Arguments against Minimum Wage Laws Opponents of the minimum wage claim it has these effects:
May cause price inflation as businesses try to compensate by raising the prices of the goods being sold.
Originally Posted by Guilty Pleasures
This is the most obvious reason why a mandatory minimum wage does not work. Anaximander sums it up thus:
You hike minimum wage to a living wage,
look for considerable price inflation
across the board.
The poor will have more money
for all of a month tops before
prices jump to compensate.
And though they may be making more,
everything will subsequently cost more.
Hence it is a zero sum gain.
Originally Posted by anaximander
and it's explained again @
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Rep...e-Minimum-Wage
The shortfall between wages and prices is more or less relative. Price inflation occurs not only when producers raise prices to compensate for increase in costs, e.g., mandatory minimum wage, etc., it also occurs when more “money” is put into the economy. Object lesson – the Weimar Republic:
“In the month following May 20, 1922, the price of an egg rose from 800 Marks to 2,400; of a litre of milk from 1,800 to 3,800, of a kilo of flour from 2,400 to 6,600, of pork from 10,400 to 32,000. In the Ruhr, too,
while salaries doubled (a workman's wage rose from 3,300 [Marks] an hour to 6,800) the cost of commodities trebled.”
http://nowandfutures.com/us_weimar.html