Will eliminating minimum wage decrease or eliminate unemployment?

i have a degree in economics (not that this means anything), and there's an easy answer:

in theory, not having minimum wage would eliminate unemployment. the problem with this, in theoretical terms, is that it means that there will be workers working for literally 1 cent an hour (or an infinitiely small amount). So even theoretically this is an ethical disaster. But we also need to recognize the problems with theory: namely that they aren't realistic much of the time. In reality, people wouldn't work for so little, especially in developed countries. And the strain that would be introduced into the economy would also be incredibly distorting (so that the pretty models that economists love so much wouldn't even work out).

Plus, capitalism needs a reserve army of labor to maintain itself and keep wages low. You might also be interested in http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secC9.html .

That is precisely right. The federal reserve bank dramatically raised interest rates when they considered unemployment to be too *low* around 1999 because they don't want it to go below 4.5%, and they use terms for it such as 'overheating'. Nobody ever polls communities which are continually denied employment such as on indian reservations or black people who are segregated away from middle-class jobs for so long.

What is happening today is that we maintain a particularly large reserve labor pool in third world countries. You know how they always say the jobs are being shipped to Mexico? Well, how come Mexicans are risking their lives to cross the border to get shitty jobs in the US? Really, the jobs disappeared due to increased productivity. Mexicans have no standing to ask for increased wages or any standards in terms of hours or safety. You can see the stock market respond positively to news that unemployment is up because it directly translates into higher profits that quarter because wages won't rise.

A Better World is Highly Likely

The entire concept of "wages". whether you call them minimal, adequate, substantial, or anything else is a waste of human time and dignity.

It is a complete lie and in and of itself a crime against the dignity of human and all other life as we know it. It exists in order to enslave all to a false material paradigm regarding human existence. It serves only the dishonest and the criminally guilty.

The only entity to benefit from removing the pittance level of abuse called "minimum wage" will be the corporate oligarch itself.

Deliberately doing away with "wages" entirely will destroy the oligarch in 24 hours.

Think I am kidding? Remember all that cute talk about "paradigms"? Well then get your butt out of the box and stop shaking your head so fast.

Just how much longer do you think this charade of horrors is going to last? Oil is finished in 2030. Prior to that, you may as well get used to brownouts, blackouts, riots, and chaos beyond your wildest dreams. You might want to pray, every day, that the righteous and wholly justified anger of millions upon millions of Muslims does not come to YOUR house due to the crimes of your so called administration that in essence only represents the falsely privileged, the criminal corporate oligarch.

Now that is what I call wages. The wages of sin.

When the time is right, it is no challenge to bring the American regime to it´s knees; simply call in all the debts and presto!, no almighty dollar worth mentioning will remain.

Your "wage" will not save you.

Default the debts? Hardly. Freezing assets on a global scale...well, you get my drift.

Work as such and the social structure as such, will reshape itself thanks to removing the only reason that the criminal oligarch has you all by the throat. Money. Wages. Value scales based on false measures. Social "status" based on the level of terror (through one´s ability to wage material or monetary aggression against the interests of others) one can sustain.

Sure, there will be a short time of complete and to my mind entirely healthy madness in which many, many individuals run amok grabbing this, that, and whatever...until one day, actually in a matter of just a few days, the sheer lunacy of it all will come home to even the most ardent materialist...

People will seek the work they enjoy, they are comfortable with. Those who are not comfortable with ANY form of work are to be pitied, for the correct definition of work must be the act of creation, not the act of receiving a "minimum" wage or even a "salary" or not. I suspect that this is what those individuals mean when they claim or shout that "people wouldnt work!" as a reason that such a social scale would not function. People will not flip your stinking fatburgers for a pittance or toil at something similar, that´s all. Simply because the social parameters are established along lines of complete irrationality is no valid reason to continue personally supporting madness. If you neighbor is burning down her house, are you going to lend her some gasoline?

Banks, financial institutions, insurance firms, S&L´s, and megacorporations, not to mention wars, are a thing much like dinosaurs. I suppose the dinosaurs did not go quietly either, so we will have a few years hardship helping today´s models over the abyss, which is a shame as it is so needless.