Minimum Wage

". . . it’s too bad that the minimum-wage law added so many people to the list of those who today cannot find jobs."

Where are the data?

How is consumption distributed by type?  How much of it is essential.  (Really essential such as food, clothing, and shelter and probably transportation and arguably essential like health services and security and supposedly essential like education.)  How are jobs distributed by the consumption they provide (essential or otherwise including the counterproductive ones)?  How are they distributed by activity:  physical such as operating machinery or using tools; selling; keeping tract; managing; engineering; teaching; health care; miscellaneous other?

An Economic Question

Tonight Michael Moore was on Jay Leno's program and stated that the top one per-cent had more wealth than the bottom 95 per-cent combined. [Or was it income? Doesn't matter.] My reaction is "So what?" A better measure is the distribution of consumption. I'm sure they don't eat as much, drive as many cars, live in as many houses, wear as many clothes, or use as much medical care. My concern is how I live, not how the top one per-cent live. I'm sure that I am in the 95 per-cent but I live very well.

If the top one per-cent gave their wealth to the 95 per-cent, the latter couldn't consume twice as much goods and services because there wouldn't be enough to go around. Instead, prices would go up.

Am I missing something?