Jack Albrecht
1 min readMar 18, 2021

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This is a seriously sophistic take on the minimum wage. You've simplified the world economy to basically, "There will be inflation, therefore increasing the minimum wage is pointless." Both statements are wrong.

Euribor has been negative in Europe for quite a while now. The US has been printing money like mad, yet there is no inflation. Increasing the minimum wage, particularly where organized labor is very weak and there is a minimum wage (as in the US) makes sense in and of itself.

Minimum wage hikes do not cause inflation by themselves. Only with multiple certain circumstances, one important one being a full labor market, will a minimum wage increase result in inflation. Particularly in the US the labor market is light years away from full.

It would be true to say, “in the situation that the minimum wage that does not increase as fast as inflation are you ‘not getting richer’" but in that case you are still "not getting poor as fast as you would if the minimum wage were not increasing" so it is still better for workers to get an increased minimum wage.

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Jack Albrecht
Jack Albrecht

Written by Jack Albrecht

US expatriate living in the EU; seeing the world from both sides of the Atlantic.

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