Comments on: Misunderstanding the Minimum Wage.

By: The Elephant's Child

The Elephant's Child — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:56:40 +0000

The minimum wage is meant to give raw beginners a chance to learn how to work. When the minimum wage is raised sharply, it eliminates the least skilled from the marketplace. That is plain common sense. Don’t go off on a tangent arguing with straw men that were never in the words I wrote. We have had tons of laws passed to regulate the labor market, some good, some bad. If you do not have a place where those who don’t know how to work to start and get the instruction that they need to become useful workers, then they are sunk.

Those who are most deeply in poverty are apt to be those who dropped out of school, or those who are new immigrants who do not speak the language. The ladder to a better job isn’t very useful if you take out all the bottom rungs. Someone who learns basic skills, how to speak to a customer, how to mop the floor, clean the tables, wash the windows and can do those things without close supervision has marketable skills.

By: Mark Baird

Mark Baird — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 05:32:08 +0000

Statutory minimum wages were also proposed as a way to control the proliferation of sweat shops in manufacturing industries. The sweat shops employed large numbers of women and young workers, paying them what were considered to be substandard wages. The sweatshop owners were thought to have unfair bargaining power over their workers, and a minimum wage was proposed as a means to make them pay “fairly”.

To a conservative their are no distortions in the market place except what the government distorts. This thinking is just as delusional as liberals regarding hunting and the 2nd Amendment.

By: The Elephant's Child

The Elephant's Child — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:02:14 +0000

I probably should have added “I think”. Something has transpired because I have read that the administration has eliminated a lot of previous intern possibilities. I couldn’t remember exactly what I read nor where, and was too lazy (it was late) to do a search. And that it was a Obama administration change.

By: Subsidy Eye

Subsidy Eye — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:01:38 +0000

Sorry, meant to write, "Lots of U.S. college students seem to gravitate to internships (unlike my generation, which sought out paying jobs) during the summer.

By: Subsidy Eye

Subsidy Eye — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:00:50 +0000

“Many people got their start by convincing a business to allow them to volunteer to work for free, fetching coffee or mopping floors just to learn. That is no longer legal.”

Is that really the case? I’m asking because I don’t know. My son managed to get a one-week internship in a big computer-chip manufacturing firm while he was just a sophomore in high school. True, all they had him do was observe what other employees were doing.

In Europe, unpaid or minimally paid working internships are common. Lots of college students seem to gravitate to internships (unlike my generation, which sought out paying jobs) during the summer. Some of these are non-profit organisations, but I thought that some of them were for companies, too. Are they all required to be paid at least the minimum wage, no matter how short a period they’re employed?