Quote Originally Posted by Animeniax View Post
There are fast food workers in the US who are on strike looking for $15/hr. Are people really that dumb? If fast food workers get $15/hr then where's the motivation to do anything else with their lives than be a fast food worker? You'd have to pay other low skilled laborers more money, or raise prices on products, then have to pay others more to be able to afford those prices, so the fast food laborers are back at square one.
You're right. From my understanding of junior macroeconomics, one problem is that even if you do increase the minimum wage, you're probably subjecting your society to two mechanisms: long term inflation (positive/negative depends on society) and structural unemployment. As businesses seek cheaper labour, this would result in greater law evasion by increased migrant workers to meet labour demand or outsourcing work, which result in greater loss of domestic jobs.

Of course, I haven't taken senior economics, which probably places greater emphasis on mitigating negative externalities through government intervention, so I'm incorrectly oversimplifying the issue.

This reminds me that high schools should incorporate basic micro and macroeconomics into the curriculum.