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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hmaly who wrote (184970)	3/23/2004 11:09:16 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1573221

The article suggests minimum wages will keep these people from being hired, when it really is their skills, and motivation, which are causing the problem. Certainly, if you have enough outsourcing, or deflation, such that the average person, with the average skills wouldn't get hired,at that price, them minimum wages become a problem. However, that isn't the case now... Yes of course they don't get hired because their skills and motivation are lacking but there will always be people with well below average skills and motivation. The minimum wage is not so low as to have much if any effect on the worker with average skills and motivation. It doesn't keep him from getting a job but it doesn't raise his wages either. In one indirect sense it might lower real wages because it creates some inflationary pressure (but because the minimum wage is low compared to the average wage or even in many places the begining wages for unskilled employees that inflationary pressure is low, and since inflation is low anyway its not a major concern at the moment). If however a "living wage" bill was pushed raising the minimum wage to $10 or $15 per hour then the minimum wage would have a lot of the negative effects the author of that article mentioned, particularly in poorer areas of the country. Tim