smokeandmirrors
Banned
Now you're beginning to understand.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Study: "78 years of minimum-wage hikes show no evidence of job-killing consequences"
- Thread starter AuthenticM
- Start date
Now you're beginning to understand.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
It's like what John Oliver said; "The minimum wage is like the age of consent. If you're shopping around for where the limit is, you've probably done something very very wrong".
It's besides the point that it's more expensive to live some places. The point of the minimum wage is that we have a basic threshold for solidarity. It's a way of saying that all free people regardless of where they are entitled to a certain amount of money for their services.
What is obscene is that 15 dollars minimum wage is a conservative estimate. If you actually adjusted for inflation, it would be a lot higher. And it would need to be higher. As the Bernie Sanders proposals was a dollar-by-dollar rise over a longer period of years, the effect would be subtle.
But it tells us just how bad the income inequality has gotten. It's depressing and scary.
"Solidarity" has nothing to do with massive differences in demand for real estate and housing in rural areas vs urban ones that result in wildly different price levels being set for people living the and vastly different costs of obtaining the same standard of living that emerge as a result.
That's a very, very bad way to think about the minimum wage, because in the places where a higher wage is useful, they often already have it!
If everyone in town makes more money what's stopping them from spending more at the comic shop? Even if it did go under, its something that would happen at the benefit of God knows how many others.
Also one argument against it is entirely selfish and dumb. I've seen it here on GAF; "fast food workers can't make the same as I do" bitch your employer would adjust your wage to keep you working there.
smokeandmirrors
Banned
If you can't afford to pay your workers a living wage then you don't deserve to be in business.
humansarehorses
Member
Are you sure you do?
The methodology in this study is a complete joke. The only reason why people cling to the results is because the conclusion the researchers reached supports their political position to increase the minimum wage.
Neoliberals would not be in favor of increasing the minimum wage whatsoever.
reggieandTFE
Member
Hahahahaha. Nothing like I njecting school rankings to make an argument. Was the Booth business school still respected when they were using their policies to justify the murder and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of South Americans in the interest of the 'free' market?
Mainstream economists are charlatans and hucksters.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
The real estate market is a separate discussion, that has a multitude of factors. On poverty itself, talking about the poverty line is used to fight for the absolut bare minimum, area by area, which is tone deaf. You do not contribute to furthering diversity and uprooting the ghettofication and separation of economic class systems, by predefining poverty area by area. That is totally misguided.
You have a minimum wage to put a line in the sand of what your worth is in the nation you live in. Your worth is not less regardless if you live in California or in Kansas or in Texas. Real estate demand is a separate issue, and the price of living per area can not be blanketed onto the multitude of systemic reasons why people are poor.
Well lets be honest. The real minimum wage has actually been pretty constant (or not even an increase).
Real estate demand is not a solvable issue, demand exists because people are born. Regional price differences are caused by lack of supply, largely from government restrictions.
Real estate demand is not a solvable issue, demand exists because people are born. Regional price differences are caused by lack of supply, largely from government restrictions.
humansarehorses
Member
His argument is that The New School is respected.
The rankings of departments on REPEC are based on journal citations. You know what that means? Of course you don't. Journal citations reflect the influence that a department has on economic literature. That's why you see Harvard and MIT at the top -- their economists, like Acemoglu, Angrist and Shleifer, are very influential on research.
Now, how doesn't that go against his claim that The New School is respected? They're not even respected in the field that they're a part of: if they were, they'd be more influential.
I'd love to hear what evidence you have that Booth justified the murder and disappearances of hundreds of thousands of South Americans. FYI, the way you wrote it implies that Booth was using their school policies as justification which is laughable.
ZeezbruhTV
Member
Wait so more people with more money...stimulates demand? SHOCKING
edit: ah, with context of your previous post I see you're talking mid-level people -- see last comment
It's kind of weird that this is your takeaway from employees getting a bigger cut of the profits. Reminder:
Not sure where your bonuses stuff comes from. You're acting like nobody got a pay bump. edit: ah, from your other post I gather you're talking mid-level people. Personally I think regulations that limit executive pay relative to everyone else's pay could act like a good compliment to the minimum wage, or perhaps even replace it. The numbers might need to vary industry to industry but I think something could be cooked up to make sure more of the shift is coming from the top.
Except they do get to control that. It's a self inflicted wound. They could raise wages and compete with the other side. They don't because they put their own salary above what's best for the rest of the business and their employees.
It's kind of weird that this is your takeaway from employees getting a bigger cut of the profits. Reminder:
Not sure where your bonuses stuff comes from. You're acting like nobody got a pay bump. edit: ah, from your other post I gather you're talking mid-level people. Personally I think regulations that limit executive pay relative to everyone else's pay could act like a good compliment to the minimum wage, or perhaps even replace it. The numbers might need to vary industry to industry but I think something could be cooked up to make sure more of the shift is coming from the top.
They would be earning more money. If more people had a higher income they would have increased sales as the people that could now afford their goods can now either purchase or purchase more. Your comic book shop will be fine.
IrishNinja
Member
this, faith-based economics should never have become a thing
gutter_trash
Banned
no matter what, you are still going to need to buy a hamburger and a coffee from a minimum wage employee
no matter what, you need those employees to serve you
why not show gratitude and campasion? 15 bucks an hour ain't much
no matter what, you need those employees to serve you
why not show gratitude and campasion? 15 bucks an hour ain't much
PdotMichael
Banned
Looking how that liberal NeoGAF reacts everytime there is a thread about minimum wage, it's not a problem of the republicans alone.
HarryHengst
Member
They are amazing at making people believe their fairytales though! Gotta admire that.
Greedings
Member
That stuff doesn't happen over night though, while the wage hike does increase. In the long term, I agree with what you're saying, but short term you can't be so confident.
Are you confusing liberal with libertarian? Because no actual liberal would have a problem with raising the minimum wage.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
Like everything else, it's a question about meeting demand. It's not just a question of increased population, but also a question of increased main city population centers being where activity, growth and stability is, while rural America is dying.
There is plenty of housing, but people don't want to live in a swamp out in alabama.
Real estate problems are also largely sympotonoic of our social and biological progress. We live much longer, so you have more older people hanging on good housing. Women are independent than ever, so you got a lot of single people who also take up housing.
More and more jobs are exclusively found in cities, and that also further increases demand. We're also steadily increasing in population, and will double to 13-14 billion people in the next 30 years according to the UN. So as 80% of the worlds population migrate towards cities and major population centers, the real estate market will have to undergo several revolutions.
What you're seeing now is just temporary. Real Estate market will have to evolve. But in America that is only part of the equation, because you guys in particularly will need a total revolution of your public transportation and infrastructure systems. There will be so many people and so many cars that getting around will depress economic growth and cause stagnation.
The good news is that the way your cities are build could in theory be changed and altered to become public transportation cities like you have in New York.
What I think will happen, as traffic and housing demands get higher, employers will simply gravitate towards remote work. So you'll be able to work from home essentially.
Lastly, we also a possibility to fix a lot of housing issues by embracing many of the unit storage and micro apartment ideas that are being concepted right now. The idea of the container home for example. If they can fix water, electricity, sanitation and transportation in a logic way, we might have a early prototype of an actual solution. But to make zoning laws that work, keep people safe and meet all the needed demands for housing is a big challenge.
IISANDERII
Member
"Political position". More like, humanitarian position.
ErasureAcer
Banned
The day workers are paid a living wage, not poverty wages, is the day slavery officially ends in the USA.
This is not the land of the free nor of the brave...yet.
Happy to see people waking up from the idea trickle down economics is a legitimate economic policy. It'll take another 20 years at this rate though politically.
This is not the land of the free nor of the brave...yet.
Happy to see people waking up from the idea trickle down economics is a legitimate economic policy. It'll take another 20 years at this rate though politically.
humansarehorses
Member
It's a political position no matter what bullshit you want to dress it up as. And it is bullshit that you're trying to sell right now because there are a number of different policies that can increase the living standards for low income households.
PdotMichael
Banned
That's the joke.
NervousXtian
Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
Not everyone has a choice, as not everyone is a franchisee or owner. Most of the decisions are handled elsewhere with regards to start rate. Everything else will be tried before raising the cost of labor.
The owner still had to take a cut in profits. Yes more people got paid better, but there was a sacrifice elsewhere, whether the owner can afford the cut will vary considerably. Also might mean that shift managers when the owner isn't there will be cut or not raised in pay, and maybe not anytime in the near future. So it could be more than just top paying for the increase.
A lot of managers at certain levels will bonus off sales and net profit. If net profit goes down, their pay goes down. The last person to take a pay cut would be the executive level.. and if talking corporations they will do whatever it takes to keep shareholders happy.
My argument isn't that min. wage increases are bad, or they hurt employment.. they hurt the middle-class the most as that's who ends up paying for it. There's things that can help though.
Limit executive pay. Opening up a larger % of revenue to end up in employees hands. Doubt this will ever happen.
Lower the corp tax rate to 15%. Ours is too high, so companies move money overseas or end up hiding most of their profit into exec pay or creative accounting so that they don't have to pay a massive amount of their profit to the government.
I think lowering the corp tax rate is something that needs to happen. We need the money to stay in the US. I do think some of that would/could trickle down.. but we'd also need a considerably more progressive tax rate that taxes extremely high earners for a huge amount after a certain amount of money.. thus forcing essentially a wage ceiling... the profit would have a better chance of coming back towards the workforce.
It's a tough situation to control since corporations have too many rights.
..but the focus on min wage and job loss is completely misguided.
Also for other reasons as well, it doesn't always end up meaning that people at that level are all that much better off.
Are you really going to just dump a table of data with no real analysis? I'm sure the cumulative total of Z goods is at least the equivalent of a major industry in any major country today. It was even higher relative to the rest of the economy historically. Honestly you clearly don't know what you're talking about here.
You don't seem to understand the scope of extra market economic activity.
You aren't actually dealing with my argument, you are just restating your thesis. The production of Z goods implies at least one of two things. 1. People are acting rationally in deciding to do some production outside of the market 2. People are acting irrationally in deciding to do some production outside of the market. In both cases the scale of z good production indicates this isn't a minor distortion. Either the market isn't always the most efficient, ior people are quite often irrational. (The correct answer is obviously a bit of both). It's not hard to deal with the problem. All it requires is a qualification of your idea, a la the reaction to the tragedy of the commons.
Oh yes, some rankings with Chicago at 4 and LSE at 20, with some clearly pretty flawed metrics. That proves your point. Anyway, I wasn't talking about the New School's economics department, I was talking about the university itself, much like that poster probably was.
It wasn't called Booth at the time, and the econ department at Chicago and Booth are not coterminous.
The New School is respected man. Honestly you sound a bit like you're starting to drift into ((((The New School)))) territory. Make your argument about the econ department's relative quality, using a rather crude metric in a field that particularly demands sophisticated ones, if you'd like, but don't try to act like the institution is not respectable. It is.
This sentence barely even makes sense. The New School is more than just an economics department.
Moreover your attempt at focusing all value from PhD programs on rankings sounds like its coming from someone that has no experience with PhD programs. A lot more goes into choosing which one to attend than simply picking the highest ranked program one was accepted to.
The New School is simply not a diploma mill or anything like that. Your attempt to completely discredit them using a metric that you are entirely uncritical of is deeply problematic and hypocritical given your stance about confirmation bias in this thread.
I think he's going too far there, but the Chicago Boys are a thing. The university's relationship with that, along with its current issues with the south side of Chicago, do demand some reflection.
Vital Tundra
Member
I have never understood why people would be against raising our minimum wage. The older folks should know better, they were there when it was 2 and 3 dollars. Decades pass of raising the minimum wage and yet life continues. But now its a problem. Its a problem because us good for nothing younger folk just aren't working hard enough. Or simply they don't want colored folk to have something better than poverty.
No, it's not. The labor market is incredibly tight right now, and even low-skill entry level jobs are paying way more than they would in rural areas.
Labor is a market just like any other, and when there's a shortage of workers, wages will rise.
People aren't special.
He's probably going with the rest of the world's definition of liberal and not America's. Though even then plenty of American liberals do not support raising the minimum wage.
humansarehorses
Member
"I'm sure this thing is true!"
And he provides absolutely no reason to believe why it's true. Again, volunteer work is low-skilled. So why should I believe what you're saying?
You're a joke, buddy.
Feel free to enlighten me then! Oh wait, you've had time and time again to do so and yet you haven't.
Alarms should be going off in your head right now.
Jesus Christ, you're bad at this.
Let's first define what rationality means in economics. It means that consumers have complete and transitive preferences. That's the actual definition.
That any good is produced has absolutely no bearing on whether consumers have complete and transitive preferences. It's completely irrelevant to that.
Some people pay thousands of dollars for another person's fecal matter. That doesn't go against economic rationality.
Also, efficiency needs to be defined. Efficiency in economics typically refers to Pareto efficiency i.e. that there isn't a way to make someone better off without making someone else worse off. Again, that Z goods are produced has no bearing on that.
"Clearly flawed metrics". How about you point out those flaws?
The rankings are based largely on article citations as a proxy for influence on economic literature. The New School isn't even ranked.
Why bother talking about an entire university when only one department is relevant to the conversation?
The only department relevant to this conversation is not respected within the field that it is a part of. The rankings support that since they reflect the influence that the departments have on research.
For economics? No, ranking is everything since which school you attend is a proxy for research caliber since they learn and work with those who are most respected in the field. That significantly impacts career prospects -- you won't see any econ PhDs from the New School land positions at top-tier universities, central banks or international organizations.
I mean you're literally doing the exact same thing. You want a source? Go read Jan De Vries.
You've indicated throughout this thread that you have absolutely no understanding of extra market production, and more problematically you're refusing to even begin to think about it.
Fine, read Jan de Vries. Or just look up what a Z good is. It's hard to enlighten you when you're going out of your way to avoid being enlightened. Most people understand that a lot of the things people do are extra-market. Normally I don't have to convince people of that.
Alarms for what exactly? And you're hardly doing anything different. Your argument is restating your thesis over and over. You aren't actually making any arguments for why it is true.
Z goods are often produced by their consumer.
That's because it's a preference. There is an element of preference involved in Z goods, but that preference is actually a preference for some activity to be done outside of the market. Again you're not even trying to understand what I'm saying, because you're so stuck within your political-economy you aren't even beginning to take any alternatives serious enough to address them on their own terms.
The most obvious flaw is thinking that frequency of citation is somehow a useful metric for getting at academic quality. This is something that a large number of academic disciplines have been grappling about for years now.
But lets move beyond this issue. Again and again here you are just asserting things as true and demanding I argue for my counter point. Why aren't you actually arguing for your own point. You aren't arguing for why this is a good metric at all.
You aren't just right until proven otherwise. If you're going to demand arguments from other people, please provide your own.
I'm aware of what it's supposed to be doing. As an academic I'm also aware of the quite sizable conversation around such metrics and their utility. Moreover, I'm, particularly aware of the problems of extrapolating from such a metric, flawed in itself, to the quality of PhD educations. These problems exist for all disciplines, but they are particularly pronounced in economics.
To point out that the institution as a whole is reputable? And thus it's component programs fall within a certain sphere rof respectability, despite certain trends in specific disciplines. Essentially to point out that the New School isn't a diploma mill, and their degrees aren't meaningless.
I mean your argument here essentially suggests that the university cannot be a meaningful level of analysis, which is patently ridiculous.
Again this isn't even a good way to analyze respectability. There is a massive issue with the proxy problem here, is this actually measuring respectability, on top of the fact that Economics has been operating on an extremely problematic base since the 70s which renders its ability for self-reflection very circumspect.
Moreover, I'm hardly the only person saying this. If you want an economist who agrees, look at Mokyr. There are plenty of people outside the discipline that also have made a number of arguments on this front, but I'm guessing you won't take those seriously.
Ranking isn't everything. I'll grant you that schools can generally be put into certain tiers with this sort of thing, i.e. placement, and that the New School would not be in the top tier, but that doesn't necessarily indicate bad research or poor PhD level instruction.
Either way, your argument is all over the place for what is essentially an ad hominin. Your argument about the metrics in the study being flawed is significantly better.
I'm not going to sit here and let you slander the New School which provided an incredibly valuable service for the academy and has suffered conservative backlash for it ever since.
thehypocrite
Member
But the CATO/Heritage and the rest of the fuck everyone libertarian think tanks say this isn't true because..... reasons. What to do?
The CBO is not a libertarian think tank.
The idea that a minimum wage increase is costless is pure fantasy.
This does not mean that we should not do them (indeed, I'm on board w/ going into the 10-12 range w/ the US's national minimum wage!) but that you can't be stupid and reckless w/ them or you'll cause real damage in its wake.
While that's fair enough, even your position brushes up against America's deep cultural aversion, blind to costs and benefits, to raising the minimum wage. This is a deep-seated problem with American political culture and political-economy.
Economists run into the same problem here that Scientists run into with scientism. Promoting an ideology over the expert community that created it means separating that community's legitimacy from itself.
While it ultimately works better at first, it can, and probably almost always will, backfire.
thehypocrite
Member
Where do you read costless in my post? The point is they are a net benefit, and definitely not a bad thing as promoted by those. Also, the fact that you consider 3 dollars beyond your range to be stupid and reckless betrays your priors.
humansarehorses
Member
Except I provided a very good reason to think why it is not a large part of the economy -- it's low skilled work. There are good reasons to think that they're low-skilled work: people who are highly skilled and volunteer have significant opportunity costs.
Now, I assume the only reason why you would tell me to read a specific work is because you read it yourself.
Then how are you so inept that you can't even discuss how the work relates to this conversation?
Let's just ignore my past argument about opportunity costs so you can keep telling me I have no understanding, that I don't think about it, blah, blah, blah.
What a windbag. I mean, my god, actually say something to support your claims.
You never said anything to support your claims! No justification OF ANY SORT.
What's more, you seem to have a very difficult time with standard reasoning and reading comprehension:
"A lot of things people do are extra-market".
I never disagreed with that. I disagreed with volunteer work being a large part of the economy (even though they're not counted). Those are two different statements, damn.
I did from the start! You're just not capable of comprehending what you read as evidenced by the example I gave above.
You remember how I talked about relevance? Big fucking deal. That has nothing to do with whether consumers are rational i.e. whether they have transitive and complete preferences.
Notice how I'm using the actual definition of a word as it's appropriately used in the field. In fact you can go and look up transitive and complete preferences in any econ paper on rational choice.
There is an element in those preference that does... what? That relates to rationality how? How does this element have anything to do with complete and transitive preferences?
You can't even finish a thought.
The truth is, it doesn't have anything to do with rationality. That Z goods exist says NOTING about whether consumer preferences are complete and transitive.
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
You CAN'T be serious. You can't be. Your reading comprehension can't be this bad.
I never once made any claims about the quality of the research that the New School produces. Citations reflect the influence that a department has which gives some notion of the amount of respect that the department has. The respected departments are the influential departments (something I previously stated).
I provided good reasons to support my arguments since the beginning. It's not my fault you can't comprehend what you read.
Which, by the way, there are multiple examples of in this post alone!
Jesus Christ, you're an academic? Yikes.
Please go back to the very first part of my quote which stated that The New School is not respected. That's my conclusion. I did not make any claims about the quality of the research their professors produce in any of my posts.
All of that, that's just more evidence of you being unable to comprehend what you read.
...yes, because article citations reflect influence on research, and if a department is respectable departments then it is influential. The New School is not influential.
More vague claims from someone who can't even read properly.
I'm certainly not taking you seriously. You're not even giving a hint at what he said or a citation of him saying anything relevant.
Rankings mean everything for attendance decisions that prospective econ PhD candidates make for the reasons I gave.
And no, my argument is not all over the place (how can it be when you yourself said that I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again and my argument was clear from the start?) nor is it an ad "hominin".
The current minimum wage is 7 and change. In urban/suburban areas (or blue states) across the country, the effective or actual minimum wage is already higher. Where it's not is in red states and rural areas. This is where the minimum wage actually matters.
I read "costless" into your post because the study featured into the OP is projecting that narrative via their paper-thin surface-level analysis.
NervousXtian
Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
Arguing with people with no grasp of what they are saying, or just believe data they have confirmation bias for isn't worth the key presses man.
Anyone who thinks there is zero impact from min wage increases doesn't understand economics at all.
There's a cost, and it's complicated in it's impact. Yes, people making min get more money, but that's only one part of a very large picture.
thehypocrite
Member
I disagree. The minimum wage matters everywhere. I don't really understand why you want to isolate it's effect to red States.
While the bolded is true that doesn't mean that extra-market production is not significant.
I mean I could in more detail, but I'm already wasting a lot of time on someone whose being rude and who I doubt is particularly interested in actually thinking about what I have to say.
Either way you would want to look at his data, which is essentially what this argument is about anyway.
I cited secondary literature that does so at length. This is an argument about whether or not something exists. You aren't accepting my rational premise from earlier, and you just made fun of me when I provided empirical evidence.
Meanwhile you also aren't supporting your claim.
At the end of the day there is probably an axiomatic difference we won't be overcoming, but you're also not even trying to understand what I'm saying. Moreover, you absolutely have demonstrated a lack of understand on at least the research that has been done on the topic. This is a thing, whether or not you like it.
Please, this whole conversation has been about various kinds of extra market activity, that was an example. But no, you are right, I'm just illiterate.
I mean you really didn't. But no, once again, you are right. I am merely illiterate, how sad I was finally discovered.
It still has implications for our understanding of political-economy. I mean this is something both economists and historians have deal with for that reason.
The preference involved in z good production is a preference for both production and consumption outside of the market. Again just look at what a Z good is, something you've show no interest in doing despite arguing about it.
Yeah, you've already established I'm an idiot and illiterate. Clearly there wasn't any full thought in that sentence.
Oh please, of course you're talking about the quality of research, that's what you were getting at when you brought up the rankings in the first place. It was part of an argument to discredit the New School.
I think it's ridiculous that you keep on attacking me for supposedly not understanding what you're saying, when you're also failing to provide me the same courtesy.
These two sentences are tantamount to just stating "I'm right and your just too dumb to understand". You might be right, but it's a pretty meaningless declaration.
Now you're just playing coy. Suggesting the research is bad is exactly the point of what you were saying. Don't try to back away from that. If I'm in an argument and someone draws on Niall Ferguson and I argue that Niall Ferguson is not a respected historian then point is clearly to argue that his research is not sound.
Pretending that isn't what you were getting at is incredibly disingenuous.
You really like repeating this man.
And you're using that as evidence for an argument about something else. I'm not saying the New School is influential among economists. For someone that's apparently very upset about how I treat what you write, you certainly aren'tvery interested in arguing against what I'm saying.
You're right, I don't want to get into all the debates surrounding epistemology that we've had since the 70s with you. If you're actually interested then they are very well documented elsewhere.
It doesn't mean everything, hell it doesn't even mean everything among students at top universities. Every econ PhD at chicago that I was friends with would say it was one factor among several.
Argument has multiple colloquial usages in English. One is the way in which one argues for a thesis, one refers to the thesis itself. You've made a bunch of disjointed claims and failed to connect them.
You got me, I mispelled a word.
Also don't pretend like you're not interested in ad hominems. This post in particular is not only full of them, but full of the same one over and over again.
Anyway, you should really think about toning down your language.
Most people won't mistake being an asshole for being right.
Many urban areas and blue states have already implemented a higher minimum wage.
Therefore, in those areas, a higher national minimum wage is either a relatively small marginal increase or literally does not matter one bit whatsoever.
I'm not "isolating" anything in my approach, this is how an increase works- the most dramatic effects are going to be in red states and rural areas. (And having a variable minimum between those two regions isn't a bad thing.)
Vicetrailia
Banned
Would you argue that there is no benefit since there is a cost? Saying there is a cost can just as easily be a mere distraction.
NervousXtian
Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
A lot of blue states already have min wages effectively higher than the federal... quite a few red states even are higher. The majority of states are higher than the federal already.
Some cities within states that are at the fed min are higher in urban cities.
I think the fed should move to somewhere in the 10 to 11 range by 2020... but for the most part I believe this is best handled by the states.
I said in my post there's a benefit... so no clue what the heck you're asking?
Those on the bottom get a pay increase, there's no denial of that... but it's complicated. As a lot of people on the bottom receive government assistance, which can be effected by the increase as well. So it's no also a huge net increase.
thehypocrite
Member
It matters to the labor market as a whole. I disagree with your premises where information has no consequence.
They have always been free to do this, some of them are more preoccupied on not helping their constituents.
Lord of Ostia
Member
Businesses typically don't provide health care to employees that actually make minimum wage, so your point there is kind of off-base. Most of those workers are classified as part time even if they work full time so that their employer doesn't have to provide insurance. The employer then bullies them into cutting hours, or schedules them less if they are close to receiving benefits, requiring those workers to pick up a second job to make ends meet. The employees that do have health insurance in retail and service jobs are usually supervisors and managers who make more than minimum anyway.
Businesses are required to provide health care to full time employees (W/ some exceptions.) The "full time in name only" thing happens a lot less than you'd think simply because it's not worth the hassle w/ many large companies.
And yes, the rise of "internships", "contract workers" and "part timers in name only" is in large part a response to this as a way to duck these requirements, which is why getting a universal health care system in place that's not tied to employment is so incredibly important here in the states, because it causes all sorts of f'd up incentive issues for both employers and workers.