IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rsocec/v61y2003i4p487-510.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Minimum Wage and the Cause of Democracy

Author

Listed:
  • Oren Levin-Waldman

Abstract

Too often the minimum wage is conceived of as a small policy measure that will be of benefit to only a small segment of the labor market while imposing costs on another segment of the labor market. Unexplored, however, are the larger philosophic questions that such a small measure may actually raise. One such issue is the relationship between the minimum wage and democratic principles. In this paper I argue that the minimum wage furthers the ends of democratic society in that low-wage workers may achieve greater equality of standing with their piers to the extent that income inequality is at all lessened; their autonomy as individuals is enhanced through higher wages, which in turn enables them to claim the benefits of citizenship and participate more effectively in the democratic process; and it fosters greater economic development in that it raises the overall structure of a region and perhaps the productivity of that region.

Suggested Citation

  • Oren Levin-Waldman, 2003. "The Minimum Wage and the Cause of Democracy," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 61(4), pages 487-510.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:61:y:2003:i:4:p:487-510
    DOI: 10.1080/0034676032000160921
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0034676032000160921
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0034676032000160921?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lee, Jungwoo & Yang, Jae-Suk, 2019. "Global energy transitions and political systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    2. Marco Lilla & Stefano Staffolani, 2009. "The evolution of wage inequality in Italy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(15), pages 1873-1892.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:61:y:2003:i:4:p:487-510. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RRSE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.