My mother says that the minimum wage is good. Here are her arguments:
“People can’t survive on minimum wage!”
“How would you like it if you could not support yourself?”
“You are against the poor.”
How do you make the case against minimum wage to a person who has not studied econ?
Just say something like this:
“If you were a small businessman, could you afford to hire people whose work only gives you $4 per hour when the legal wage is above $6?”
Or use a reductio ad absurdum: If poverty can be eliminated by a minimum wage, then why not increase it to $1,000,000/hour?
All we have to do to live like billionaires is pass a min. wage law!
Obviously, a min wage makes it more expensive for employers to hire workers. This in turn reduces their demand for labour, and so reduces the supply of jobs. With less jobs, competition for work increases and marginal workers are shut out. The min wage is compulsory unemployment; it hurts marginal workers the most.
Punch her in the gut until she concedes that the minimum wage is bad. This worked on my mom.
As most things interventionist in economics, a policy meant to benefit some will do so at the expense of others, and often with further unintended consequences. In the case of the MW this means (if the MW is above the market-clearing price) making some better off whilst forcing others into unemployment. This has the further nasty consequence of rendering the market less flexible and thus introduces rigidity.
-Jon
Answer: “That’s good, because the greedy companies, instead of pocketing the money, can hand it out to the workers.”
Response to that: and when the company goes out of business because it can’t sustain the losses, all those workers are out of jobs.
Next argument, for social programs in general:
“The reason people are richer in america in general is because we have lots of social programs.”
“If you take away social programs, the poor will STARVE.”
Are you sure this is your biological mother? [;)]
Ask her how all of the people without social assistance manage not to starve.
Haha for a minute there I took that to be a parody of the OP. It sounded that stupid.
-Jon
If you lift the tax burden that is being imposed on the average citizen by these state welfare programs, a lot more resources will be available to help the poor in a sustainable manner, i.e. by investing in business and creating jobs or by funding aid programs aimed at the rehabilitation of their recipients rather than at their dependence, as most political welfare schemes are.
Furthermore, wealth is not being created by redistributing. Wealth is created through production. The reason why people are generally wealthier in America is because they are working on a high level of productivity. Simply eating up the financial backing of this productivity, namely the invested capital of the producers, to fund redistribution schemes would therefore have disastrous effects on the general welfare.
Is that an actual answer? Wow, she really missed the point.
If a person’s labor only earns 4 dollars, where will the company get the 2 extra dollars to pay her 6 dollar wage? If the minimum wage is 6 dollars than no one will hire a person who can only do 5 dollars worth of labor an hour. Automation will be increased and more services will become do-it-yourself.(Like pumping gas)
Minimum wages create unemployment!
She’s probably one of those people who think a company can dictate whatever price it so chooses for its products.
-Jon
Why would you want to argue against the minimum wage to someone who doesn’t know economics and clearly doesn’t think it’s wrong to limit people’s freedom of association? If you don’t want to establish those points, and you’re just trying to win an argument, I’d say you’re missing the boat entirely. If you want to convince someone that the minimum wage is a bad idea, you should work on explaining to them how limits on our freedom of association and artificial price floors do not properly respect people’s individuality and right to self-determination, and create undesirable economic outcomes which often end up hurting the very people the policy is designed to help.
Here’s a good, relevant post by Long on the state vis-a-vis the poor.
-Jon
While we are being socialists enforcing a minimum wage, why dont we enforce a minimum profit margin.
This is the problem:
Now when I try to argue about it with my mom, she rants at me and says something like this:
“Maybe you should try to be self-sufficient sometime. You should see what it is like being poor. Since you obviously don’t unterstand, your argument against social programs fails.”
Let her know that it doesn’t matter about your own experience; what matters is the experiences of all the poor who would like to have a job, but are unable to find a job because their skills do not meet what the minimum wage pays. That is: they are unemployed because the wage is too high. So they turn to other things to support themselves, such as drug dealing and the like.
Let her know that minimum wage laws are merely one piece of the violent crime rate.
This is a blatant argumentum ad hominem. She could not argue against your position, so she attacked you. In particular it is an argumentum ad ductum (appeal to experience).
And I can find you dozens of “self-sufficient” and poor people who oppose minimum wages and social programs. Hell, I’m one.
Guess I must just be too bourgeoise. 
Stop arguing with your Mom. I’m sure you love her as most people love their mothers, but this is an uphill battle with a lot of pain along the way and no guarantee of success. Fight the battles you can win, until you are a competent enough argumentor to give yourself a chance.
I don’t talk about liberty with family. Most of my elders have blown it, and cannot understand a radical agenda of being solidly antistatist. They are of “get along so we can go along” variety which is fine, they aren’t very critical of me, and I do not tan their hides with logic in return.