improve themselves and reach higher levels of employment? First, you need to give them room to breathe.
A business can only compensate an employee with wages that are comensurate with the value that the employee brings to the business. Encouraging a business to pay an employee more because he 'needs' more, is sheer folly. It's the type of economics used by leftists that have done nothing but destroy every country that has ever listened to them. You know who they are when they begin to explain how supply side economics doesn't really work in practice.
I did give them a look, not in depth, but a look. I see a lot of the evidence stating that an increase won't have much if any impact on actual job numbers in a negative way. As I posted previously, I'm giving you that. Right or wrong, I'm not debating that. What I think is the flaw in the studies is they're looking at wage hikes that happened over an extended period of time. Perhaps any impact on price would be minimal in that case, but it also keeps people below and ever rising poverty line, however slowly it goes up. Should we just bump the wages from 10 to 15 all at once I think the impact on price would be swift and dramatic to the upside. It's kind of a Catch 22 situation. Raise it slowly and it really doesn't help the low end worker. Big jump will shock the entire system too quickly to absorb the cost. The fix is to create jobs that pay well to replace all the well paying jobs that are being abolished through innovation and off shoring. That doesn't even address corporate greed in laying people off just to fill their own pockets, which does happen. I don't hear a single candidate delivering a realistic solution to the problem. They all have the same rap. We much create jobs and bring jobs back. Yeah, sure. What jobs, in what sector, and just how the hell do they propose to do it? An actual plan, not just empty rhetoric.
Most businesses will pay as little as they can get away with, which has a tenuous relationship with actual value. Frontier times.
You mean you don't think a guy like Bernie, who has never held a real job, can't decide what every entry level job in the economy is worth?
Now you're talking value, before it was what the employees needed. Which is it? And why would a pol like Bernie have any clue what a job is worth?
Look at executive pay. Look at corporate profits. Look at lower end wages. Look at the trend of growing disparity over time. Why is this happening? Why are employers squeezing the bottom rung? Because they can.
the government acts as a union for workers who can not otherwise organize. Look at it as a Minimum Wage Union. The workers can't go on strike, but the government can put the screws to the owners.
Paying a hourly wage that someone working full time could get by on is not a leftest idea. It is a mainstream idea. When you pay less than a minimum living wage to a full-time worker, some other person or entity has to subsidize their wages so they can make ends meet. For you and I to be required to subsidize these low wage workers is a radical idea! America is becoming a radical nation. If you are running a business and your employees can not justify their wages by the value they bring to your business, then you are either hiring people you shouldn't be, or there is something fundamentally wrong with your business model. All private, for profit business models that depend on taxpayer subsidized wages are following a radical, distorted, capitalist business model, and should not be permitted to exist in a free, mixed economy. One of the important roles that government should play is to prevent these defective business models from gaining a foothold in the economy. By adjusting the national minimum wage up to a living wage for all businesses the country can be moved back to sound business practice and a more stable and vibrant economy. Everyone will benefit. It is a win-win adjustment.