1) Bill can tell Overworked Oliver that, in addition to making the pizzas, he now has to also cut the peppers
2) Bill can buy an automatic pepper-cutter
3) Bill can pay more to buy pre-cut peppers
4) Bill can hire Efficient Ernie instead, who can cut peppers, olives, tomatoes and pepperoni, to get more bang for his buck
5) Bill can cut the peppers himself
6) Bill can hire an intern, spin some tale about how pepper-cutting is the key to the pizza business, and get it done for free (until the intern wises up)
7) Bill can hire an illegal immigrant for less than minimum wage, and pay him off the books
And yeah... he can also just decide to do without peppers on his pizzas from now on.
2) Bill can buy an automatic pepper-cutter
3) Bill can pay more to buy pre-cut peppers
4) Bill can hire Efficient Ernie instead, who can cut peppers, olives, tomatoes and pepperoni, to get more bang for his buck
5) Bill can cut the peppers himself
6) Bill can hire an intern, spin some tale about how pepper-cutting is the key to the pizza business, and get it done for free (until the intern wises up)
7) Bill can hire an illegal immigrant for less than minimum wage, and pay him off the books
And yeah... he can also just decide to do without peppers on his pizzas from now on.
So (in any legal way), if the job really needs to be done, the worker gets paid at least the minimum wage per hour.
How can you even make that statement?
In example #1, no one got paid more. Instead, one worker is made to work harder with no increase in pay.
In example #2, A MACHINE does the job.
In example #3, we have no idea if someone somehow gets a pay raise. For all we know, the pre-cut peppers could be produced by child labor in a third-world country.
In none of those examples do we see Dan the Drunk, who isn't worth minimum wage, suddenly start making it. Please note that THAT is the point I'm trying to make.
Of course all the legal workers still left employed make minimum wage. No one argued otherwise--it's a strawman. But to say that poor people are all suddenly made better off through the decree of a minimum wage is nonsense. See examples 1-7.
In each of those cases, Dan was not made wealthier. He's still poor, and now he won't even be employed. You have an unrealistic view of things if you think employers just eat losses because some law tells them to, rather than doing whatever they can to avoid it.
This is the way we got all our workers' rights and it has worked very well so far. Do I have to enumerate again all the workers' rights we've got right now that we earned back when vacuum tubes didn't exist?
