> The marginal value being too low is just the company being bad at optimizing.
not really.
If there's a job for cleaning the sidewalk of a joint, or for holding up a sign, but this marginal value is very low, then a minimum wage greater than this value will prevent this productive work from being done (or it'd be done by an existing worker, at the sacrifice of some other productive work they _could've_ done). There's no way to "optimize" this.
Personally i am not a fan of minimum wage. I rather have tax payer money spent on creating valuable workers through training. There's lots of models for such programs - for example, an apprenticeship model, where a firm pays for the cost of an apprenticeship (which includes wages as well as cost of training), in exchange for an agreed upon number of years of employment at an agreed upon fixed wage post-training (they cannot quit or will have to pay back the cost of training for example).
> Personally i am not a fan of minimum wage. I rather have tax payer
Tax payer?
> in exchange for an agreed upon number of years of employment at an agreed upon fixed wage post-training (they cannot quit or will have to pay back the cost of training for example)
Well I've heard of such model once, a scam school used it for what basically was forced labor. Thankfully the contract was nullified by a court. It's not surprising to me, as I have heard too many stories of harassment and abuse at work.
There's not even a need for that, normal programs such as part-time school, part-time work paid half the minimum wage already exist in my country and are generally appreciated. But they exist mainly for skilled work only, such as engineer positions.
The issue is that you don't need much training for sidewalk cleaning, so "innovative" programs won't solve anything. What is needed is to push back against abusive practices caused by the imbalances of the worker market. Companies are predatory by nature.
not really.
If there's a job for cleaning the sidewalk of a joint, or for holding up a sign, but this marginal value is very low, then a minimum wage greater than this value will prevent this productive work from being done (or it'd be done by an existing worker, at the sacrifice of some other productive work they _could've_ done). There's no way to "optimize" this.
Personally i am not a fan of minimum wage. I rather have tax payer money spent on creating valuable workers through training. There's lots of models for such programs - for example, an apprenticeship model, where a firm pays for the cost of an apprenticeship (which includes wages as well as cost of training), in exchange for an agreed upon number of years of employment at an agreed upon fixed wage post-training (they cannot quit or will have to pay back the cost of training for example).