Missed it by that much

 


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How the minimum wage is maximized to hurt the poor

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Simply put, the minimum wage should be 0. And for you Bernie Sanders fans, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden agree with me.  But that didn’t stop Florida from becoming the next state to require a minimum wage of $15. Like all recent increases in the minimum wage this too was touted as, "a huge win for the working people of the Sunshine State!"(1) At first it seems simple. Well-meaning people want to help the poor by forcing businesses to pay them more money. If you look at the economy in a vacuum that would play out. But life is not so simple. The topics of prices and Karl Marx’ defunct Labor Theory of Value are worth spending a whole essay on, but suffice it to say that the price of goods and services are based on how much the customer is willing to spend.(2) And in this particular instance the goods and services are the employee and the customer is actually the business itself. Raising the minimum wage makes the employee more expensive. And when you make something more expensive...
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