Liberty Alone

I’ve just had a thought. The minimum wage raises the cost of labour which makes investment in capital more attractive.
This means that for the poorly skilled who this affects there are less jobs. This shifts power even further to the employer, enabling worse working conditions to be accepted (if you don’t like it then lose your job, there’s plenty more waiting for your job).

So, not only does a minimum wage increase unemployment, it will have a detrimental effect on the employment conditions of the lowest paid.

All in all, a minimum wage is a rather bad deal for those its meant to help…

(the situation without the minimum wage is not ideal either of course, but that’s due to other imbalances caused by state interference).

Watching Walter Block and Boyd Blundell debate unions and the minimum wage Blundell made the most absurd argument:

He accepted Block’s reasoning that demonstrated that the minimum wage causes unemployment, but then proceeded to argue that removing the minimum wage is a bad thing. Block made the point that removing the minimum wage means more money to the least skilled (and therefore poorest), this was countered by Blundell saying that this is bad because it means the poorest have to work when they could be doing other things.

Just a minute. He expects me to work hard, spending lots of time at work therefore denying me the opportunity to do other more fun things, so that my money can be given to people to allow them to not work? I think I see a problem with the incentives here.
I don’t mind providing some support for those who are struggling to make ends meet. I’d prefer that to be transparent and ideally voluntary and to be going towards supporting those few who cannot work and those who are working but still find it difficult to earn money.