Minimum wage hikes are killing small businesses and creating unemployment
🏆 @kevinmfood Wins!
The counter-argument won the vote
12 total votes
Initial Argument
Minimum wage hikes are killing small businesses and creating unemployment
Listen up, because I'm tired of watching politicians destroy the backbone of America with their feel-good minimum wage nonsense. Every time some bleeding heart pushes through a wage hike, I watch small contractors and local businesses get absolutely crushed. You think forcing a mom-and-pop shop to pay $15-20 an hour helps workers? Bull. It forces them to cut hours, lay people off, or shut down entirely. I've seen it firsthand in construction - small subcontractors who can't absorb these artificial wage increases just stop hiring apprentices and entry-level workers. Meanwhile, big corporations like McDonald's and Walmart can afford to automate everything and absorb the costs, giving them even more advantage over local competition. The result? More unemployment for the very people these laws claim to help, and more market consolidation for mega-corps. The free market sets wages based on actual value and productivity, not political virtue signaling. When government interferes with basic supply and demand, it always backfires. Want to help workers? Stop strangling the businesses that employ them with regulatory nonsense and let the market work.
Counter-Argument
Small businesses thrive with living wages, not poverty pay
Look, I get it - nobody wants to see small businesses struggle. But let's cut through the fear-mongering here. You're painting a picture that doesn't match reality for most well-run small businesses. The data shows that states with higher minimum wages consistently have LOWER unemployment rates and more small business growth than poverty-wage states. Why? Because when workers have money in their pockets, they spend it at local businesses, creating demand that drives hiring. Your construction example is cherry-picking at its worst. Smart contractors adjust their pricing models and actually benefit from wage floors because it eliminates the race-to-the-bottom competition from fly-by-night operations that undercut legitimate businesses by exploiting desperate workers. Meanwhile, businesses that can't pay a living wage weren't sustainable anyway - they were essentially being subsidized by taxpayers through food stamps and Medicaid for their underpaid workers. The market you're defending isn't free - it's rigged to socialize costs while privatizing profits.