Why not

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Well, one step at a time - let's start by saying that a full-time job should meet the cost of living.

Yeah, you have to kill America slowly.

Sure, but to get there we'll have to fire at least one other worker to keep costs about the same.

Once they die off in the street though then we'll be good to go!

Give an example in history - in ANY country - where raising the minimum wage directly caused a drop in employment rate. It normally actually causes a hiring stimulus as businesses try to sell things to the workers who can actually afford to buy things now. There is such a thing as a demand curve, you know.

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/a-15-minimum-wage-would-wreck-us-economic-recovery/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/07/10/the-unintended-consequences-of-the-15-minimum-wage/?sh=75afd258e4a7

Just because something can and will work in some areas doesn't mean it will in others. For folks in big cities/urban states with very powerful economies and lots of cash flowing around that minimum wage is probably there already, or could be met easily.

It would NOT work in an area like mine (small town rural). There simply is not enough demand (which you were kind enough to mention) to fuel an increased "supply" (in this case wages). If my local pizzaria raises his pay to $15 an hour, then he's assuredly firing at least half of his workers. Those workers don't need the raise either; the folks he employs (students mostly) couldn't suddenly pay off their student debt if he increased their wages. They'd have more money, but it would be a marginal improvement bought at the price of half his workers receiving no wages at all and going elsewhere.

That's just one example amongst thousands that I know of. Margins are thin here, and demand will not fluctuate. People in my state, Republicans and Democrats alike, know that our state economy is simply not geared to provide a flatline $15 minimum wage. Try and propose one and they'll kindly tell you where you can stick it.

I didn't ask you for an example of something that MIGHT fit your theories, according to your theories. I asked you for an example of something that DID, in the past.

You yourself said that your pizzaria workers would have extra money to spend and they're not spending that money on student debt - so what would your pizza workers spend their money on? If they spend it on rent in nicer places to live, now your town has landlords getting a pay rise. If they spend it on something new entirely, those former pizza workers who got fired now have a chance to break into that new market, selling to their former colleagues or (more likely) moving to larger markets where people are earning more because their pay went up.

That's why I'm asking you to point out when - IN THE PAST - minimum wage directly caused a drop in employment rate.

Your pizzaria might cut its staff in half at first, but the number of customers visiting your pizzaria has not changed and might even have increased because now, your pizzaria staff are actually able to afford the very pizza they make and serve. After a few months of TRYING to run the pizzaria with less staff doing more, exhaustion sets in, staff start leaving, and the owner starts to get desperate and starts offering more to attract workers to relieve the labor issues - doing, at last, what they should have done from the beginning: pay their workers a living wage from the start. Or they could close their business, and an entrepeneur who can run the pizzeria at a profit while paying its staff decently could step in their place.

And I write this not as a fanstasy, but relaying to you how the market responded to a raise in the minimum wage EVERY TIME THIS HAS BEEN DONE. Minumum wage has NEVER caused inflation and has never crashed the labor market - that is a Charlie Brown Football fallacy, as y'all tell us "but NEXT time, raising the minimum wage will lose jobs!" hoping that we just don't know enough about economics to notice that it doesn't and wouldn't.

$15 an hour is exactly what workers were paid in the 1960's if you correct for inflation. In effect, your pizzaria workers have been taking a long series of pay cuts for 60 years, and there is no market reason to justify this. If a pizzaria could run in the 60's, there's no reason a pizzaria couldn't run now with a $15/hr minimum wage.

I got so wrapped up in the last half of your question that I forgot about the first. My bad. Here's a study performed in California that shows how the restaurant industry grew as the minimum wage grew, but noted that employment numbers grew more slowly than would have had there been no wage hikes.

https://ucreconomicforecast.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Minimum_Wage_4-17-19_FINAL.pdf

A couple of rebuttals to your other points;

"Your pizzaria might cut its staff in half at first, but the number of customers visiting your pizzaria has not changed and might even have increased because now, your pizzaria staff are actually able to afford the very pizza they make and serve. After a few months of TRYING to run the pizzaria with less staff doing more, exhaustion sets in, staff start leaving, and the owner starts to get desperate and starts offering more to attract workers to relieve the labor issues - doing, at last, what they should have done from the beginning: pay their workers a living wage from the start. Or they could close their business, and an entrepreneur who can run the pizzeria at a profit while paying its staff decently could step in their place."

See, you're looking at this situation with your single lense and not the lense the situation requires. These are students, not people making a career out of flipping pizzas. The only people who work there for a living are the owner and the manager (they make far above $15 an hour, FYI). The kids work there to earn a little spending money to help them as they go through school (pay for gas, maybe a small car or rent payment). The job is simply not meant to be a 'living wage' job. How then is it equitable to fire half of them? The half that stays on still won't make enough to pay for school, rent, etc (that delves into the realm of student education costs and we'll save it for another time) and the other half will think, "Well f**k you, I'll go earn my gas money somewhere else.

No. Sorry, that hasn't really been the situation since the 1950's. It's VERY common these days for people flipping pizzas to have families and long-term financial commitments. They're students - educational debt is not something you can pay off over a summer job anymore, it's up there with a mortgage downpayment.

And look, maybe they'll have to go camping over a three-day weekend instead of going on a family trip to Rome in 3-star accommodations for a week, but they need to be able to afford a vacation of some kind. Maybe they'll rent an apartment and not buy a house, but they need to fit a family in there. Maybe they'll be driving a second hand family sedan and not a Ford Mustang, but they need a car. And sorry, but this is America - if you're willing to knuckle down and flip those pizzas the best you can, then a 40-hour work week should let you get started on the basics of prosperity. There shouldn't be such thing as work that isn't worth doing in this country.

Perhaps it is very common...but it is not common here.

Perhaps the students in most places are working full-time, but very few of these employees work full time...they are there to earn what they can while focusing on studies (so far as I know, unless they've hired anyone new in the last few weeks).

They don't have families and recreational spending is probably limited to date nights and other small things like that, and the rest put towards school (A safe assumption, given how well I know them.)

Therefore here is a place where setting the minimum wage would be best left to the municipality level.

For the record I 100% agree with you that anyone who is dedicated should be able to earn a decent living. Sacrifices may have to be made, but nobody should be prevented from earning their dream. The problem with that, at least so far as I'm concerned, is not everyone who works is at that point. My arguments are limited solely to folks like the kids above who don't need to pay for a family or their Federal Student Loan Debt right now...they just need money to get to class and similar 'small ticket' items. If the local economy dictates that even that low level requires $15 an hour, then that's what it should be. It's just that not every place has the same economic requirements. There is no harm in leaving it in the hands of local governments who know their economies better than someone at a desk in D.C.

Many studies have shown that it is and you just haven't noticed. Sorry.

For the record, I would have no problem with the minimum wage being municipally set AS LONG AS IT WERE PEGGED TO THE LOCAL COST OF LIVING (and none of this Chain CPI bullshit as a cheapskate way to get out of it). A zero wage increase is equivalent to a pay cut and that just should not happen; I don't care if you hawk insurance or flip pizzas for a living, nobody deserves a pay cut if they haven't done anything wrong.

But we have seen over and over again that people just wouldn't pay their workers at all if they had the choice not to; at some point, there needs to be federal - yes, federal - oversight to make sure that municipalities aren't undermining the basic idea. America is currently a place where you can work full time and still not have any money - and that needs to stop, TODAY.

It's not that I haven't noticed, it's that I don't want to speak to economic policy in places where I'm not qualified to do so. Therefore I dislike using studies that don't accurately reflect or understand my particular economic situation (hence why I won't make anything beyond broad statements about places like California...I have no clue what goes on there.)

Federal oversight is something I could get behind, I'll shake hands with you there. Obviously there are places where the minimum wage can and should be raised. Abuses of power aren't OK.

So long as we don't base economic policy off an arbitrary number like $15, I think the best course of action is indeed to keep it local. Cheers.

As I say, the $15 an hour number comes from tracking what the minimum wage WOULD have been today if it had been pegged to the cost of living since 1968ish - the time in our history when the minimum wage was closest to meeting the poverty line for a family of four. It is not arbitrary - there is math behind that number.

You also noted that by improving pay the staff would, "actually be able to afford the very pizza they make and serve"...I have no clue how much a pizza costs where you live, but in this example these employees already make plenty more in a single night (avg. shift is 4-5 hours) than it costs to buy a large pizza, and that's before their employee discount is factored in.

Now, I know that this is a singular example with very specific economic conditions, but that is my entire point; a starvation wage in one region is a veritable gold mine in another. Market forces will indeed, as you noted by way of mentioning wage hikes to attract labor, balance out at a fair wage that serves the needs of its employees while keeping the workforce at a reasonable level. The thing is, that wage is NOT the same everywhere. In this town $12 an hour is very good for an entry-level job such as is sought out by students and others with little work experience. Some places pay far more, some far less, but you simply do not need $15 in this town if you're working an entry level job. I daresay though that $15 an hour in San Francisco would barely cover your rent, so I'm NOT saying it isn't needed anywhere...all I'm saying is that we should leave minimum wage at state and municipality levels. The only thing the Feds could accomplish is give us a 'one size fits none' that stifles lower paying/lower cost of living economies like mine.

You realize the cost of living goes up every time you raise minimum wage because the cost if goods and services go up with it right?

Exactly. The ones paying the minimum aren't going to sacrifice their profit for their employees; the increase the price of goods and gouge the customer.

Yup, then they will complain they got replaced by machines or illegals under the table.

Also, one needs to consider if customers can afford to forgo the service altogether.
Take food deliver apps in California (this isn't directly a wage issue, but similar principles apply). Due to increased costs, they have added a multitude of fees. I used to use them regularly. It was already an overpriced luxury, but I can't afford the additional fees and still give a reasonable tip. So I started buckling down, researching recipes, and making my own meals which natead (which I'm actually thrilled about now, but it was an adjustment at first). I imagine this will be a widespread occurence (especially since I appear to be undergoing the least financial problems among my friends). This will result in less available work overall for delivery persons. So even if they are making a little more per delivery, it will be less overall income, as there are fewer deliveries for them to make. (I actually think the delivery platforms will collapse, as I don't think they are sustainable at current cost requirements)
I think Uber and Lyft will survive though. Transportation is still a necessity, and the alternative is an even more expensive cab.

You know, not all jobs are meant to support a family right and meet cost of living right? You are just enabler for people without vision or will to improve their lives. Your whole understanding about how things work is so wrong, please stop watching TV Octavia, looking at asian porn will be better for you at this point than watever is brain wasing you!