Originally Posted by
Name User
Raising minimum wage is like taking Tylenol for a broken arm. It may dull the pain but it doesn't fix the underlying issue.
The underlying issue is a severe reduction in middle wage jobs over the past ~30 years. Quite a few manufacturing jobs were outsourced overseas. The jobs that filled in the void have primarily been customer service type jobs, with limited earning potential and upward mobility.
There really is no way to move manufacturing back over here and pay middle class wages, the jobs that are coming back are fairly low end $10-$14/hr assembly line jobs (if you're lucky).
The biggest issue I have with raising min wage (which I do tend to support as an overall boost to the economy) is eventually at some point wages will get so high that those the hike intends to help will be displaced. Either by people coming back into the job market (like educated retirees) or technology. For example, there are now kiosk ordering stations at multiple fast food locations, automated checkout machines, etc.
I've had several discussions on this with some of my friends over the past decade or so. As the world becomes more automated and more jobs lost, there will be less and less opportunities for the general population to make money. Virtually all customer service jobs will be extinct. With an automated car, plane, and train, all transportation jobs will be extinct. Payroll, automated. Administration functions, automated. Computer programmers, automated. So, what do you do with the rest of the citizens when all the jobs are overseas or robotic?
Capitalists will say that the market will evolve and they'll have to retrain into something else. At that point, even the higher paying jobs will be threatened by a glutton of labor.
Socialists say that we should tax the corporations and everyone gets a standard basic income. We all know how people will respond to that idea.