The baseline of zero still equals zero no matter where you arbitrarily move the line.

Zero doesn't reference the amount of money being received.

Why not raise the minimum wage to $100.00 an hour? Or a million dollars an hour? That money would buy stuff, but where you you think that extra money is supposed to come from?

You don't understand this concept. That is your intellectual failing, not mine.

Because $15 an hour meets the cost of living for a 40 hour a week job. Or at least it used to - in the time it's taken to argue about this, the minimum wage would actually need to be higher for that. But the point is, $100 an hour isn't tied to the cost of living in any way.

You have no idea what the cost of living is. Ever been out in the sticks of North Dakota or even in the hood of Detroit? You can buy a three bedroom house for $10,000.

Go to L.A. or Manhattan, you'll spend $10,000 a month renting a studio apartment.

You think by being condescending, insulting, and dismissive, you win the argument. You are wrong. I've seen your comments and that's always how you speak to people.

"in the time it's taken to argue about this, the minimum wage would actually need to be higher for that."
And the drama in your comment is silly and immature.

You don't understand that minimum wage is a starting point, thus is the baseline.

What happens to the cost of living when the minimum wage goes up? The cost of living will also increase, then you will complain that the minimum wage needs to be increased again.

If the baseline moves, wages higher than that, which used to be worth more, are now devalued. Also, employee morale suffers because now people who've worked their way up are angry that all of the their time and work is of no value because now a 16 yr old can walk and make $15. It devalues their worth as an employee and their wages. Most employers won't be able to raise everyone's wages the percentage which minimum wages gets raised.

Employers may realize that they can't afford to hire new minimum wage employees at such a high salary and instead, place extra work on current employees at little to no extra compensation.

Those with your philosophy on minimum wage remind me of little children who think that their parents can go the the ATM and get an unlimited amount of money to give the children. The ATM isn't a magic money machine that creates money out of thin air for everyone just like employers can't just create more money out of thin air to give people, either.

But the baseline already HAS a zero reference point: zero dollars.

What you're discussing is the scaling of dollars, not where the zero baseline sits. Even if we imagined a world where a dollar could only buy half a stick of spaghetti, that's still more than what zero dollars buys you.

You're just. Wrong. The zero baseline is zero dollars and nothing else can be. There's no way to phrase it that ISN'T going to sound patronizing to you: you're dead wrong. Completely incorrect. You're not even a little bit right. There are no opinions or viewpoints that would make you right in any way. It's total and absolute wrongness.

And then you're going off on a bunch of tangents that you want to engage me in instead of the topic you yourself started - I'm not interested.

You are wrong.

Zero dollars is not a wage. Baseline refers to the starting point at which entry level positions are paid, not the amount of the wage itself. You are the one who doesn't understand.

Raising the minimum wage gives the false illusion that people are getting a temporary boost, when in time, the markets will adjust. If raising the minimum wage works so well to solve everything, then why does it need to keep being raised?

I brought up no tangents.

What I mentioned directly addressed what I stated in the meme. Raising the bottom wage, if nothing else adjusts, only brings everyone else closure to the bottom. And it's going to cause employers to curb/stop hiring entry level employees or find ways to automate those positions. And where does that leave people who need to get their foot in the door? There's no way to work your way up if you can't get hired in the first place.

Where is all of this extra money that employers are supposed to magically conjure up supposed to come from? Oh, right... you're not interested in answering that.

I think you're trying to backpeddle, as far as I can tell? Which is as close as I'll ever get to a direct admission that you got that wrong in the first place, so, I'll take it.

The baseline equals zero, not the wage!

I did not say that the wage equals zero.

The baseline is whatever the minimum wage is - $5, $10, $15,$20,$50,$100... The amount of the minimum wage is irrelevant. Whatever the minimum wage is, at any point in time - is the baseline.

The baseline starts at zero and as you work yourself up from the baseline, then you are above zero. Raising the bottom level, no matter what it is, only drags everyone closer to the bottom.

It's not a difficult concept to understand!

Still waiting on the answer from where employers are supposed to magically conjure up all of this extra money. You must still not be interested in answering that.

"I did not say that the wage equals zero."

Literally what "=zero" means. Again, basic math: "=" means "equals".

You're DEFINITELY backpedalling, which is all I was after.

Raising the minimum wage will dilute the VALUE of ALL money. The number doesn't matter.

Let's say I have a pile of cookies (dollars) that I can buy pieces of cake (good and services) with. Let's say everyone else has a pile of cookies that vary in size. Some people have zero cookies. The cost ratio of cookies to cake is a percentage that inflates the more cookies there are. Cookies are more valuable when there's less of them, you know, like supply and demand. Cash is a commodity, just like anything else. This is very important to understand.

Now, Let's say in a perfect world that 1% of total cookies buys ONE slice of cake. Ergo, if there are 100 cookies combined being held by people, then 1 cookie = 1 cake. Now, let's say we have a group of 10 people with varying amounts of cookies the total amount equals 100 but then socialism comes along and decides that everyone should have at least 10 cookies. No one with zero anymore, and everyone with at least ten. You have two choices : You can either take cookies from those who have more and give to those who have less to equal the cookie share, or just give everyone a baseline of 10 cookies. You decide the latter, raising the minimum cookies per household to 10. This move inflates the cookie supply to where it exceeds demand and it's value per cookie drops. Now we have... i don't know... 147 cookies, still only so much cake. It will still cost 1% of total cookies to purchase the cake, which is 1.47 cookies. Now, instead of paying 1 cookie = 1 cake, you're paying 1.47 cookies for one cake. Your "more" cookies don't buy more cake. Because devaluation by dilution.

You could say that this brings up the ethics of capitalism, a system of comparative wealth by which some people must be considered "poor" in order for someone else to be considered "rich" and the sad fact that it's the lack of available money that makes it valuable - quite literally ensuring prolonged human suffering at a massive scale. But that's another topic.

Are you a child? If you're a child then you get a pass for not being able to understand this yet. If you're an adult, then you are being obtuse. And by your responses and refusing to answer the question, I'm hoping for your sake, that you are a child.

Think of minimum wage as a baseline which equals zero - this means that the concept of minimum wage is the baseline, which means the bottom, bottom equals zero. This does not mean that the wage itself equals zero, as I've stated.

I've not backpedaled. I've explained this multiple times and you've ignored what I said each time. And you still refuse to answer my question.

You're inability to understand and your reference to basic math leads to the conclusion that you're a child. You probably get your self esteem from "besting" people on the internet. Why don't you go to the middle school stream and bully people there to make yourself feel good? Hopefully, one day, you'll become more mature.

THE BASELINE THAT EQUALS ZERO IS ZERO DOLLARS! IT'S THE ONLY VALUE THAT HAS ZERO VALUE!

We are discussing the value of the dollars.
If you raise minimum wage, the cost of living and the cost of goods goes up to match. Then people that made more than minimum wage just have less buying power. Its like getting a pay cut.

have you heard of inflation? probably not by how you didnt think about it at all, go back to middle school