Put simply, which do you believe is better? Is a government that cares for all needs itself, or a government that enforces a high standard of living, better?
Personally, I'm more in favor of a high minimum wage. It keeps money out of the hands of politicians, while it also rewards people who work more(whereas most welfare systems seem to focus on filling in the gaps beneath a certain income level, such as Friedman's proposed system, plus welfare systems only benefit the poorest usually). A higher minimum wage, in theory, could thus equal lower taxes(we still need
some government, never mind it's size; we also need some unemployment benefits) while also biting welfare thieves in the rear.
I'm sure large businesses wouldn't mind either, as the net gain from lower taxes would probably greatly exceed the costs of more employment. I do however, fear for small businesses, which would find themselves hard-pressed to keep people employed. Perhaps this can be solved with employees being able to work for less if they consent to it; however, the business should always be required to offer the minimum wage if the employee does not ask for less.
Anywho, post your own views and discuss!
The thing to consider is that it's overinflating the value of goods, whatever label you put on it. If government is mandated to reinvest in it's people somehow, I'd consider education scholarships, incentives for start-up businesses, incentives for businesses to hire and train new employees to be very much preferable to a welfare state, and preferable to a large minimum wage.
Consider that a welfare state starts with a mandate that government will provide all services that a citizen needs, yet that mandate isn't enough; Individuals in the society have to work and make goods that the economy needs, or the goods just won't exist, regardless of any government mandates. If a significant fraction of the population is dependent upon the welfare state, there reaches a tipping point where the technology of the society can't compensate for the inflation that comes from giving free goods and services to non-working individuals. Government has to raise taxes to compensate, which in turn can create a negative feedback loop that businesses are reluctant to hire more employees, and therefore more people become in need of welfare. Eventually, that just leads to a back door kind of communism, where the government has to order the people on welfare to work. In sum, such a system is not at all desirable.
A high minimum wage is a better option than a welfare state, for sure, but consider that too has problems. The most obvious problem is if the country has to compete in a world economy (which ours does to date). A high minimum wage inflates the value of the products we sell, which makes them less competitive in the world market. That can lead to two outcomes---1. we have to go protectionist, not deal with the world for the most part, but then we miss out on the benefits of the world economy; 2. we stay open market but our economy stagnates---(e.g. the price of our goods vs. their goods means we don't sell as much products, less people are employed). If we go protectionist, we'll probably just end up with inflation---not necessarily impossible inflation if we have a strong domestic economy, but it's not a highly desirable situation. If we stay open market and the economy staganates, then people are actually outbidding themselves with high minimum wage, because no business can afford to employ them----leads to unemployed people, and might lead to the welfare state eventually.
IMO, the best option is to grow the economy, and that means investing in the people and country so the economy can expand, improve technologically, and be competitive against the world market. There's no guarantee that it can be achieved, but if it can, then I believe that investing as I state above at the beginning----educational opportunities, incentives for new businesses, incentives for businesses to grow and train new people, etc... is the way to go. But still keeping an economy continually growing is maybe impossible, and something I suspect that economists don't know how achieve infinitely.
If you really don't like that answer, then I'd go with a modified version of minimum wage. Rather than say everyone gets the same minimum wage, establish that certain key jobs in areas that the government feels the economy can grow, and give higher minimum wages for those jobs. De Facto, the government does that by trickle down approach, if the government gives large tax breaks and other financial incentives to specific industries (e.g. alternative energy).
