Minimum wage

Well, let me hop onto the bandwagon of people talking about the minimum wage. Apparently, Ontario is now up to 8$ an hour, and there's calls to push it to 10 bucks an hour.

The main arguments on both sides are basically:
1. You can't live on 8$ an hour. 10$ at least brings you up to around the poverty line if you have a full-time job.
2. Increasing to 10 bucks an hour would kill the economy and make us lose 20k-60k jobs.

Now, everyone wants to make more money, and we would all like to improve the minimum wage. I know I sure would have liked to be paid more than the 5.75 I made in my job at the Stampede oh those many years ago. I mean, at 10$/hour, I would have been able to buy an extra iPod with that money, had they actually had them around back then. And I'm sure it does suck for those people trying to make it on on minimum wage, barely working enough to get by, often working multiple jobs just to live.

So, why do I say we need to look at other things than raising the minimum wage? Other than losing a few jobs?

Well, the reason I feel is that in our society, there's no reason that people should be working at a minimum wage job to get by. If you're bordering on poverty, I think as a society (through the government, if they can), we should try to make sure that those people get paid more than the minimum. It makes much more sense to find ways to fund the poor (maybe through some government-work programs, or through direct infusions of cash to those who do work), than to just throw more money at all the low-paying jobs. In a similar vein to the debates on tuition rates, it makes more sense to direct the cash to those who need it as opposed to making policies that end up subsidizing those who need to upgrade to a larger iPod.