[po1nt]

It's 100% lower wages for those who lost jobs.

[StevenWaterman]

If the total salary has gone up, for less work done, it is a positive change. You can solve the inequal distribution via taxes and benefits.

Start: 100 people paid $100

After minimum wage change: 90 people paid $125, 10 people paid $0

After tax increase: 90 people paid $113 + $12 taxes, 10 people paid $108 from taxes

Now everyone is paid at least as much as they were before, and fewer people are forced to perform labour

In practice it was only 3% unemployment not 10%, which means the tax increase is less and there is more of an incentive to continue working. You can also pay the displaced workers less than their original wage, to reach an equilibrium where everyone is happy with either work+more money, or leisure+less money. Or have it be age-based with an earlier retirement. Or have people work part-time.

We need to stop seeing having a job as being inherently good. Being able to live is good. Humanity should strive for 100% unemployment.

[kgwgk]

"Less work done" doesn't look like a positive change, you can't tax your way out of a smaller pie. Specially if you strive for humanity to produce no pie to start with.

[po1nt]

Then we should increase the minimum wage to 200$/hr or more.

[SideQuark]

Paying more for less is never a positive change, it's an inefficiency that is costing someone and resulting in less goods for society. It's a net loss. That money paying for less is now not being spent where it was before, making that place lose out.

[OrvalWintermute]

Total salary going up for less work can truly hurt people that are low, aptitude, low skill, and do not produce sufficient value to hit minimum wage.

[simianwords]

Also consider non linear utility of money.

[skrebbel]

For hamburger flippers? A 25% increase in wage might well be superlinear for some of them (eg better circumstances and opportunities for kids)

[bravesoul2]

They are working the same hours elsewhere for free?

[po1nt]

They might be living in a tent on a sidewalk for free if you ban them from working.

[frikskit]

Why not set very low maximum wage ceilings and have 100% employment? /s

[themafia]

Are you going to reduce lottery payouts and maximum stock investments as well?

Will I still be allowed to hunt for food?

Society is something better encouraged than gamified.

[roenxi]

Because that happens naturally without a law. People lower the wage they ask for until they get a job.

[barchar]

This has been tried, and actually does work reasonably well.

Well, not maximum wages as policy but policies where high productivity workers take a lower wage than they could individually bargain for in exchange for boosting wages of low productivity workers.

It provides a windfall to the most productive industries and a squeeze to the least productive ones.

[em500]

Why not set very high minimum wage floors and make 100% of worker rich? /s

Turns out economics is actually more difficult than "higher minimum wage is good/bad".

[BriggyDwiggs42]

Correct?

[ath3nd]

Nah, they didn't lose them, they got employed elsewhere for what they are worth, so if we do random calculations, it was probably something like 25% increase for many of them.

The unemployment statistics were not influenced by raising the minimum wage here, so you can assume that the people who lost their low paid jobs simply moved elsewhere and got better paid jobs. It's mostly the employers' loss, which is how it should be. If you can't afford to start a business, don't start a business.