More money in people's pocket doesn't necessarily cause inflation in everything - for goods which supply can be increased at will(new factory etc), their long-term prices mostly depend on competition and manufacturing costs.

As for goods with inherently limited supply, like land, there would likely be some inflation - so in the end maybe you'll spend the same salary share on them. But the rest of your salary still carries more purchasing power than before.

Then it seems like the minimum wage is not the underlying issue.

If there are too many people and not enough jobs, fiddling with the minimum wage won't have any real effect because regardless of what it is, there are always going to be people who are jobless (and therefore without income).

So how do we reconcile the fact that currently, most people must work in order to live and yet there isn't enough work to go around?

What if we stop trying to control everything and let people make their own choices. In nature, if an animal doesn't hunt for food, it dies. We should take care of those who can't "hunt" because they're handicapped, but we can't afford to because we spend all of that energy on handing things to the ones who don't want to "hunt".

Stop trying to control nature.

I can't tell if this is a serious comment or a facetious one. Do you know me from somewhere else? Very strange.

If serious, I believe that it would be categorized under the "appeal to nature" group of fallacies. Secondly, who is "we" in this situation? People are making their own choices. We live in a representative democracy and people vote to decide things. Not everybody gets their way all the time. And then, is it worth the time and energy spent on differentiating between those who can't hunt and those who won't? I would think it's much more efficient to assume that everyone who asks for help needs it and simply help them.

I agree with mangeletti's first sentence completely, but I have no comment on his appeal to nature.

Democracy is one of the most insidious forms of government, since it gives the people the illusion of choice and the "we made this decision together" mindset. The problem is that a bare majority of voters (not population), can force its will upon all others in society, bringing down the hammer of government arbitrarily on any group it chooses.

Look how politicians who win a decisive presidential race in the electoral college go into office with a self-proclaimed "mandate from the people" to change things. Now his every action cannot be scrutinized because "we" chose this course. Ridiculous.

And don't get me started on wars waged by democracies...

And yet nothing I said was untrue nor out of the realm of possibility.

I didn't down vote you but I assume the people that did have some kind of value system that doesn't involve culling the underperforming subsection of humanity during their annual review.

The implication in my original post was that there is enough "wealth" to go around but the current system prevents it from being shared with everyone. When I say shared wealth I don't mean equally, I mean enough so that people can survive without having to fight for subsistence wages to work part time at their local mega mart.

> I didn't down vote you but I assume the people that did have some kind of value system that doesn't involve culling the underperforming subsection of humanity during their annual review.

This is a rad comment, I laughed. Well, I'm not sorry if I jarred them, that was my intention.

> The implication in my original post was that there is enough "wealth" to go around but the current system prevents it from being shared with everyone. When I say shared wealth I don't mean equally, I mean enough so that people can survive without having to fight for subsistence wages to work part time at their local mega mart.

When I think about the great social upheaval that will come about from job sector-eliminating automation, I shudder to think about what the hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed masses will do. And, I shudder to think about what governments will do with them in response, (which I why I wrote what I did.) In my opinion a living wage just puts the class war pressure cooker on medium instead of high heat.

I wish I had a great idea or plan to keep things running smoothly, but I don't. I have seen homelessness explode in my city ever since the Occupy Wall Street protests, and I see a lot of young people among the homeless who should/could be off the streets making a living. It's absolutely criminal simply from a public health standpoint for the city to let homelessness proliferate like this, and that comes from someone who thinks of himself as a libertarian.

Here's a recent interesting interview on RuneSoup about work and money. It gives me hope when smarter people than me can present a positive vision of the future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ci24y4wOHY

> So let's assume you now have inflation.

You're basically arguing that it's raising the minimum wage that increases inflation, when this is patently not true. Inflation is almost always present, regardless of modifications to minimum wage.

So ... in my comment I was continuing the line of the parent that minimum wage rises lead to upward pressure on wages generally.

My claim would be that general wage level increases lead to inflation.

Raising the price doesn't raise the price; that's what I'm hearing. Seems legit.