Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

That’s an OK life.

First, inefficient employers like McDonald's have an entrenched position in the industry because of their massive scale and their real estate holdings. A new entrant in the market already has an uphill battle - if they don't want to rely on government subsidies (e.g., because they want to attract employees who would rather be paid directly for their work), their task is even harder.

A free market in the sense Adam Smith meant it - not a free-for-all, but free to enter - would treat it as a policy goal that new companies would have a fair shot at competing.

I'd understand the argument that government welfare and a low minimum wage are important to support new entrants, by making it possible for them to compete against the entrenched companies. But that's not what's happening; it's the entrenched companies that are effective beneficiaries of these policies (cf. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...).

Second, passing the costs along to the consumer along with raising wages has the effect of increasing the purchasing power of low-income consumers. If the minimum wage goes from X to 2X, which causes the cost of items at McDonald's or Wal-Mart to go from Y to 2Y (which it won't, because labor costs aren't the entire costs, but for the sake of argument assume they are), then people being paid the minimum wage are in basically the same position for their everyday purchases: they get twice as much money, but they spend twice as much money. But they've also got larger expenditures - renting or buying a home, buying a car, paying medical bills, etc. The cost of emergency surgery isn't going to double just because the minimum wage goes up (even though much more of the cost is labor) - surgeons are paid way above the minimum wage already.

What this means is that people being paid a high minimum wage are equally able to live their ordinary lives, because they can afford the increased cost of goods made by other minimum-wage employees, but they are more able to make expenditures that improve their lives (e.g., more able to deal with medical issues before an emergency) - and more able to make purchases that stimulate the economy. Instead of buying N hamburgers a year and a car that costs Z which they use for five years, they can now buy the same N hamburgers a year and a car that costs 1.2Z.

As long as government policy continues to enable both wages and prices remaining low, the economy is stuck.

(It does mean that the relative purchasing power of rich consumers goes down - they can buy the same number of vacation homes, but they can't buy as many McDonald's hamburgers - but that hardly seems like a concern. You can only eat so many hamburgers, and they're probably not buying very many hamburgers from McDonald's anyway.)

Solar panels are quite useful in many poor countries, actually. But indeed much more is needed in terms of means of production: agricultural equipment, infrastructure, factories, etc. Expertise and technology (which are restricted by IP laws) are also needed. All of this is what the Belt and Road Initiative does.

If you look at it over time, the poor countries only get poorer over time. It may not be a zero sum game, but development is actively prevented. The only exceptions are countries where workers have at least some control over the state.

That’s where the solution lies: ending the control of capitalists over the world. The poor countries have succeeded a few times with good results, but the rich countries doing it would have a much bigger impact.

Given the context this would be the standard model upon which dollars are adjusted for inflation over time, tools like usinflationcalculator.com make this easy to factor in what that would be

If you want to shift the debate to "what is inflation" that is fine, but that is not the debate I am having in this comment thread

You're kidding, right? You're sayig that minimum wage robs people of ability to get a foothold in the economy?

Please enlighten me how "getting a foothold" works for people that have to work several jobs just to barely keep afloat?

> It's also rather intrusive and authoritarian, if two people want to get together and exchange one hour of X for $Y then I don't see that as any of your business

What about if a bunch of people come together and agree this is a good thing? Oh, wait, that's called a government, and laws, and common human decency.

> this is more a point of personal values and it's more productive to focus on the utilitarian part of the argument.

Indeed. Because your personal argument basically devolves into: if you want to keep slaves or indentured servants, who am I to keep you from doing that?