Strong opinion, lightly held on Ontario minimum wage
Over here Mark talks about strong opinions, weakly held (I prefer lightly to weakly, but love the idea).
Herewith then one of my strong opinions, lightly held. The minimum wage in Ontario should be increased, and I support the current attempt in Queen’s Park to raise the minimum wage to $10 immediately. I have even sent a letter to my MPP to tell them so (the old fashioned sort with a stamp and everything, apparently they prefer those).
The pro argument for an increase is fairly simple I think, people who work for a living should be paid enough to live on. The con is more complex, involving the potential impacts on the economy of such an increase.
In my opinion (and I’m definitely no economist) the economy should exist to serve society, and not the other way around. It is not acceptable to me that a person in this rich province of a rich nation can work a hard 40 hour week and still live in poverty. It’s going to take a pretty strong ‘anything else is bad for the economy’ argument to persuade me otherwise.
I realise this is a way off topic, even for me, but I feel strongly about this so I thought I’d just stick by virtual heart on my blogging sleeve here.
Classical economics argues that increasing the cost of labour causes unemployment as employers substitute capital for labour. However, the reality is that most of these minimum-wage jobs are service industry jobs with few ways of substituting capital for labour. McDonalds order-takers will not be replaced by robots anytime soon. Many studies have shown the positive economic benefits of increasing the minimum wage from stimulating consumer spending at the bottom of the income pyramid.
So I say, yeah, bring it on.
Mark Kuznicki
5 Jan 07 at 6:38 pm
Thanks for the thoughts Mark, that’s kind of the feeling I had in my sub-Econ. 101 way.
pdinnen
5 Jan 07 at 6:47 pm