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From: faustus@ucbvax.UUCP (Wayne Christopher)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Williams on the Minimum Wage (longish)
Message-ID: <1661@ucbvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Aug-84 01:45:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.1661
Posted: Fri Aug 24 01:45:14 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Aug-84 04:02:24 EDT
References: <917@phs.UUCP>
Organization: U.C. Berkeley
Lines: 19

On the minimum wage -- what evidence do we have that a given
employer would, in fact, hire more workers if he were allowed to
pay them less? Look at it this way: say we have a job that takes
a reasonably competent worker a certain amount of time to do,
paid at the minimum wage. If he were allowed to pay less,
does it follow that he would instead hire more workers who were
less competent to do the same job? No, he would just pay the
same worker less. Or maybe the reduced labor costs would allow
him to make more money, and thus expand his business, hiring
more workers and eventually paying more in wages than he would
have at the higher wage.  This may be so, but I think that the
overall effect of a lower minimum wage would be that taken as a
whole, less money would get out into the pool of poor unskilled
workers. Granted, it would be spread around more fairly, but
that is a secondary consideration. Of course, I know nothing about 
economics, but this just seems to be common sense...

	Wayne