this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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Without minimum wage, companies will pay their workers the absolute least. That's why there's a minimum wage!
And that's irrelevant if we have other mechanisms to ensure everyone has a minimum standard of living. If you are above the poverty line regardless, you wouldn't have to take poorly paying jobs if you didn't want to, but that shouldn't restrict others from choosing to take that job.
Once you start talking about other mechanisms that don't exist, then your ideology is a fairy tale. Libertarianism is stupid, it won't ever work.
So, proposing policy changes makes an ideology "a fairy tale"? How else are we supposed to actually make changes?
I would never support eliminating the minimum wage w/o some kind of replacement. But I also won't support increasing the minimum wage in lieu of a replacement, because increasing the minimum wage often does more harm than good in the short and medium terms (kills jobs and encourages longer-term replacement of those jobs w/ AI).
Some hardcore libertarians say "no welfare and no minimum wage," but most serious libertarians take a more moderate approach. So ignore the crazies that say we should radically change the entire economy "because principles" and listen mostly to those who want to make smaller changes to reduce initiation of force.
What will stop manufacturers from putting cheap carcinogens in their products?
What stops monopolies from suddenly deciding to pay as little as they can?
What stops corporations from paying as little as they want?
What happens to consumer standards and laws?
How will you assist the impoverished?
How will you stop poverty?
How about taxes?
Social services?
Where even is your evidence that removing minimum wage increases job growth? Ridiculous line of 'thinking'
In fact, I don't even care. Libertarianism is fucking stupid and will always be stupid and will always fail because it is inherently stupid.
The same thing that stops them today... public outcry and lawsuits after the fact. Regulations are generally reactionary.
Likewise for monopolies et al. They happen with strict regulations, and it's pretty clear that corporations lean on regulations to protect them from what would otherwise be a lawsuit. Look at how ineffective fines are for violating regulations, they're largely a cost of doing business at this point and are almost never enough to actually compensate those injured.
The general libertarian position is that we can reduce a lot of them to fraud. Right now, companies can cover for their lies in the fine print, whereas a reasonable person would consider that to be misleading and fraudulent. If there was a real risk of that corporation going under and the owners getting sued personally for fraud, companies would likely act a lot more reasonably.
One change here could make a ton of difference: remove limited liability protections for corporations over a certain size. If Boeing fails to ensure their airplanes are safe, those in charge of cutting QC spending should be held liable for criminal negligence. If your local mom and pop restaurant has an ecoli outbreak, they probably shouldn't go to jail, but they may need to go out of business if they were negligent.
The more laws we have, the more having expensive lawyers can protect the wealthy from consequences by finding loopholes and whatnot. I'm not saying we should eliminate all laws, but we should certainly reevaluate the ones we have to determine if they're actually protecting people equitably, or if they unfairly protect the rich.
Libertarianism isn't an end goal, it's a general direction, so everyone is going to disagree on the exact policies here.
My personal opinion is to do something like UBI, more specifically a Negative Income Tax (NIT). If you earn less than some amount, you should be a net receiver of tax dollars, and that should scale back the more you make.
We could probably get this today by switching Social Security to this NIT program without increasing taxes. Basically, we'd ensure everyone eligible is above the poverty line, and nobody over a "living wage" (say, 2-3x the poverty line) gets benefits. That would turn SS into an actual safety net instead of a retirement program, and some back-of-the-napkin math says the current SS tax rates should be enough. I don't think we should switch to it overnight, but phasing it in while phasing out other welfare systems is certainly something I'd be in favor of.
This isn't consistent with the "ideal" libertarian policy of no public welfare, but it is consistent with the direction libertarians would like to go, which is simpler government. Making government less subjective is a good thing, and welfare programs are absolutely subjective and unfairly distributed (many don't bother applying when they'd totally qualify). A Negative Income Tax is automatic, you file taxes, and if you qualify, you get benefits. It's similar to the EITC, but removes the requirement to earn an income.
It's simple supply and demand. If you reduce the costs of supply, businesses will create more jobs. That's why reducing the Fed rates works to stimulate the economy, lower borrowing rates means fewer impediments to expansion, which leads to more jobs. That's the foundation of fiat monetary policy, and cutting the minimum wage is simply another way to accomplish the same thing.
I can also point to numerous examples where increasing the minimum wage, especially rapidly, results in fewer jobs. Yes, those jobs tend to be better, but that doesn't matter if you're not one of the lucky few who get it. Here's an article about just that.