Somebody help me out here. I'm no econ major, nor a self-believed super genius. I need help understanding this issue. But, don't flood me with speculation and "woulda/coulda", if you can help it.
The way I see it, education for the masses should be part of our long term strategy for eliminating poverty. That way, people move out of being forced to work for minimum wage jobs, unskilled/semi-skilled labor jobs are phased out over time, companies upgrade systems to make labor work more efficiently, and people move towards higher paying jobs that they are more qualified for. Then people working in the service sector move to part time, and to people who are not completed with education.
Then, market forces would push the minimum wage up naturally, over time of course, because the pool of workers for the lower end of the wage scale would decrease. Right?
Granted this all depends on not having an influx of workers who are uneducated artificially driving wage levels down. And, this seems like it would need a big distinction between rich and poor.
Or, would increasing the minimum wage lower the amount of low-end jobs and then after some 'growing pains' force people to increase levels of education because of the lack of work at unskilled levels?
Also, education, i think...is a privilege of being a thinking thing. Why not use a brain if we have one.
What I'm really trying to learn about is economic strategies where the rich continue to get rich (perhaps at the cost of a slower rate of increase) and the poor also start to get richer. I feel like someone would've figured this out, though.
Comments? Guidance? Please?
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