If you have ever seen a labor market, yes minimum wage is a cause of unemployment period.
Unemployment is a problem because people in a modern society almost 100% of the time define who they are by their profession. So a person without a profession, has no way to define themselves in relation to their peers which can cause emotional problems. That is a problem.
People who are unemployed do not have an income, and thus have problems feeding themselves and their families which cause negative externalizes not on just the unemployed person, but others as well.
To be honest, I don't believe there's a system that "works". Life just doesn't work in a way you can achieve an ideal state of affairs and then leave it be for eternity. Life is dynamic, nature is chaotic, people come in all kinds of variations. Any social or economical system will appear, evolve, devolve and eventually crash. There's no common ground for a species of sentient individuals. I think any form of social order is a reflection of it's times, the environmental circumstances and a reaction to it's predecessor. Conservatism follows liberalism, frugality follows indulgence, liberty follows tyranny, etc.
I'm afraid the ''professional'' economists in this thread won't understand you :P but you are absolutely right. That, or a different kind of currency - there was a guy that implemented a dynamic currency based small scale economy, last I heard a few towns were using it. The idea is actually very simple.
Watch ''The Money Fix'' from here:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/money-fix/
It's a pretty good documentary. The idea I was talking about is at the end (or at 2/3 of the documentary)
Capitalism is fine. Corporate Capitalism is a problem.
Perhaps one day we will have a Utopian society, where people work in jobs suited to their personal abilities not for monetary reward but for the good of society. There would be no money or financial systems at all, and the state would ensure everybody had a home and enough food to survive well.
I seriously doubt it though, because Humans in general are greedy, amoral, selfish, power hungry, intolerant and very resistant to change. We, as a species, are not civilized enough to achieve such a goal. Of course it is our greed and hunger for power that has propelled our society to its current level, and left unchecked it will either take us to the stars or destroy us.
Not that it really matters though, because whether it be in 10 years or 10 billion years the Human race will eventually die out and be forgotten. Nothing any of us ever achieves will last forever. Human existence is essentially worthless and ultimately not really worth the effort.
the big thing is no matter how good a system looks on paper as long as people run it there will be problems. Greed ruins any government no matter how good the intentions of those who founded it.
Tell them that the Lich King is dead...and the World of Warcraft...died with him.
My answer is this - you presume to understand people and their situations, yet it's clear to me that you've never had a single thing happen to you that throws your life around so hard that you can't even begin to orient yourself. It's clear to me that you don't understand anything about people in difficult situations because you presume anybody can be successful if they just work hard enough. That's the exception, not the rule. Not to mention your strong misunderstanding of Capitalism, amongst other things.
Don't presume, and maybe you'll get an answer you can understand.
---------- Post added 2012-05-14 at 09:46 AM ----------
And yes, although to an extent. A market without Government involvement as far as making certain aspects more competitive is great, but no regulations whatsoever isn't good. Currently there isn't a happy medium struck between the two in the US, and that's why it's a failing system right now.
Enlighten me as to why a "price floor" is at all relevant when it comes to making goods and services more readily available to the destitute? Since a "price floor" has nothing to do with actually making things affordable. Only that there's a minimum price that a product can be sold at. Which is irrelevant if your market still has no money to buy it.
I apologize if I may be misunderstanding you, so I'll ask you to clarify. But are you suggesting that we lower wages in a market where the wages are not currently meeting the cost of living for the populace? As in if people are now making 65% of the cost of living, lets create more jobs by dropping everyone down to 40% of the cost of living?
What the hell are you talking about...? Emotional problems? Look, you can cite Economy textbooks all you want, but I assure you it's got nothing to do with reality. That ''profession'' that they teach you is a load of fiction, but I still haven't met a single ''economist'' that wasn't too proud to admit that.
Lemme ask you - why the hell do people get employed? why would they want that? what the hell drives them to go through this or that education so that they can get a job? Because they just like busting their assess off all day doing meaningless work? Nope, it's because of one simple reason:
If you don't get money in this society you can either start robbing the stores or starve to death.
That's the only reason people go to work. Without food, your lifespan is one week. In one week you have to eat something. Your whole life looks like that - each time you eat, you replenish your life for another few days. If you don't have that ability to feed yourself, you're done. If you steal, you get punished. If you ''work'' you get payed.
That's the sole imperative of why ''jobs'' exist in the first place, not because we simply need to have 160 million people sitting at desks answering phones all day long. You have voicemail for that. This also applies to every job that can be replaced by a computer. There is no need for a cashier at a shop if you can have it work like a vending machine.
And long story short - that's the reason why we have unemployment.
Technology advances, human labor becomes redundant, people are fired and stop getting money to eat, debts can't be payed by the individual or the state so the state can't hand out millions of free money to people and those whole system goes to hell. As I said, I will repeat:
The imperative for profit at all costs is the cause of unemployment. Let me explain:
It is in absolutely every possible employer/s interest to minimise expense and increase profit. What kind of insanity will stop him from erasing all the possible costs that come for hiring a human to do something when he can buy a machine once which need no food, no social security, no holidays, it's perfectly precise, never gets tired, and does a superior job to a human in every possible way?
What kind of insanity will stop him from getting that when the rule is simple - you either get profit, or you close down.
As I said, you can cite Economy rules all you want with those fairy tales, but there isn't a single Economy book/professor/professional that found the solution to this problem - the replacing of human labor by machines, which is by default in the employers best interest.
Last edited by mmocd8a3ba3df1; 2012-05-14 at 04:54 PM.
But, surely, that is the natural progression of Capitalism. The most competitive will always dominate the market, monopoly leads to big businesses and big businesses lead to inefficiencies, corruption, bureaucracy and all that jazz.
Or do you mean the problems of businesses having rights and legal protection beyond their owners?
I was addressing your comment about unemployment. Minimum wage is a price floor of the labor market which causes a disparity between the demand for labor and the supply for labor, in the market. Prices naturally would be lower than the minimum wage and so adding the floor by law causes people employed to be less than the people who want to work thus causing more unemployment that there would be at a labor market in equilibrium.