The old - One's employment options often severely diminish as they approach retirement. With health insurance (and those costly prescriptions) tied to employment, how little do you think some are willing to work for? Would you work for free if your life depended on it?
I feel like you avoided engaging at all with my comment. I explicitly commented that the safety nets and retirement system are not perfect and could be better, but that I believed minimum wage was not a solution. Increasing the minimum wage isn't going to get more people just short of retirement health insurance.
I don't believe in your good faith desire to discuss. I've said above I believe there should be a minimum wage, but that it's a crappy lever for the groups that you describe and that there are better ones for different subgroups (social safety nets, reducing the supply of labor by shortening work week).
Instead, I get a bunch of strawmen that have nothing to do with what I said.
You've presented a group home as a possible solution for the severely mentally handicapped. Presumably great for the few who can get it.
What you have not addressed is the extreme imbalance in power for many employers at the expense of employees. If there is no floor on what someone can get away with paying, then it is reasonable to expect the marginalized or powerless to be fully taken advantage of. Even today, some employers try to get away with not paying by having employees work "off the clock". At least with the minimum wage, litigious employees can eventually expect something for their lost time.
> What you have not addressed is the extreme imbalance in power for many employers at the expense of employees. If there is no floor on what someone can get away with paying, then it is reasonable to expect the marginalized or powerless to be fully taken advantage of.
???? I have stated throughout this entire conversation that I believe there should be a minimum wage. I do not know why you continue to argue with me as if I have not. Your messages have nothing to do with what I am saying. I have pointed this out to you now three times.
You haven't confused me with trcarney who said far above that there shouldn't be one, have you?
I just don't think the minimum wage is a solution to many of the problems you cite. It will not generate more employment income for the severely disabled, etc.
