Lower wages = Lower unemployment benefits

[scottie]

HappySqurriel said:

scottie said:

First of all, the reason very few countries have as large a labor force as the US is because they have smaller populations. How is total labor force an indicator of anything?

 

Assuming you're talking about labor force participation rate, higher is not better in this case (obviously it is better if you are a millionaire seeking to extort as much money from people as you can, but it isn't actually better for the country or its population). The way I am reading it, if you want a high participation rate, you should knock down all your educational instituions and kill off the young and the old. How is that a good comparison tool?

You start off by cherry picking and now you resort to an appeal to ridicule ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule ) ...

Now, no one has determined what the ideal labour force size is (obviously relative to population) but we have seen countries (like France) which have raised minimum wages to the extent that the employment prospects of young visible minority youths that it takes very little to motivate them to rioting in the street and burning cars. By increasing minimum wages to an unreasonable level you eliminate the opportunities of those individuals you're trying to help by increasing minimum wages.

Sorry, that was not meant as an appeal to ridicule or to strawman your argument. I am merely pointing out that the participation rate is a poor monitor of how good an economic system is. In Australia we are seeing an ageing population, which means that our participation rate is uselss for comparing between countries, or even comparing Australia now to Australia at a different point in time.

 

Regards the France point, read 1984 and you will see that you were so close to the truth, but you drew the wrong conclusion.