A minimum wage doesn't help the teenager who's supporting the family, because the teenager living at home can outcompete him to get the job. Unless you're hoping that the rich kid is too lazy to get the minimum wage job.
Why do you assume either of them are rich? And why would the non-supporting teen get the job, if the other one is more qualified? And if a minimum wage job doesn't help, do not sit there and tell me that a less-than-minimum wage job would.
You're seeing this through an economics textbook. I look at it from the point of view of someone who has never been rich and was once half a day from being homeless because of a shortage of affordable apartments in Red Deer that also take cats at an affordable pet damage fee. The place I ended up in was a dump in one of the more dangerous parts of town (murder happened a block away, the upstairs neighbors had regular visits from the cops due to domestic violence, other neighbors told me that the person who used to live in my suite was a hooker and her pimp (who decided to smash holes in the walls and the building owner wasn't in any hurry to fix them until I pointed out that insects could be living there and would escape if they didn't fix the holes), and I was accosted at a bus stop by a woman who was high and potentially violent. I lived there just over a year until the opportunity came to get out of that neighborhood that the cops swore they'd cleaned up (there was a Grim Reapers chapterhouse there, as well as a number of known drug houses) but didn't do anywhere near enough.
The minimum wage is the wrong tool for the job
. It has nothing to do with Jason Kenney. A high minimum wage, if put to a 'living wage' destroys every single lower-productivity job. That's a huge loss of potential employment and output.
I take it you don't read the CBC.ca news site. If he ends up as Premier, he says he will do away with the minimum wage for teens (lower it) because he seems to think that teens never spend money on necessities, only luxuries. I shudder to think about what he would do regarding other vulnerable populations here; whenever some UCP (or Wildrose) canvasser would phone me and I'd ask the party's position on AISH, not one of them had ever heard of it.
It's a very regressive intervention. It hurts one poor person in order to help another poor person. A single mother cannot afford a babysitting service in order to take advantage of a spare shift, because the babysitting service (while hiring teenager in their spare time) is not allowed to charge the single mother less than what she's making by pulling extra shift hours. It wouldn't matter if the babysitting service could offer a cheap service, it's not allowed to exist.
So nobody offers babysitting services anymore unless they work for a child care centre?
It's the wrong tool for the job. If you want young people to have enough money if they need it, then use a progressive taxation to help them. You don't give teenagers an advantage by forcing their employer to pay an adult wage, you use a wage-match program paid for out of progressive taxation. You don't help handicapped people by forcing employers to pay them the same as an able-bodied person, you wage-match out of progressive taxation.
In other words, you treat teens and disabled people (not "handicapped" if you please; I'm not fond of that word) like TFWs and get the non-disabled/non-teens mad at them, like it's their fault if employers suddenly make it difficult for other workers to pick up enough shifts or have decent hours (as was done in some cases where the employers were able to hire TFWs because of subsidized wages).
The employer won't hire a low-skill worker if the cost (to the employer) is too high. It's just fundamental. It's the wrong tool for the job.
So what
is the "right tool for the job?"
I would be interested in your proposed progressive tax policy that would counteract excessive rents.
In the bigger picture, I'm not sure I understand your arguments. You keep mentioning that a living wage would destroy the market and thus it shouldn't be instated, but what is the point of a wage if not for the worker to then be capable of living? Is this a really roundabout way of saying you think the current market system is bollocks?
I'm reminded of an argument El Machinae and I had years ago, when he stated that the Alberta government is "benign."
Sure, it's benign if you're wealthy and don't need the social programs that were cut or the hospitals that were blown up or you don't have anyone among your family or friends with a gambling addiction (Klein broke his promise to remove VLTs from any businesses that wanted them gone) or you weren't a nurse who had to leave the city, the province, and sometimes the country to find a job (some of my nursing student clients were in that situation and I tore a strip off Stockwell Day, the last time he came doorknocking for my vote).
Fast-forward to now, and I have to wonder just what Rachel Notley's government did that benefited me. Sure, AISH just went up... by an inadequate amount (I guess she suddenly realized that disabled people vote, but for me it's too little, too late; she would have frittered away hundreds of
millions on a two-week party (aka the 2026 Olympics if the people of Calgary hadn't wisely killed their city's bid), but done nothing for the people outside of Calgary and Edmonton. Even now, we apparently have to vote NDP if we want a proper cardiac unit in Red Deer. I had to go to Innisfail for my eye surgery because there's no room to do it in Red Deer.
And I told the person conducting a phone survey regarding emergency rooms if I'd recommend the one at Red Deer Regional Hospital. I told her it was a meaningless question, since it's the only one we have so there's nothing to compare it to. Considering that we're a city of 100,000+ and we also serve a lot of the surrounding towns, villages, and cities like Lacombe, we damn well need a second hospital.
But gotta fund those expensive international sporting events because they supposedly benefit "everybody." I won't be seeing so much as a penny of that "benefit" from the recent Canada Winter Games that just concluded here.
Almost by definition, yes. But the output that is less productive than the minimum wage is just not done. The productivity worth $14/hr becomes zero. It doesn't magically become $15 because the MW is $15.
If you force an employer to pay all apple-pickers at least 10 apples per day, you'll find that none of his workers picks fewer than 10. But not because of magic. The 9-per-day pickers get zero, and they don't get counted as an employee. The 9-per-day picking just doesn't happen, that job is destroyed. It's gone.
Have you accounted for under-the-table payments to workers who are willing to take less? The underground economy is a thing.
