Re:What harm do minimum wages do?
by roenxi on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @06:44PM
(#24217706)
Hasn't the experience, considering Asia, been that the greatest benefit of free markets is for low-paid workers?
I buy a lot of notionally 'American' products (iPhone, computer gear, electronics) that are all manufactured in Asia for cost reasons. A bunch of places have become extremely wealthy in the last century, basically creating a middle class out of poverty, through a strategy of cheap-wages-lots-of-manufacturing. Coincidentally, the greatest reductions in poverty are all in Asia. And one shudders to think what the Chinese could be achieving if their government was a bit more competent and left people alone to prosper.
Is there evidence that the poor in America are prospering under high minimum wages? The stats I've seen suggested it is basically status-quo for the last 50 years. Minimum wage is a small part of the puzzle, granted, but it isn't necessary to generate absurd improvements in the general welfare.
I buy a lot of notionally 'American' products (iPhone, computer gear, electronics) that are all manufactured in Asia for cost reasons. A bunch of places have become extremely wealthy in the last century, basically creating a middle class out of poverty, through a strategy of cheap-wages-lots-of-manufacturing. Coincidentally, the greatest reductions in poverty are all in Asia. And one shudders to think what the Chinese could be achieving if their government was a bit more competent and left people alone to prosper.
Is there evidence that the poor in America are prospering under high minimum wages? The stats I've seen suggested it is basically status-quo for the last 50 years. Minimum wage is a small part of the puzzle, granted, but it isn't necessary to generate absurd improvements in the general welfare.