The leftists keep screaming “living wage” but all wages are living wages as dead people and robots don’t need a wage. In fact, minimum wage has opened up a new front of business avoidance made possible in the digital age.
Also, teenagers do not need a living wage but job experience. Hours, not wages, are more important. The more they work, the less time they have to spend money or get into trouble. Having less free time makes it easier to save money. Yet, minimum wage makes teenagers less employable. The stats are clear on this (https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/hotlines/minimum-wage-means-maximum-teen-unemployment/). Without early work, the teenager does not build on hours of work experience. The hours, not the wage, are what matter. If the minimum wage law factored in age, it would limit some of the destruction caused by the minimum wage law, but another problem has emerged.
In the digital age, labor and work resources are easy to shift about. A business finds they need 10,000 units done. They estimate it will take 100 hours to do, and at minimum wage (https://dol.nebraska.gov/PressRelease/Details/301/minimumwageincrease), the cost is $1,500 (which is 100 times $15). So the business puts out a contract and someone says they can do the work for $1,200. The person accepting the contract may simply be doing this work where the minimum wage law is lower, or hiring teens or temporary workers or illegal immigrants, or has a more efficient way to accomplish the same work in fewer hours. This practice has become more common in the digital age (https://www.park.edu/blog/the-gig-economy-shaping-the-future-of-work-and-business/). And it is called the Gig economy (https://www.resumenerd.com/blog/gig-economy-statistics).
This is what lead to California passing AB5 (https://www.lawinprocess.com/ca-ab5-law-explained/) to “combat the problem of misclassification” of workers as contract workers. Many are pointing to the problems with this California law (https://i4aw.org/resources/warnings-from-california-the-harms-of-attacking-entrepreneurship-and-freelancing/ and https://pacificlegal.org/what-was-the-impact-of-ab5-on-californias-marginalized-communities/ and https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3677431-california-has-a-terrible-labor-law-the-biden-administration-wants-to-take-it-national/ and https://www.downtimeclaims.com/2022/08/ab5-impact-on-trucking-industry/)
Most Nebraska legislators have yet to figure this out. The mainstream media is often clueless as to how this part of the economy works. Many of the think-tank organizations have not gone far in understanding the situation. Yet, the evidence is in. Minimum wage laws need to be abolished as should be AB5.