No matter what is legislated, our Minimum Wage will ALWAYS be $0.
Timeframe doesn’t matter: $0/hour, $0/week, $0/year.
Aren’t taxes through the roof? Don’t many of them still want to settle here?
Correct.
The market always sets prices (including wages) regardless of legislation, because a trade is, by definition, entered into willingly by both parties.
If either party is forced, it is not a trade - it is something else - it us government redistribution.
Setting a minimum wage means those who were earning less than that will lose their jobs, and others will receive a slight raise for assuming their duties.
For example, let’s say a shopkeeper is paying two people worth $8/hr to sweep the floor, and two people worth $16/hr to work the registers. Total cost $48/hr for $48/hr worth of work.
Then a federal $15/hr minimum wage is imposed.
The shopkeeper will have a choice: either pay the floor sweepers nearly twice what the market says they are worth, throwing $14 of profit per hour right down the drain, or restructure his workforce.
He really has no choice: he will immediately fire the two who are worth $8/hr, and hire a third person worth $16/hr to sweep the floors.
Thus, he will still be paying $48/hr for $48/hr worth of work, yet be perfectly legal - the only difference is two low skilled people lose their jobs - the very people the minimum wage was supposed to help.
It won’t take the shopkeeper even two seconds to figure this out - and the shopkeeper will have no choice. And it won’t just be that shopkeeper, it will be every shopkeeper and every employer of low skilled workers in the nation.