TheGuySwann on Nostr: I appreciate the challenge, but frankly, that isn’t how markets work and never ...

I appreciate the challenge, but frankly, that isn’t how markets work and never have, there are a few reasons why:

• The only reason we need minimum wage is because if govt created inflation. Otherwise even a static wage literally grows by itself every year in purchasing power due to growth in the society.
Here’s a short expansion on this:
https://youtu.be/vknNY3oTABc?si=kTtyxd06PwJUT059

• Free markets have always produced increasing wages and bettering standards. The govt never even considered outlawing child labor until it wasn’t even a problem anymore. This is common with regulation. The brilliant economist, Thomas Sowell, details a lot of the history of this in his books. An example being when the Ohio river caught on fire, which lead to a public outrage and the creation of the EPA and Clean Water Act. Years prior, river fires were actually pretty common. Everyone dumped stuff into the river and it was completely normal. It wasn’t until after it was largely solved, and people no longer thought of it as normal, that a river in Cleveland caught fire and made national news.

• WITH a minimum wage people with very low skills can’t get work. So the amount of people who drop out of the workforce increases dramatically. It also encourages businesses to seek automation rather than paying less to low skilled workers, resulting in far more stagnation in impoverished populations.

• When people can’t get work and can’t afford necessities, it doesn’t mean children don’t work. It means they can’t work *legitimately,* but the children still work if the family is poor.

• Child labor doesn’t occur because there’s just a whole population of mean and evil parents. It occurs because of poverty so bad that if the kids don’t work, the family cannot eat. Child labor is a result of poverty, not meanness. Every place that institutes child labor laws, sees a dramatic drop in child labor, with a corresponding jump in child prostitution. If the children can’t work, they get raped instead. Since you support a minimum wage, do you support child rape?

• Kids should be free to work if they want, especially considering if they are poor this would be their way of learning important skills and avoiding having to be raped for money to survive. I mean, priorities here. Also I worked when I was a kid and loved it. I know SO many things and learned tons of great skills working construction with my dad from 11 and 12 years old and on. If the govt tried to come and hurt my father or restrict me from earning money, then they are the violent lunatics that are harming my family AND me.

In short, child labor and minimum wage laws are dumb, they harm the very people they pretend to help. No disrespect to you, and I appreciate you responding, but I disagree with your entire framing.