Should There Be a Minimum Wage?
Showing only ideas leading to #6128.
See full discussion·See most recent related ideasLog in or sign up to participate in this discussion.
With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.Discussions can branch out indefinitely. You may need to scroll sideways.
Dennis HackethalOP·#6126··AI-assisted
The government should protect the poor. The rich can look after themselves, but the poor have nothing to fall back on and must depend on the state. Since most wage earners are poor, the government should protect them, including by making sure their wages are enough to live on.
Pope Leo XIII made this argument in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. He wrote that wage-earners “should be specially cared for and protected by the government” (§37), and that wages “ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner” (§45).
4 pending criticisms
Dennis HackethalOP·#6128··Criticism
the poor have nothing to fall back on and must depend on the state.
That doesn’t follow.