Minimum wage is supposed to represent the minimum wage necessary for a worker to meet their basic human needs.
If you don't have a minimum wage, some people get paid below this level, and they somehow struggle along in poverty. But there is no real incentive for the state to help them.
Establish a minimum wage. Now these people are unemployed. Which contributes to the unemployment percentage. Causes the government to lose votes. The state has to pay out unemployment benefits to these people. The govt+state now have real incentives to change the structure of economy to ensure jobs are created for these people that are productive enough to justify the minimum wage.
But available labor is available labor, for new businesses.
I don't understand why people sit around saying oh the minimum wage is going to increase unemployment and therefore treat minimum wage legislation as apostasy, but some radical new technology which results in a lot of unemployment is just the economy getting more efficient and it will absorb all the excess labor with new enterprises.
Is there something about minimum wage legislation that makes the labor completely unusable? Wouldn't it be equally as temporary as some large efficiency gain in the economy?
If you don't have a minimum wage, some people get paid below this level, and they somehow struggle along in poverty. But there is no real incentive for the state to help them.
Establish a minimum wage. Now these people are unemployed. Which contributes to the unemployment percentage. Causes the government to lose votes. The state has to pay out unemployment benefits to these people. The govt+state now have real incentives to change the structure of economy to ensure jobs are created for these people that are productive enough to justify the minimum wage.