The Infinity of Minimum Wage Debates...

Day 441, 13:42 • Published in USA USA • by scrabman

It seems that every term of Congress there are a slew of debates about raising the Minimum Wage from the default of $1. I see well-meaning Congress members proposing to raise the Minimum Wage often oblivious to how this topic is discussed on a monthly basis if not more often. So let's get into some of the nitty gritty where the Minimum Wage is involved.

First of all ... I'm a liberal and the Party President of the United States Workers' Party (yes ... WORKERS). Thus, I would be in favor of this if the players of the game didn't already take care of 0 skill workers. You're only a 0 skill worker for a few days and then you're a skill 1 and then you're rapidly a skill 2. It takes 2 days to hit skill 1 where most of the market offers are well above minimum wage because of the sheer number of employers competing for employees (even moreso in other countries). Generally if you're an employer offering jobs to 0 skill workers you're going to help them out ... 0 skill jobs are basically charity offers because company owners get very little benefit from a 0 skill worker who starts the game at 50 wellness.

So every other week some Senator gets the same idea that I had when I was a new Senator that it would be cool to make the minimum wage equal to the cost of food (though when I started the cost of Q1 food was about $0.30) or even higher. However, there are a few things that aren't being considered in that thought process.

1) The citizen gets a $5 New Citizen payment upon starting eRep that will help buy food along with working their first job and earning at least $1 per day. On the third day any worker can get a pay raise.

2) The citizen is directed by the New Citizen Message to seek out gifting and food programs that will give them free wellness. The USWP has a long history with their Hand to Hand program and now some of the other parties are getting similar (but inferior) programs up and running as well. The USWP wellness program is one of the big ways that we help workers ... though our detractors just brand our workers as "zombies" out of jealousy.

3) The 0 skill citizen who is hired by an employer who is offering 0 skill jobs is usually going to be looked after. But if the new citizen is too dense to use the above two options then how is forcing an employer to pay them more going to help that citizen?

4) With all of these other factors there are many employers who will deem that it is not worth it to offer jobs to 0 skill citizens if you try to raise the min. wage to $2 let alone raise it to $5. Thus, if you raise the Minimum Wage it will hurt 0 skill workers. Look, I know that this is a RL conservative argument against raising min. wage but in eRep it happens to be true due to how the game works.

Those are my thoughts that come as a 3rd term Senator and as an employer. I've offered plenty of jobs to 0 skill workers but now I run a Q5 defense system company and a Q2 wood company (that I hope to upgrade to Q3 with the sale of my first DS) and it would be bad for me to hire 0 skill people because it's more detrimental on their wellness. Yet, there have been times when I've plugged some 0 skill workers into one of the various companies I've run to fill my max productivity calculation. Easily half of the 0 skill workers don't make it much past skill 1 and that's with me as an employer who gives them free food and wellness in their first several days just like Justin did for me when I was a new employee.

I think that the Min Wage option is a bad game mechanic based upon the interests that are involved between worker and employer in this game. However, it is one of the few things that Congress gets to do so it's only natural that someone would get the novel idea to propose a minimum wage increase every term of Congress. I still think it's a bad idea though ... and this has come from accumulated experience in eRep.

Vote Scrabman for President in March. Vote Justin for President in February.