The State of Washington has made it illegal for certain low-wage workers to keep their jobs:
Washington's minimum wage will rise by 15 cents an hour in January, becoming the highest in the nation.Meanwhile, Washington officials tacitly acknowledge how silly the minimum wage law is: by encouraging illegal immigration, which exists mainly because the minimum wage law prevents law-abiding citizens and legal immigrants from working at a market-clearing wage! Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 01, 2003 03:52 PM
Yes, let's get rid of all our wage and safety laws so our working conditions and economy can be as bad as Mexico's. That way those pesky Mexican's won't bother to come here illegaly.
Posted by: Simon on October 1, 2003 04:42 PMSimon: Yeah, let's remove all safety laws. Because Stefan was talking about that, right?
Wage laws? Yeah, get rid of them. Unless, that is, you prefer people to be unemployed, rather than employed for less than the high minimum wage in Washington? That, you see, is precisely the result of a minimum-wage law. Any job where the productivity of that job makes it not worth more than minimum-wage (plus employer-specific costs like their chunk of the various taxes, and their overhead) will disappear under that minimum wage.
But, hey. At least it's not an irrelevant comparison to another country and its economy, right?
Posted by: Sigivald on October 3, 2003 03:09 PM