So long as we’re discussing issues of socio-economics on pgo, and since my current job pays minimum wage, here’s my take:
And thanks to timezone strangeness, this appears before rml’s post… 🙂
Update
But now it does not
Appear before rob love’s post
Thanks to p g o.
James Cape 
Maybe I’m being stupid, but surely Rob’s supply/demand graph is wrong: the higher the wage the more demand and the less supply not the other way round?
No, it’s correct, from the perspective of the boss. The higher the wage, the greater the number of people willing to fill that job, hence the supply of labor is greater. However, as each individual laborer costs more to employ, the employers would (theoretically) demand fewer employees. Employees are just walking, talking cogs (or “human resources”), after all.
From the worker’s perspective, however, there is a greater demand for a particular job (due to increased wages), and a lower supply (due to increased costs) of that particular job. Workers are all free agents who make rational decisions in a market environment, after all.
Economists, knowing who they work for, think and speak in the former terms, but the difference is semantic, not substantive :-).
And of course all countries with rational minimum wages bear out the theory with high unemployment levels, like the U.K.
Oh, I know you were being sarcastic, but Canada still has 7.2% unemployment, whereas in the U.S., it’s at 5.2%. Levels of unemployment akin to, say, Germany’s 9% haven’t happened in the U.S since the post-WWII era, IIRC.
Of course, 45% of everyone in jail was unemployed at the time of their arrest, and save a few “privatized” prisons which prefer slave labor to preventing future crime, none of them are working now…
This is true, but if you include underemployment and prisoners, the differences between the U.S. and the U.K. are much smaller.
jimbob – actually, my message was intended to be sarcastic and in support of a minimum wage. The U.K., with a minimum wage around US$10/hr, has extremely low levels of unemployment right now, and here in Canada where the minimum wage is eminently livable (and there’s also disgusting commie things like employment insurance and socialised healthcare), unemployment isn’t particularly high either.