This is what happened in the UK but not immediately, it’s only in the current government where the minimum wage (especially for young people) got hiked massively in the context of a weak overall economy that the effect on job creation became obvious.

Now it’s quite bad though, a whole generation of 16-20 year olds entering the job market and there’s just no jobs because you can hire a 30 year old for the same money

The actual problem in the US is housing costs, but most people are around social media knowledge level in this area, and just blame the first thing in front of them. Raising wages will do nothing to lower housing costs, which eat the largest chunk of everyone's pay.

Your "often" is not borne out by actual econometric studies. The actual rate of minimum wage that produces dead-weight loss is much higher than most minimum wages in the USA.

In any market, there is wide range of possible clearing prices with cost of production as a floor, and marginal value as a ceiling. Which price the market settles on is often a function of bargaining power as much as productivity. Minimum wage regulation is a heavy-handed way to change that bargaining relationship.

While true when minimum is set too high, the level it is set to generally takes this into account so that "too high" is not reached over the entire jobs market.

> At best all you can say is that if you decide to hire, it cannot be lower than some minimum

That's pretty reasonable. Nobody should be working 40 hours a week at a job and not make enough to support themselves. Any company who can't afford to pay their employees at least that much is a failure who deserves to be out of business.

> Given that you cannot force someone to hire anyone at a given wage what is the solution?

The author writes for Jacobin, which promotes a failed ideology where you CAN force people to “hire anyone at a given wage.”

It’s an advertisement for a failed ideology.

It's because the most massive costs an American has like healthcare, child care, and higher education are free or vastly less expensive in Europe. Americans spend all their time at work for a very impressive number on their paystub while they're still one accident or illness away from homelessness or bankruptcy. Europeans get higher quality of life/happiness scores and spend far less time slaving away for their boss. Just because the number on your paycheck is bigger, it doesn't mean you're winning.

Not at Walmart. They want their employees to get on government assistance to justify paying them less.

https://factually.co/fact-checks/business/walmart-workers-go...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...

The median salary in the US is $43k for the latest year I see data (2023). Median salary in the Netherlands and Germany was €44-48k or ~$50-55k.

We might make half as much (rather less for me actually) because of our specific industry, but that's not generally true.

What does that matter when cost of living is commensurately expensive?