What people with minimum wage can really afford in the US?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Couple of points...

1. The *federal* minimum wage hasn't been raised in the U.S for a while now; as such it's too low to be very effective (due to inflation) and individual states/local authorities raising their own minimum wages hasn't been a great success due to the inevitable boundary effect. The problem with raising it to the amount that it should be at, is that such a sudden large rise would hurt small businesses (and I mean genuinely small businesses; not places that employ a couple of hundred) which operate on very tight margins. The best solution would probably be to increase it up to where it should be, peg it to inflation (so this problem doesn't occur anymore) and pay genuine small businesses some sort of one-off compensation.

2. An income gap is only a *serious* problem if the main cause is the poor getting poorer. If it isn't, then the cure can often be worse than the disease (ie; if a rising tide *sometimes* lifts all boats, then a hurricane *always* sinks all ships...). Income gaps and so on are an extremely poor measure of inequality anyway.

3. I don't see what Unions have to do with this; the sort of workers that get paided the minimum wage are rarely Unionised (even over here that's the case)... in the Anglophone world, Union membership is generally made up of blue collar workers (especially medium skilled ones) and public sector workers; the private service sector doesn't have much truck with Unions. And the effects of Unions depends very much on what sort of Unions we're talking about; they vary a lot from country-to-country and industry-to-industry.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No, Everrett, charity is offensive.

What you're proposing *is* charity...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Now generally I can't be bothered to wade through all the foolish crap you post in any long post on this sort of subject, but I would like to ask you to stop saying this:

Now as for a model, of course we have that in various European countries, particularly in Scandinavia and the Benelux region

The economic and welfare setups of the various Scandinavian countries are completely different to the likes of Belgium or the Netherlands. In other words, you are either ignorant or a liar...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No, you are a poor reader.

Er... how exactly?

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Everything

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Do you actually know anything about either? Are you aware (for example) of the severe social problems seen in Belgium and the Netherlands in recent years?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Of course I do not know any detail

Suprise, suprise

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Not so, dolt. They are *very* important. You should learn to shut up about things that you're totally ignorant of.