Quote:
Originally Posted by belsarius
Trying to use minimum wage alone in a market economy to lift people out of poverty is ineffective and inefficient. It addresses the problem bluntly, and ends up creating more problems; and in the end doesn't make a difference.
I think this kind of minimum wage increase needed something else to offset the damaging effects, to small businesses especially. I would have loved to see some sort of tax credit issued for businesses which maintained their employment levels to ensure they could afford the higher wages. That credit would easily have been compensated by the individuals paying more and the generated activity. Without it, like Zarley demonstrated, you aren't increasing pay, just moving it to a smaller number of employees.
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I'm glad to see some of this is finally sinking in. Further back in the thread I suggested that Alberta tier their minimum wage increases based on the size of the business (like Seattle did) to reduce the impact on small businesses.
Obviously that's not what they're doing, and these are the results.