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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (68739)	2/3/2014 10:54:52 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Increases in minimum wages create a bias towards automation. One needs look no further than the increasing appearance of the retail equivalent of the one armed bandit to see that. Walmart was by no means the first major retailer to put in a self check out aisle. They have determined that they can save sufficient labor by forcing customers to self check out to make up for losses due to error and theft. That kind of thing never goes away and penetrates into ever smaller markets. Minimum wages disrupt labor markets and create a tax on businesses. If one considers preventing marginal operators from clogging the business landscape a boon then it might not be all bad. Of course many of those marginal operators later go on to become successful. In that respect minimum wages is a drag on the economy by preventing success. The reason they need a ridiculous minimum wage is that small business is the engine of growth in the economy. It is the way to make people less dependent on government. Thus in the minds of liberals small business is the enemy of the people. Ultimately, we agree that small incremental increases in the minimum wage is only harmful to then marginal operations. The problem is that every increase moves up the threshold of marginal.