Post: #1

There are proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15 nationwide. How is this likely to affect women's behavior? Some possibilities:

• Unskilled women who are priced out of the labor market will become housewives or end up up working under-the-table gigs such as prostitution, or will start their own businesses (such as court transcriptionist) where they get paid based on productivity rather than hours worked.
• More girls who want to keep open the option of working will go to college, since they will need an education in order to be able to sell their labor at such a high starting wage. The bottom rungs of the economic ladder will have been chopped off, so an uneducated woman won't have the option of starting with a menial job and working her way up by demonstrating skill, work ethic, etc.
• Salaried professional jobs are exempt from the minimum wage, so companies will create lots of "managerial" positions such as junior deputy under-assistant vice-manager that unskilled women will end up filling, and spending most of their time doing entry-level grunt work for less than minimum wage, rather than real supervision.
• Women will fight to expand the number of government-funded white collar jobs, not only in the clerical functions in the state bureaucracies but also in the soft sciences such as psychology, social work, etc.
• Women will seek to impose more affirmative action quotas requiring companies to hire women for jobs they aren't qualified for and/or won't do well in.
  

Normally, a housewife serves as a backup in case her husband's earning diminishes (e.g. if his specialized trade becomes obsolete and he has to take a lower-paying job). In case of financial emergency, she can enter the workforce and the family can stay afloat by cutting unnecessary expenditures, assuming their fixed costs aren't too high. But if unskilled, inexperienced workers are priced out of the market by the minimum wage, these families will be in dire straits if anything happens to the husband's ability to earn an income. The wife will not be able to find employment, and they will have to go on welfare or rely on their extended family.

Therefore, we might see our culture become more family-oriented, as relatives are increasingly called upon for help. This seems to already be happening, as millennials live with their parents, siblings, cousins, etc. into their late 20s or beyond due to crushing student loan debt burdens and the high cost of their expected standard of living in general. Family businesses will also be a popular option for people looking to work under the table for lower than the minimum wage.

Either that, or unemployed voters will call on politicians like Bernie Sanders to help them out with more generous social safety nets. The high taxes required to support this, though, will also increase the incentive for people to work in the underground economy and will encourage those who do pay taxes to live with family in order to save money.

Post: #2

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