On Sat, 8 Aug 2015 18:23:30 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 4:07:43 PM UTC-4, Ed Huntress wrote:


You are living a fantasy if you think a minumum wage of $10.10 an hour will get people off welfare.

It will get some off of welfare. But if you think it should be higher,
how much higher should it be?

--
Ed Huntress

I looked at one web site with data for Chicago. It claimed that $12 an hour wages provided the maximum benefits. Higher wages resulted in fewer free gov benefits so wages above $12 reduced benefits more that the increase in wages.
So from about $12 an hour in wages to $20 an hour in wages there was a reduction in benefits. When wages increased above $20 an hour the additional money in wages were more than the welfare benefits lost.

My answer to how high should it be is Zero. Supply and demand will keep the wages at about what they are now.

There is no reason or evidence that I know of that suggests that would
be true. The supply/demand curve now is biased by the minimum wage.
Nobody knows by how much.

A few years ago there were some pundits, and business managers, who
said that we have to reduce wages to compete with China. There is
plenty of pressure to drive wages down. Fortunately, wages in China
are going up, so it's unlikely that the push to lower wages in the US
will go anywhere.

All the money now used to enforce the minimum wage law could be used to help pay for welfare.

It will not happen. There are no politicians that would vote to get rid of the minimum wage. And few that would vote to raise the minimum wage above the market-clearing wage for low-skill jobs.

Dan

--
Ed Huntress