Capitalism and socialism clashed in full force last Wednesday night when TruthRevolt Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro debated Seattle's openly socialist city councilwoman Kshama Sawant on raising the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour. Rebecca Smith, Deputy Director of the National Employment Law Panel, aided Kshama Sawant; Paul Guppy, Vice President of the right-leaning Washington Policy Center, aided Ben Shapiro. Conservative talk show host David Boze served as moderator. Click on audio below to hear the debate in full:

Sponsored by Seattle's conservative radio station KTTH, the debate covered a range of topics concerning the minimum wage debate from how small businesses will be affected to whether or not the CEO of Wal-Mart should be paid $20 million a year. As the debate opened, Boze made it perfectly clear that all parties involved in the discussion wanted people to make a decent wage, but differed in approach. He began with the following question for Shapiro:

Some people making below $15 an hour make ends meet by receiving government benefits in the form of food stamps and other subsidies. Some essentially assert that governments have enabled businesses to pay less and keep more for their bottom lines, resulting in subsidized corporate profits and people more dependent on government. Ben Shapiro, as a conservative, advocates less to dependency on government. Do you object to this reasoning?

Shapiro did not object to the reasoning, arguing the government has been subsidizing big business with social welfare programs such as food stamps, which has enabled employers to pay workers less and give them no incentive to pay their workers more.

Shapiro also argued he opposes raising the minimum wage for the same reason he opposes forcing someone to work for an employer at an undesired wage: forcing a minimum wage down employers' throats violates the consensual agreement between two parties.

Kshama Sawant and her counterpart Rebecca Smith agreed with Ben Shapiro that the government has essentially been subsidizing big corporations like Wal-Mart to pay their workers less with programs like food stamps and appealed that raising the minimum wage will get people off those programs so taxes could be lower. Sawant does not feel small businesses stand to lose with a minimum wage increase, because local people will have more money to spend and small businesses thrive the most when locals have more money to spend.

David Boze then asked Sawant if raising the minimum wage favors larger businesses over smaller businesses, because larger businesses stand to gain if their competition goes under.

Sawant acknowledged that opposition to minimum wage has largely come from small businesses on the surface, but the true opponent has always been big business. She  argued that people should step back from their emotional reservations and look at the results  when the minimum wage had been raised in the past, which, she claimed, shows “overwhelming evidence that small businesses gain when consumers around them have more money in their pockets to be able to spend on extras.” She later proclaimed that if people really care about small businesses, then they should join her in the fight to raise minimum wage.

Shapiro and Paul Guppy agreed that raising the minimum wage will help big businesses most of all because they have economies of scale. They asserted big businesses can absorb increases in costs in a way that small businesses cannot and big business will always find a way to come out ahead when government meddles with wages and regulation, because they can afford to lobby.

The question was raised that if raising the minimum wage won't work, how do workers earn a decent wage? Paul Guppy cited Henry Ford's wage increase for his assembly line workers back when multiple auto companies were directly competing in Detroit. Due to a high-rate of turnover, Ford made a business decision to raise his workers' wages, encouraging them to stay longer. Essentially, wages increase only when workers have choices enabled by competition.

Sawant and Smith disagreed with the assertion that there lies a consensual relationship between employee and employer, because consent only lies with the person who wields the power over the other, and challenged their opponents that if they really believed in voluntary transactions, then they should be in favor of child labor. Shapiro rejected that argument, pointing out that child labor laws were implemented because children were not of age to properly consent.

Responding to the argument that low-level workers are not worth $15 an hour, Rebecca Smith urged her opponents to take their philosophy to the other end of the spectrum, asking whether Wal-Mart's CEO is really worth $20 million a year. Guppy argued that no one in government forces Wal-Mart to pay their CEO $20 million a year; the salary is  voluntarily chosen by a board of directors. Shapiro did some basic math and divided $20 million by Wal-Mart's 2 million employees, and noted giving the money back to the employees would equal only $10 extra for everyone that year.

The debate concluded with Boze asking Sawant what it would take to happen for her to abandon raising the minimum wage. Sawant stayed true to her leftist principles by saying her policy will not fail and the worst possibility would be failing to raise the minimum wage.