Should We Raise the Minimum Wage?

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In which John discusses the minimum wage, and whether raising the minimum wage would negatively affect employment in the United States. Thanks to Rosianna for graphics and research help: …

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25 thoughts on “Should We Raise the Minimum Wage?

  1. vlogbrothers

    WTF

    +John Green discusses the minimum wage, and whether raising the minimum
    wage would negatively affect employment in the United States.

    Should We Raise the Minimum Wage?

    Reply
  2. Jake Milliken

    plane deals

    If a job pays their employees minimum wage, then it’s not a hard job. I
    know that not all minimum wage paid jobs are fast food related, but if a
    job has minimum wage, it’s not hard to begin with. So if you wanted to be
    self-supporting, look into getting another job, pay attention in class,
    work hard for your future, it’s useless to raise the minimum wage, because
    if it’s a minimum wage paying job, it probably doesn’t require that much of
    a skill set to handle. Also, raising the minimum wage will be worse for
    smaller businesses and it’ll create fewer jobs. People who work minimum
    wage jobs shouldn’t push for raising the minimum wage, they should push for
    looking into a job that’s harder, which in turn has a steadier income, of
    course a job flipping burgers(again, just an example, however all minimum
    wage jobs are minimum wage for a reason; they’re not hard) shouldn’t be
    paid $10-15, if you want more money, find a better job that better suits
    your qualifications and skill set, instead of wasting your resources on an
    easy job that doesn’t have a decent paycheck supporting you, use your
    resources and find a good job that uses your skills, because those kinds of
    jobs have really good/decent pay.

    Reply
  3. Naveen

    Dating Sites

    John is disregarding the fact that MOST studies say raising the wage does
    kill jobs & raises prices. According to the non-partisan CBO, raising the
    minimum wage would kill the jobs of 500,000 Americans. Obama’s federal
    contractor wage increase has already caused restaurant closures on military
    bases, and 15,000 base jobs will vanish by next year. More people lose jobs
    than benefit from higher wages. Minimum wage hikes mean less opportunity
    for poor and minority Americans like me to get on the job ladder and it
    raises prices of necessities which hurts the poor the most.

    Reply
  4. IgnemFeram01

    Super Exotic Cars

    I graduated high school in May. I’ve been looking for a job (but no one is
    hiring). I’m still living with my mom and I’m unable to go to college
    because I wasn’t smart or fast enough to apply for scholarships. My mom
    hasn’t done taxes in two years because she can’t afford to have the
    government take what little money she makes from her job. If minimum wage
    was raised she’d have an easier time and I could get into college. Fuck
    minimum wage.

    Reply
  5. bweazel

    Lose Pounds

    “A living wage”…. I stopped watching right there. A pity it was so late
    in your video where you finally let your politics slip, I would have
    stopped watching earlier.

    You don’t get a living wage for flipping burgers. If you make it easy for
    people to not do shit in life, and they can still make a life out of
    flipping burgers, they’ll do just that. 

    Reply
  6. Jordan_Cardwell

    New Site

    This guy sounds like a college freshmen. “Daddy, Mommy, I’ve discovered a
    formula that central planning intellectuals can use to force more
    prosperity on us with the police. Freedom is like, so dangerous, and my
    intellectual professor was able to teach me the dangers of freedom in like,
    three or four lectures! We even looked at some studies that concluded that
    freedom is bad. They were SO compelling, like OMG. I’ll never trust freedom
    again, and will only trust the intellectually elite who know what’s best
    for me.”

    Reply
  7. MadBunnyRabbit

    Score!

    I know nothing about economy, but I feel like no minimal wage gives
    employers more room to abuse their employees. Let me give a personal
    example. I’m still studying. Although my degree is more of a backup plan to
    what I want to do. Nevertheless I have o real applicable skills. I had an
    opportunity to go for an exchange and I took it. I want to make the most of
    it so I plan to stay for two semesters, but my Uni can’t guarantee money
    for second semester. So I calculated and figure I need 2600 euro in an
    economy where monthly minimum wage is 300 euro. So clearly there’s no way
    to make that cash. But since I’m a bit desperate I took first job that
    offered me the closest thing to it. So since two weeks ago I’m stuck with a
    95 hour a week graveyard shift every week nonstop and I’ll only get 1800
    euro (which should be enough since I have some extra cash on the side). Now
    for me, I don’t have to go for the exchange. Nothing really will make me
    more desirable as employee because of that and like I said it’s only a back
    up plan for me. But I really, really, really *want* to.

    Now imagine that you really, really, really *need* to eat. You may say from
    economical point of view, if wage is too low people wont work. But in
    reality, they will if they are hungry. Or even a student that wants needs
    some cash. In high school, classmate of mine was in bad spot at home, so he
    worked at a hypermarket, six hours a day for 3rd of minimal wage. At first
    he said it was ok, but with time they gave him more and more and more
    duties, but no extra pay. He really was complaining, but guess what, he
    wouldn’t quite because family needed money.

    And that’s also a thing. Even though there is a minimal wage, companies
    still abuse employees. I just feel that without it, it would’ve been even
    worse.

    Reply
  8. Chris O'Rourke

    chat fast

    Raising the minimum wage without raising the official income determining
    poverty is a trick to reduce social spending, and workers would end up less
    less net income via reduced benefits, higher health insurance costs and
    student loans kicking in.

    Reply
  9. W Gaston

    think tank

    People who think the minimum wage should be increased have absolutely no
    idea about economics. I used to believe in the minimum wage, but, I was one
    of these uninformed people who couldn’t see past his own nose. First of
    all, wages are none of the government’s business! The Constitution does not
    authorize the feds to get involved in such matters. Second, minimum wage
    increases don’t solve anything. Companies will do one, several, or all of
    these: hire less employees, lay off employees, cheapen their products,
    increase their prices, or go out of business. Setting a minimum wage knocks
    the bottom rung off the ladder of success. Increases to the minimum wage
    continues to weaken and remove more rungs from that ladder. Entry level
    people such as high schoolers will have much harder times finding
    employment. Another thing. Burger flippers, order takers, cashiers, grocery
    baggers, etc., are examples of bottom rung entry level positions. They are
    meant for young people still in high school and such. These jobs are not
    intended to be career, family raising type jobs. To expect brain surgery
    wages from a burger flipping job is not only impossible, but insane! These
    jobs are meant to be stepping stones to better jobs and careers. America
    ain’t a caste society, folks! We have the freedom to move up and down the
    ladder of success. If you choose to bag groceries as a career, then you
    have no legitimate gripe if you only get paid a few dollars per hour! If
    you want higher wages, then find or learn better skills and work! But don’t
    whine and cry to the government like a snot nosed kid throwing a tantrum
    because he didn’t get that Snicker’s Bar he wanted! Low skill jobs have low
    pay wages, so suck it up and take it, or move on to something better! You
    pinko commies and socialistic shmucks have knowledge zero about how the
    free market works! 

    Reply
  10. Mike Timothy

    cut electric bill

    Here’s some college freshman economics to counter the anti-minimum-wage
    college freshman argument:
    At current productivity it is impossible to have more jobs than workers,
    therefore, by supply and demand, work will always be devalued.

    Even when the economy booms and unemployment declines to under 2%,
    pro-rated full-time employment caps out at about 60%. Why is that a
    problem? Because “work” is not some faceless market commodity or good, it
    represents the ability of people to survive. If there isn’t enough “work”
    (and there isn’t), people die.

    If you tell a person “you must work to survive”, then it is incumbent on
    you to 1. provide enough work for them and 2. pay them enough to survive
    given the work that’s available. If you have to work to live, working has
    to pay enough to live, and if there are more workers than work, market
    forces will NEVER allow workers to be paid enough to live, and you need a
    minimum wage.

    For the simplest short term solution, raise minimum wage.

    For a simple, medium-term solution, decrease the number of hours in
    “full-time” until the available work hours get closer to 100% population
    employment hours. If we can’t achieve more than 60% full-time employment,
    decrease full-time by 40% (to ~25 hours/week).

    However, unless our economy collapses under the idiocy of this debt-based,
    exponentially-increasing system we have, our productivity will only ever
    INCREASE. Eventually we approach a post-scarcity economy. As that
    happens, the notion of a capitalist economy becomes more and more
    ridiculous. Eventually we have to realise that we’ve WON the game of
    survival and quit playing as though we’re still competing with anything.
    In reality, we already have. Eventually, all it should take to receive
    the basics of survival is simply being a person. Eventually, “If a man
    does not work, neither should he eat.” needs to be recognized for the
    bronze-age nomadic desert-tribe economics that it is.

    Eventually, “survival” needs to stop being a commodity.

    Reply
  11. naturebc

    Free Credit Report

    I agree with you to a great extent. Raising minimum wage does not fix the
    problem it is meant to fix but it also does not create problems some claim
    it creates. Raising minimum wage only perpetuates the need to raise the
    minimum wage again. I believe we should be focusing on the upper echelons
    and control the price increase which is almost always arbitrary, almost
    never tied to the cost of production.

    Reply
  12. Harry Elliff

    cambodia Vacation

    Its true that increased wages = happier employees. Therefore, its a good
    business model. Unfortunately, human nature is what motivates employers to
    cut hours and force employees to moonlight when companies are faced with
    higher MW and increased regulations. I think redirecting welfare funds to
    allow giving people a basic minimum income would be better. Better for
    capitalism. Better because it reduces welfare bureaucracy and welfare
    traps. BETTER for the poorest of the poor.

    Reply
  13. Scott Pettigrew

    TI

    Excellent argument at the end John. However the middle part where you
    disregarded economic logic and the obvious observable trend of job loss
    and/or wage suppression due to minimum wage laws was a little bit
    wishy-washy. It’s an incredibly great business model to pay your employees
    more in order to attract better employees, but I really really don’t need
    the government to tell me how to do business. Because, well, if the
    government was a business it probably wouldn’t have even been able to raise
    the startup capital it required, let alone not go bankrupt almost
    immediately.

    Reply
  14. clairishe

    New Site

    Both of the min. wage studies he cites have been debunked by later studies.

    Raising the price of anything will reduce the potential consumption of it,
    including labor. Employers will simply have fewer people work harder or
    longer hours, rather than hiring additional people if it will hurt their
    bottom line.

    Reply
  15. john patterson

    New Site

    Minimum Wage Should Have Been Raised Every Time The Politicians Voted
    Themselves Raises=The PROOF The Nation Has Been Run and Continues to Be Run
    by Double Minded Hypocrites And JESUS Said All Double Minded Hypocrites
    Burn In HELL !!!!!!!

    Reply

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