in re: opposition, there are also state and non-state industrialists in non-rich countries who feel that building a strong local socio-economy is neither of their concern nor to their benefit and who enjoy hanging union member body parts in their salon.

Besides, higher pay is an incentive to replace workers with robots. In the U.S., Canada and Europe, even small organic farms use tractors because labor costs make hand-sowing and hand-reaping inefficient. As a result we have fewer people connected to the land (bad) and fewer people doing dull, exhausting work in the hot sun (good). In this manner you displace some workers, but over time they too find work at the new, higher minimum wage.

The price increases that result from a global minimum wage may be ok given that scarcity isn’t the great crisis in the world right now. People everywhere have t-shirts and snack food, be they brand name and new or generic and cast-off. I’m here in the “third world” where people living in general squalor are still well supplied with ham sandwiches and cable TV (drinking water is another story). There is plenty of stuff; if prices double and the wages of the poorest multiply 10-fold or 100-fold ($10 an hour instead of $1 a day), scarcity won’t be the problem.

There is no reason for t-shirts to be cheap. Made well, from good materials, a t-shirt can be worn every day for a year. You don’t need piles of t-shirts, you can get by with one a year and if you need to pay $100 for it, so it goes. If everyone is making $10 an hour they can all afford a t-shirt a year at that price and get a lot of other benefits as well.

Hapa, your arguments about liquidity seem specious. Nothing is less liquid than the investments of the rich — bonds, real estate, jewelry, art. The more cash that’s in the hands of the poor, the healthier the economy as a whole would remain. Poor people are very reliable consumers, with none of this discretionary boom-bust crap about “I’m just going to keep my powder dry now, I think I’ll put all my money in T-bills.”

I think the reason that the global minimum wage has never taken off is simple — the industrialists in the developed world have a powerful incentive to fight it, while those who would benefit are less organized and much less hopeful about their prospects for success. A classic case of diffuse and tremendous benefits for the world being outweighed by moderate but focused benefits for a special interest.

As to high-priced T-shirts and high-end food and the like, perhaps its true that people will simply be forced to pay more for necessary goods. But the math doesn’t work out, for me. If I’m making t-shirt worker wages, I can’t afford expensive t-shirts, high-quality food, etc. People in the relatively affluent middle class can make those choices, but I don’t believe they’re open to everyone, or that minimum wages or consumer choice succeed in achieving that end.

so i guess the question is: have you programmed an anti-capitalist comment filtering robot? or are you doing this with cheap indian labor?