>>5800
A raise in the minimum wage is not an efficient means to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. That doesn't mean it couldn't be helpful at all. Imagine doing nothing as driving a Hummer, raising the minimum wage as driving a Toyota Corolla, and transferring wealth through taxes and handouts as driving a Prius. Maybe you're a libertarian and you believe that the Hummer and Corolla should actually be switched. That's likely what the debate you watched was about. Nobody who follows any of the main schools of economics believes that the Prius and the Corolla should be switched (that minimum wage is an efficient means of wealth transfer). Not Republican (Classical School), not Democrat (Keynesian School), or even Libertarian (Austrian School). No economist that falls into 99% of American politics believes minimum wages are a good way to transfer wealth.
>muh corporate greed
I'm not a libertarian. The argument I'm making isn't about whether the government should step in and transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. My argument is that if you choose to make that wealth transfer, raising the minimum wage is is not an efficient way to do it. I can't stress this enough, people always try to argue against some strawman saying corporations shouldn't pay more. Sure, maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't, but supposing they should the natural question is what's the best way to make them pay more? Well it's not raising the minimum wage.
Why? I'll give an example. Suppose you have a worker who gets paid 8$ an hour, but earns his company 12$ an hour. Let's pretend we all agree that people should have a standard of living equivalent to what a $15/hr worker will earn. Again, I'm not debating whether that standard should be based off of $15/hr, but only how to complete the wealth transfer. This is our new minimum standard of living.
Well if you raise the minimum wage to 15$ an hour then the company has two options. They can either fire the worker, and they will break even, or they can keep the worker and lose 3$/hour. The raise in minimum wage just gave the corporation an incentive to fire the worker. The corporation will fire the worker and the government will be on the hook to provide this person the entire $15/hr equivalent standard of living. That money has to come from somewhere so the government will have to tax someone whatever it costs to provide the full $15/hr minimum standard of living.
Now suppose that instead of raising the minimum wage, you raise corporate taxes the equivalent of what it would cost to pay a worker a $10/hr standard of living. Now the worker is still being paid $8 an hour by the corporation, and he's still earning the corporation $12/hr. The corporation will not fire that person because he's still profitable. Now here's the magic, the government can tax the corporation the equivalent of $10/hr and give it as a handout to the worker who's making $8/hr. Now instead of the government spending $15/hr to give a worker a $15/hr standard of living, the government now only has to spend $10/hr to give that worker an $18 standard of living. The government was able to spend less to provide a better quality of life. Where did that extra money come from? The worker created it while doing his job instead of loafing around at home doing nothing. He was able to create it because you didn't kill his job.
Another way to think of it is that raising the minimum wage allows for a what is practically the same as a corporate tax loophole. But in order to take advantage of this tax loophole a corporation needs to fire someone. You're losing tax money to subsidize something you don't want to happen. That's bad economic policy. As I said earlier, the purpose of raising the minimum wage is to give incentive for corporations to invest in automation.