Should minimum wage be variable?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

There should be no minimum wage period. 

RAHAHA WORKERS DON'T DESERVE A LIVING INCOME!!!!

 your country is so backward.

Why should employers bear the burden alone?  There are far better methods than minimum wage to provide for a living income.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Why should employers bear the burden alone?

Because, generally speaking, "employers" are the people who reap the most benefits from modern economy, and asking them to give something back makes perfect sense if you're concerned about common good.

Then tax them in other ways that don't discourage them from hiring people as the minimum wage does.  Economically, that's all the minimum wage is, a tax linked to a welfare benefit.  Of course, it has the advantage (from a politician's POV) of not showing up on the budget.

So you're perfectly okay with Wal-Mart helping its employees fill out food stamp, HUD and Medicaid applications to supplement the inadequate wages they are being paid?

Yup.  I'm not against there being a social safety net.  I just think that the minimum wage is not a particularly good net.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Why should employers bear the burden alone?

Because, generally speaking, "employers" are the people who reap the most benefits from modern economy, and asking them to give something back makes perfect sense if you're concerned about common good.

Then tax them in other ways that don't discourage them from hiring people as the minimum wage does.  Economically, that's all the minimum wage is, a tax linked to a welfare benefit.  Of course, it has the advantage (from a politician's POV) of not showing up on the budget.

So you're perfectly okay with Wal-Mart helping its employees fill out food stamp, HUD and Medicaid applications to supplement the inadequate wages they are being paid?

Yup.  I'm not against there being a social safety net.  I just think that the minimum wage is not a particularly good net.

Do you see the problem here?

1. Local government gives Wal-Mart enormous tax abatement and/or incentive package to locate in their jurisdiction.
2. Wal-Mart opens. People working there make minimum wage.
3. Wal-Mart workers cannot pay for housing, food or healthcare with these wages and require public assistance.
4. Government must provide public assistance.
5. Since Wal-Mart got major tax break, Wal-Mart is not contributing much to this public assistance. Instead, that burden falls on small businesses and on individual citizens.

The problem is right there at the start, with government granting Wal-Mart (or any other business) large rebates for doing ordinary business.  That would be a problem regardless of whether there is a minimum wage or not.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

And how savvy do you think the city council in a town with only 2,000 people is? Most of them are going to listen to the company's pitch and be taken in out of a combination of fear, desperation and lack of background in cost-benefit analysis.

I guess I come from an atypically savvy small town.  We got our Wal-Mart without offering an incentive package beyond paying for a traffic light and some other road improvements.  Back during the ethanol bubble of a couple years ago, they turned down an offer to host a distillery at the industrial park that would use up most of the town's spare water capacity.

Believe it or not, not all small towns are led by rubes.  Still, if that is something you consider a problem, then simply bar local governments from offering those sorts of breaks.  Indeed, I'd be all in favor of that.

Your argument seems to be that because some businesses screw society, society needs to screw business rather than figure out ways to stop the screwing.