Minimum Wage

See: Wage Rate.

The lowest price per hour legally allowable to be paid to an employee.

Ooooh such a hot-button political topic. Should there even be a minimum wage? Like...why would we not let the market rule and whatever the lowest price employees should be willing to work for...well, then, pay them that number? If you believe this notion, go back and read or watch The Grapes of Wrath. Yeah, that purely market based system doesn't work so well when decent people are just trying to...um, what's that luxury called? Oh yeah...eat.

So we need a minimum wage in this country. We aren't India. Our government doesn't let a third of our population stand on the street begging for food. So we have a minimum. But what should that minimum be? There's the problem. The cost of living in Manhattan or Silicon Valley is vastly different from the cost to live in Des Moines. Yet minimum wages have had a kind of "national" minimum that created all kinds of local problems. And when that minimum number gets too high, it calls in a whole bunch of questions that, if answered, harm the people it was trying to help.

Take those expensive U.S. jobs overseas; replace the workers with robots or automated latte-makers or ATMs. Oh, wait. We already did that third thing.

So yeah, hot topic. Key thought: get a job that can't be outsourced or replaced easily with robots. Fast.