United States Biden's Ideas and Policies and Socialism

[LordsFire]

If anyone expects to be able to take career politicians at their word (Democrat or otherwise), they're a fool.

The 1980's was a very different time from now, and remember that Reagan was born in 1911. The Democrats were up to shady crap during most of his lifetime as well, but the majority of them weren't the sort of open traitors that they are now. Also, he came to the presidency shortly after they'd finally given up on open discrimination against black people, so it's not like he didn't have some reason to think they might be changing.

Even then, yes, he still trusted them more than he should have.

 

[JagerIV]

I don't see why it would be so ridiculous to even consider the Biden was a socialist: socialism has been mainstream in American elite institutions for at least a 100 years, and certainly a great deal of socialist ideas have fully entered the mainstream.

I think some of the problem people get caught up in is, well, treating the surface level of things. Socialism is less a series of policies per say, but the world view that leads to those policies. And you can get fairly big divergence in world views while still being part of the whole: like, most people accept both Catholics and Methodists are Christians, at least now a days.

So, like a capitalist, Christian, Socialist, or feudalist? can all decide to build a road. Road building per say is thus not tied to any of those. However, once you get into things such as who chooses to build the road, how its funded, how its justified, and how its operated, you can generally pretty quickly tell if this is a capitalist, Christian, or socialist road.

Though, I guess like with the example of the Christian worldview, it can also be quite difficult to explain from first principles where practical things come from. Like, from the example of Jesus Christ, a celibate childless man, it seems a bit disconnected that the ideal godly life is to get married, work hard, and have a lot of sex and children with that wife. But, that seems to be the ideal vision of a good Christian life in like 60-80% denominations, the more hard core, the bigger the ideal family.

However, celebrate, even communal living like monks and such is also seen a s holy, godly life as well. And those radically different lifestyles are not really seen as being in any sort of contradiction. They both make good sense in the Christian worldview.

Explaining why from an outside perspective however can be difficult, so its easier to just list the policy outcomes of the Christian worldview on sex, rather than trying to explain from first principles, which I'm not sure most Christians can explain all that well anyways. Generally you can list the policy and most people can more or less gut feel if something does or does not make sense in a particular world view.

 

[JagerIV]

@History Learner , actually, do you have any evidence that Reagan raised the minimum wage? Looking at the numbers for when minimum wages were raised, you had a raise in Jan 1st, 1981, 20 days before Reagan got sworn in, and nothing else until till April 1 of 1990, a year after he left office.

The Nation, as part of criticizing Reagan, claimed also that he kept the minimum wage frozen at $3.25 for his entire term, which obviously with inflation meant you had de-facto declining minimum wage in real terms over his 8 years.

During Reagan’s two terms in the White House, the minimum wage was frozen at $3.35 an hour, while prices rose, thus eroding the standard of living of millions of low-wage workers.

Ronald Reagan was also very openly against the minimum wage in general, and campaigned to at least get a high schooler exception. This didn't pass, but his arguments for it clearly lay out a strongly a hostility to the minimum wage in general:

REAGAN'S WISH IS NO MINIMUM WAGE FOR YOUTHS (Published 1983)

www.nytimes.com

In his latest budget and employment plans, Mr. Reagan has proposed cutting the current minimum wage of $3.35 an hour to $2.50 in the case of summer jobs for young people up to 22 years old.

n a similar forum Tuesday, Mr. Reagan, addressing local television newscasters at the White House, spoke of teen-age unemployment when he was asked about complaints that Administration policies were widening the income gap between blacks and whites.

''Before there was a minimum wage,'' Mr. Reagan replied, in part, ''young, teen-aged blacks had a far lower rate of unemployment than teen-aged whites. And as the minimum wage was put into effect and began to increase, this was reversed.''

This was in line with the Republican party manifesto of the time, in 1980:

Republican Party Platform of 1980 | The American Presidency Project

www.presidency.ucsb.edu

We believe that present laws create additional barriers for unemployed youth. One of the keys to resolving the youth unemployment problem is to reduce the cost to private employers of hiring young people who lack the necessary skills and experience to become immediately productive. Unfortunately, current government policy makes it too expensive for employers to hire unskilled youths. We urge a reduction of payroll tax rates, a youth differential for the minimum wage, and alleviation of other costs of employment until a young person can be a productive employee.

And the 1984 party platform:

Republican Party Platform of 1984 | The American Presidency Project

www.presidency.ucsb.edu

There are still federal statutes that keep Americans out of the work-force. Arbitrary minimum wage rates, for example, have eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs and, with them, the opportunity for young people to get productive skills, good work habits, and a weekly paycheck. We encourage the adoption of a youth opportunity wage to encourage employers to hire and train inexperienced workers.

We demand repeal of prohibitions against household manufacturing. Restrictions on work in the home are intolerable intrusions into our private lives and limit economic opportunity, especially for women and the homebound.

So, you seem to be accusing Reagan of supporting a socialist policy he didn't support, his party didn't support, and which he didn't even do.

Your entire argument there seems false.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

And the Democrats state they know what's best for your kids. The government (meaning them) get to decide, not the parents.

 

[TriforcedLink]

And the Democrats state they know what's best for your kids. The government (meaning them) get to decide, not the parents.

I hope that homeschooling keeps rising since I'm 100% sure that schooling is becoming more and more useless as time goes on. The internet for all its ills is still a great source of information. The biggest weakness is ironically the people themselves since information is always readily available, but people are just too lazy in general to seek it out.

 

[History Learner]

You really need to change your screen name.

Because you have learned nothing from economic history.

Instead of I'm wrong, which does nothing to advance the conversation or show your own points are valid, let's see some actual arguments.

 

[History Learner]

I love how both of you are just engaging meaninglessly in the age old argument of what is the definition of socialist, the fact is that price floors and ceilings for wages are a modern socialist ideological position and no excuse changes that.

In which case, see my earlier point: The U.S. and all of the Western World is Socialist and has been since the 1930s, so what's the problem then?

That's a stupid and braindead example, because Denmark's cost of living is 2.38 times the worlds average, just because a country has a higher minimum wage doesn't mean higher purchasing power as shown by Denmark's small home size and yet still expensive cost.

All countries economies exist in a vacuum from the others even western ones, I don't see how it's irrelevant as a point when being developing or not it caused price increases across the board.

By which metrics and data are you using for Denmark? If you want a more American example, we can't compare food prices and other metrics?

Also, how does Brazil being a developing nation supposedly make the argument irrelevant? (I have an idea why you think that is but would like your reasoning.)

Maybe because being a developing nation means it has other factors going on that can explain it? That's also ignoring the cognitive dissonance at play here if we accept your argument on all economies being in isolation of each other.

 

[LordsFire]

Instead of I'm wrong, which does nothing to advance the conversation or show your own points are valid, let's see some actual arguments.

Alright then.

So, now that we are about eight months in, I can say the Biden Administration has at least done three things right:

1. Getting us the fuck out of Afghanistan; we should've been there, I'm glad we're out and I don't see any of the criticisms as being valid in general terms.

I'm also glad we're out. You're blindingly wrong on saying criticisms of how we left aren't valid. It is common sense that you pull out your military assets last, after getting your civilian assets out. Yet Biden had them pull out of Bagram before the cascading collapse of the Afghan government and military had gotten rolling.

2. Extending the Student Loan pause. It's good policy in a stopgap sense, and I personally benefited from it.

This one, I will partially give you. Student loans have been an absolute disaster, driving tuition rates through the roof, and pausing payments (since at this point the fed holds basically all of them) is not entirely unreasonable. It is nothing more than a stop-gap, however.

3. The Child Tax Credit reforms are good in a general sense, at least as a start.

This is basically a 'break neutral.' Rather than increasing the tax credit for children, just simplifying taxes and cutting them would have been a far better choice. Every time taxes have been cut in the last 50 years, we've shortly thereafter had a surge of economic growth. Why does it seem like leftists and Keynesians can never learn from this repeated lesson?

Now, with that said, basically everything else has been bad and I'm still especially upset in three key areas:

1. No $15 minimum wage. This not only needs to happen, it needs to be indexed from inflation so we stop having this stupid fight every so often over what is, objectively, good policy and beneficial to the American public.

Artificial price-fixing, whether it's on goods or labor, always causes problems rather than solves them. If you understood even just the basics of economics, you would know that government mandates cannot change the fundamental effects of supply and demand. Minimum wage laws are only good for two things; further dividing people into privileged and unprivileged groups, and widening that divide. Which, of course, works out really well for Democrats, as that's what their entire political program is based on.

2. The pause is, on it's own, good but what is better is outright cancellation or at least doing the $50,000 proposals floated out there. While you're at it, let's fix the disaster our national universal system has become.

This is absolute madness. You can't just magically make debt 'disappear,' and breaking signed contracts en-masse like that will have massive consequences.

To be clear, I'm not unsympathetic. When I was 18 and signed for student loans myself, I didn't really understand what I was signing up for, and it took me 16 years to pay off loans for a degree I never actually received. That doesn't change the fact that I did sign for that, and I was an adult when I did so.

A better solution would be to stop giving any more federal-backed student loans, permanently. For current loans, I would be sympathetic to forcing the fed to cancel the accrual of further interest, and the setting of generous minimum-payment terms.

3. We need Universal Healthcare, full stop. This is obvious on it's own but especially so given the Pandemic.

No.

This has been a disaster in every nation it has been implemented. Government anything is inefficient and slow to respond to external pressure, on top of giving the government more power over your life.

You want waiting times measured in months for basic diagnostic tests? Waiting times measured in years for life-saving surgeries? Quality of care steadily decaying?

More importantly, as the US is the only major first-world economy without universal health care, do you want the last place that free market medical R&D really has to work in to die?

Do you have any idea how much medical research would slow down if that happened?

Let me rephrase your statement to what it would mean in the real world:

"We need worse care, at a higher cost, that also gives both politicians and elected bureaucrats near-total control over your life."

That is what you just said.

 

[Zachowon]

You have to wait months to see a doctor for things in the Army. Few things have walk ins.
I know people who have tried to get into MRIs and Cat Scans over half a year ago, and still waiting.

That is what fre Healthcare does.

The military is a perfect example of it

 

[Captain X]

Isn't it kind of hard to get rid of a bad doctor in the military as well?

 

[Panzerkraken]

Isn't it kind of hard to get rid of a bad doctor in the military as well?

That sort of varies. On one hand, you don't have a choice of who your PCM is; they're assigned by the 'system.' However, if there's any kind of documentable mispractice (not malpractice, that's a different discussion) on the part of the doctor, you're fully within your rights to complain and request to be assigned a different provider (once again by the 'system'). In the event that you're talking about a specialist who is the only provider for your issue in the system, you're SOL, that might be your only cost-free option.

Outside of the documentable mispractice (meaning poor choices of treatment plans, unavailability for appointments, etc.), things like "I just don't like his manner" and "I don't like the diagnosis he gave me" aren't viable complaints within the military medical system. You'll be told to "suck it up."

There are other options, however, since Tricare exists outside the on-base hospital system and is full coverage across the nation; you're always welcome to shift to Tricare Select (which allows you to choose your doctor from those available to bill into tricare) and pay the copays. It's when you're trying to stay in the "no cost to me" range that there can be longer wait times.

Another interesting aspect of the military medical system is that it's very focused on its target demographic: Soliders and their immediate families. This means that the base of health for the patient pool is usually pretty high, and they're very likely to be more resilient than the average citizen by comparison. They also have minimum physical capability requirements (for the Soldiers) and weight restrictions that lead to better overall health. It was interesting to me when I sat in a feedback session and was shown that most of the complaints in ICE (Integrated Customer Experience; it's how the military gets its anonymous feedback) were from family members, local veterans, and retirees rather than from the Soldiers themselves. It's fueled some discussions about restricting the on-post care to Soldiers in the past, but I doubt that'll happen.

Overall, my experiences with the military medical system were good, over 21 years and multiple events (surgeries, births of three kids, and TONS of routine visits) and I know that they have some of the best trauma care out there, but I can also see how attempting to tear down the existing pay-or-die model and replacing it with something akin to a community tax-based system (like police or fire departments) would be a hard sell.

 

[Captain X]

Granted, this is Vietnam era, but I'll never forget the horror story my parents told me about my dad's time in the Navy, wherein someone's daughter needed a leg amputated, and they managed to take the wrong one off.

 

[Zachowon]

That sort of varies. On one hand, you don't have a choice of who your PCM is; they're assigned by the 'system.' However, if there's any kind of documentable mispractice (not malpractice, that's a different discussion) on the part of the doctor, you're fully within your rights to complain and request to be assigned a different provider (once again by the 'system'). In the event that you're talking about a specialist who is the only provider for your issue in the system, you're SOL, that might be your only cost-free option.

Outside of the documentable mispractice (meaning poor choices of treatment plans, unavailability for appointments, etc.), things like "I just don't like his manner" and "I don't like the diagnosis he gave me" aren't viable complaints within the military medical system. You'll be told to "suck it up."

There are other options, however, since Tricare exists outside the on-base hospital system and is full coverage across the nation; you're always welcome to shift to Tricare Select (which allows you to choose your doctor from those available to bill into tricare) and pay the copays. It's when you're trying to stay in the "no cost to me" range that there can be longer wait times.

Another interesting aspect of the military medical system is that it's very focused on its target demographic: Soliders and their immediate families. This means that the base of health for the patient pool is usually pretty high, and they're very likely to be more resilient than the average citizen by comparison. They also have minimum physical capability requirements (for the Soldiers) and weight restrictions that lead to better overall health. It was interesting to me when I sat in a feedback session and was shown that most of the complaints in ICE (Integrated Customer Experience; it's how the military gets its anonymous feedback) were from family members, local veterans, and retirees rather than from the Soldiers themselves. It's fueled some discussions about restricting the on-post care to Soldiers in the past, but I doubt that'll happen.

Overall, my experiences with the military medical system were good, over 21 years and multiple events (surgeries, births of three kids, and TONS of routine visits) and I know that they have some of the best trauma care out there, but I can also see how attempting to tear down the existing pay-or-die model and replacing it with something akin to a community tax-based system (like police or fire departments) would be a hard sell.

It works because of how small the mikitary is, and how long thins can take, because you have nothing but time

 

[Bacle]

Granted, this is Vietnam era, but I'll never forget the horror story my parents told me about my dad's time in the Navy, wherein someone's daughter needed a leg amputated, and they managed to take the wrong one off.

Yeah, military docs are a mixed bag from what I've heard and seen with some of the vets I've met.

For every Hawkeye you have about 5 Burns's.

 

[JagerIV]

In which case, see my earlier point: The U.S. and all of the Western World is Socialist and has been since the 1930s, so what's the problem then?

If the fascist political theory had won in the 1930s, would you accept as a reasonable counter argument to opposing a fascist policy that all of the Western World has been fascist since the 1940s, so what's the problem then?

Would you consider that a reasonable response?

 

[Free-Stater 101]

In which case, see my earlier point: The U.S. and all of the Western World is Socialist and has been since the 1930s, so what's the problem then?

No, it hasn't, unless you explicitly define anything which the state does as socialism in of itself as opposed to to the politically affiliated ideology of socialism, In which case you should realize you are judging this off of a metric that explicitly benefits your beliefs and which hardly anybody but yourself acknowledges.

By which metrics and data are you using for Denmark? If you want a more American example, we can't compare food prices and other metrics?

By which metrics and data are you using for Denmark? If you want a more American example, we can't compare food prices and other metrics?

Don't change the subject, you were explicitly talking about bringing up the Minimum Wage to $15.00 and suggesting that raising it would have little negative effect on the economy citing Denmark having high wages as evidence, to which I pointed out purchasing power in Denmark is lower in spite of it something which isn't in question.

Raising the minimum wage while necessary in some cases isn't a process meant to be doubled overnight as that makes inflation jump and when our inflation rate is already up due to last years stimulus that's asking for issues.

Maybe because being a developing nation means it has other factors going on that can explain it?

Like what? It's up to you to call bull on my argument if you think I am wrong and so far your being unforthcoming.

My ultimate point is your downplaying how big of an economy Brazil was in the early 80's despite being what you like to call a 'developing nation' from 1980-1985 was still the fifth largest economy in the world by GDP at the time, as well as the largest in South America and while indeed lagging in some areas was far from some third world african warlord state.

Brazil in the 1980's mandated a minimum wage starkly and as always that caused hyperinflation by devaluing the currency and predictably leading to a lack of purchasing power, it's not rocket science.

That's also ignoring the cognitive dissonance at play here if we accept your argument on all economies being in isolation of each other.

All economies are intertwined and yet separate why do you think think Greece and Denmark are both so starkly different despite both being in the EU and using the Euro?

You are right however in that forces outside the minimum wage can and will lead to problems but at this point that is neither 'here' nor 'there' because you refuse to acknowledge the simple fact that raising the minimum wage has any negatives/downsides what so ever so naturally the problem must always not be the minimum wage in your eyes.

Raising the minimum wage = Prices raised to match it = The government needed to increase the money supply as a result = Us slowly drifting right back to square one.

If fixing the minimum wage solved all the problems it's supposed to we would have solved these problems back in the 40's when first implemented, yet today we still have poverty and inflation has dragged us to the same spot, doubling it out of the blue will only have adverse effects on the economy and bring us back to square one twice as fast.

 

[Wargamer08]

Raising the minimum wage also almost never lifts the rest of low wages. A semi skilled worker who was making a couple dollars over minimum doesn’t get paid more when he’s suddenly making the new minimum.

 

[History Learner]

Alright then.

I'm also glad we're out. You're blindingly wrong on saying criticisms of how we left aren't valid. It is common sense that you pull out your military assets last, after getting your civilian assets out. Yet Biden had them pull out of Bagram before the cascading collapse of the Afghan government and military had gotten rolling.

Because your point is completely utterly wrong and shows exactly zero awareness of what the situation on the ground was, the deals made and basic Afghan geography. Pull out a map of Afghanistan and look where Bagram is and then look at the distance to Kabul; please explain to me, from there, how holding Bagram would've achieved anything once you realize the sheer distance between the two. Now look at what actually happened with civilians shutting down HKIA in the early days of the evacuation compounded by the ISKP attack; how exactly is stretching our forces even thinner operating both HKIA and Bagram-which has 14 miles of defenses to be manned-supposed to work? Sure, you can bring in more troops to garrison Bagram but you've already broken the Doha Agreement with the Taliban by holding Bagram and now you're bringing in more troops?

Why, exactly would the Taliban tolerate that?

This one, I will partially give you. Student loans have been an absolute disaster, driving tuition rates through the roof, and pausing payments (since at this point the fed holds basically all of them) is not entirely unreasonable. It is nothing more than a stop-gap, however.

Which is why I criticized him?

This is basically a 'break neutral.' Rather than increasing the tax credit for children, just simplifying taxes and cutting them would have been a far better choice. Every time taxes have been cut in the last 50 years, we've shortly thereafter had a surge of economic growth. Why does it seem like leftists and Keynesians can never learn from this repeated lesson?

Except we don't tax children, so exactly are you supposed to "simply" taxes which already equate to 0? As for the whole supply sider nonsense, that's without any evidence has been categorically debunked and rejected in the wider field of economics for decades. The overwhelming amount of research doesn't support and there is a major lack of data to support it in the real world too; remind me, did the Trump cuts result in 4% GDP growth? Did incomes noticeably increase? The answer to all of this is no.

Artificial price-fixing, whether it's on goods or labor, always causes problems rather than solves them. If you understood even just the basics of economics, you would know that government mandates cannot change the fundamental effects of supply and demand. Minimum wage laws are only good for two things; further dividing people into privileged and unprivileged groups, and widening that divide. Which, of course, works out really well for Democrats, as that's what their entire political program is based on.

Not supported by any real data and claiming I don't understand basic economics because of government mandates when you already cited Keynesians tells you're projecting here. Studies of minimum wage increases show the complete opposite; poverty declines, employment stays the same or actually grows and racial divides are decreased.

This is absolute madness. You can't just magically make debt 'disappear,' and breaking signed contracts en-masse like that will have massive consequences.

Except you can and do, especially given the United States Government is the holder of said debt.

To be clear, I'm not unsympathetic. When I was 18 and signed for student loans myself, I didn't really understand what I was signing up for, and it took me 16 years to pay off loans for a degree I never actually received. That doesn't change the fact that I did sign for that, and I was an adult when I did so. A better solution would be to stop giving any more federal-backed student loans, permanently. For current loans, I would be sympathetic to forcing the fed to cancel the accrual of further interest, and the setting of generous minimum-payment terms.

I'm not opposed to a wider reform, and there's no reason we can do either/or.

No.

This has been a disaster in every nation it has been implemented. Government anything is inefficient and slow to respond to external pressure, on top of giving the government more power over your life.

You want waiting times measured in months for basic diagnostic tests? Waiting times measured in years for life-saving surgeries? Quality of care steadily decaying?

No, this is all a myth and has been since it was first claimed in the 2000s in the Bush era.

More importantly, as the US is the only major first-world economy without universal health care, do you want the last place that free market medical R&D really has to work in to die?

Do you have any idea how much medical research would slow down if that happened?

Let me rephrase your statement to what it would mean in the real world:

"We need worse care, at a higher cost, that also gives both politicians and elected bureaucrats near-total control over your life."

That is what you just said.

In your mind, sure, in the real world there is no evidence for it at all.

 

[History Learner]

No, it hasn't, unless you explicitly define anything which the state does as socialism in of itself as opposed to to the politically affiliated ideology of socialism, In which case you should realize you are judging this off of a metric that explicitly benefits your beliefs and which hardly anybody but yourself acknowledges.

Okay, I can only assume you are acting in bad faith here since you quoted my reply to a post which had the original context within it, so there's no excuse on your part. The whole reason this thread was created is because I said these measures aren't Socialism, to which the user I was replying to earlier argued they were; I decided to humor their argument and accept their premise, by pointing out that if such measures constitute Socialism, the U.S. has been Socialist since before WWII.

Quite ironically, I was arguing against the idea anything the State does is Socialism, perhaps you should take the time to re-read what's been said before further knee jerks.

Don't change the subject, you were explicitly talking about bringing up the Minimum Wage to $15.00 and suggesting that raising it would have little negative effect on the economy citing Denmark having high wages as evidence, to which I pointed out purchasing power in Denmark is lower in spite of it something which isn't in question.

Except I didn't change the subject, you did by arguing that Denmark didn't have a relevancy to the United States; again, I can only assume you are acting in bad faith here. Are you wanting U.S. specific examples or are you wanting to focus in on Denmark? Let's not keep it up with these lame gotcha attempts.

Raising the minimum wage while necessary in some cases isn't a process meant to be doubled overnight as that makes inflation jump and when our inflation rate is already up due to last years stimulus that's asking for issues.

I don't agree, but let's roll with it, so let's do a gradual phase in and thereafter index it to inflation. Solved the whole issue, so let's raise it.

Like what? It's up to you to call bull on my argument if you think I am wrong and so far your being unforthcoming.

Given you have yet to present an actual point, that requires you to take the first move. By all means, be direct with me; what am I not being forthcoming on?

My ultimate point is your downplaying how big of an economy Brazil was in the early 80's despite being what you like to call a 'developing nation' from 1980-1985 was still the fifth largest economy in the world by GDP at the time, as well as the largest in South America and while indeed lagging in some areas was far from some third world african warlord state.

Brazil wasn't even in the top 10 economies in 1980 by GDP, so I think it's safe to say you don't know what you're talking about.

Brazil in the 1980's mandated a minimum wage starkly and as always that caused hyperinflation by devaluing the currency and predictably leading to a lack of purchasing power, it's not rocket science.

And yet Australia and Western Europe all mandated extremely high minimum wages. None of these issues occurred there; perhaps, even if we take your argument at face value, we should realize the weight of evidence shows Brazil is the outlier. However, let's also refuse to take your example at face value and force you to engage in burden of proof, show me Brazil's minimum wage hike was the cause of their troubles. I want actual evidence, not just the claim itself.

All economies are intertwined and yet separate why do you think think Greece and Denmark are both so starkly different despite both being in the EU and using the Euro?

I never argued against that, in fact that was my point about comparing the United States, a developed nation, with Brazil, a developing nation. So again, what exactly are you even attempting to argue?

You are right however in that forces outside the minimum wage can and will lead to problems but at this point that is neither 'here' nor 'there' because you refuse to acknowledge the simple fact that raising the minimum wage has any negatives/downsides what so ever so naturally the problem must always not be the minimum wage in your eyes.

So basically you agree citing Brazil is shit because outside factors-such as institutional ones between Developed and Developing countries-play a role. You're attempting to hide this concession by engaging in the same behavior you accused me of earlier, in that you're now switching to the topic. That's very rich, as well as telling as to the validity of your points.

Raising the minimum wage = Prices raised to match it = The government needed to increase the money supply as a result = Us slowly drifting right back to square one.

Except that doesn't happen, minimum wage hikes in the U.S. have historically had essentially no impact on prices. Even on the aforementioned Denmark example, your average Big Mac meal is only about 20-30 cents more expensive, despite the minimum wage being over 3x higher than the U.S. version. If you feel it increases the money supply and thus leads to inflation, let's see some charts of the money supply as well as the velocity of said cash; you'll find no correlation once you actually look at it.

If fixing the minimum wage solved all the problems it's supposed to we would have solved these problems back in the 40's when first implemented, yet today we still have poverty and inflation has dragged us to the same spot, doubling it out of the blue will only have adverse effects on the economy and bring us back to square one twice as fast.

Given the minimum wage act was first institute in the 1930s, not the 1940s, you might find it more worthwhile to step back and read up on it more before attempting to debate it. If the "well our ancestors didn't do it like that!" then I would love to see your take on things like antibiotics and the universal franchise lol.

 

[LordsFire]

Snip.

Short and long reply to your claims:
'Citation needed.'

In order not be hypocritical, here's a couple of my own:

On government interference making things worse, specifically in the health care sector.

Wait times in Canada's socialized health care system. An article that highlights the extreme ends and gives a partial summary of the findings if you want it in a more readable format.

And is a collation of some stats from different places around the world. If you don't like the website it's hosted on, conveniently they link their sources so you can check them yourself. Not sure why that result was one of the higher ones on a search myself.