Denmark has a $20/hr minimum wage, and a nearly impossible to fall out of last-resort welfare payment (the
kontanthjælp, "cash assistance") which provides a minimum income. And yet, it has quite low structural unemployment.
What those policies did do is destroy the low end of the labor market, the poorly paid dishwasher jobs supporting cheap restaurants. So what? That forced them to move upmarket. Denmark doesn't have $6 hamburger joints; instead, it has $12 hamburger joints. But it doesn't matter. The people who might be most impacted by that are precisely the people who now make the higher minimum incomes: when your income as a burger-joint dishwasher is triple what it is in the USA ($20/hr vs. $7/hr minimum wage, not to mention healthcare), you can certainly afford a doubling of the prices, and still come out ahead.
Now as a middle-class professional, it's probably bad for me: in the U.S. I could make a bunch of money and buy $6 hamburgers, while in Denmark I make a bunch of money and buy $12 hamburgers. But I can easily afford them either way, so I don't think social policy should be based on what benefits me.
What those policies did do is destroy the low end of the labor market, the poorly paid dishwasher jobs supporting cheap restaurants. So what? That forced them to move upmarket. Denmark doesn't have $6 hamburger joints; instead, it has $12 hamburger joints. But it doesn't matter. The people who might be most impacted by that are precisely the people who now make the higher minimum incomes: when your income as a burger-joint dishwasher is triple what it is in the USA ($20/hr vs. $7/hr minimum wage, not to mention healthcare), you can certainly afford a doubling of the prices, and still come out ahead.
Now as a middle-class professional, it's probably bad for me: in the U.S. I could make a bunch of money and buy $6 hamburgers, while in Denmark I make a bunch of money and buy $12 hamburgers. But I can easily afford them either way, so I don't think social policy should be based on what benefits me.