So Congress thinks that min. wage should stay the same. 5.15 an hour, could you start a family on that?

Whats amazing about this is that, while voting down a minimum wage increase 9 times over the last 10 years, they've voted to increase their pay 7 times. How's that for hypocracy?

I think Congress and the Senate should be paid the same way we pay them here in NH, $100 per year plus expenses.

Just another point - About half of all hourly-paid workers earning $5.15 or less were over age 25. Over 3/4 of minimum wage workers work full time. Just disputing a few "facts" others have quoted without sources.

Can you start a family on nothing? No.

And thats what you would condem people to do because minimum wage is directly correlated with unemployment.

Think of it this way. Lets say we would increase minimum wage to $100 per hour. What would the result be. All non essential personel would be fired. Lots of businesses would close. And those lucky enough to still have jobs would have to work a whole lot harder to make up for the fact that there are so few workers.

That happens on a small scale every time minimum wage is increased. If I have 20 workers working for minimum wage, which is increased from 5.50 to 7.50, I will fire four or five of them and divide the remaining work among the remaining workers.

On another point, why shouldn't I be allowed to work for whatever I want? Lets say I'm a high school student trying to find a job over the summer. I want to make money, but I also want experience in an office setting. I can get a minimum wage job working in the grocery store (no experience), or I can get nothing working in an office as an unpaid intern. If there were no minimum wage, I could take the internship at $3.50 per hour, make some money and get some experience. But I'm not allowed to because the government says I must work for $5.50 or nothing.

A third point is that people need to be responsible. If you can't afford to have a family, don't have kids. That isn't the government's problem.

No way to raise a family on $5.15 an hour, and by no means is that congress' intentions. Everyone's goal with respect to money is to always make more of it. While $5.15 is certainly enough for a 16 or 17 year old. You shouldn't make that job your career goal, and if you are, then the education system put into place by congress has seriously failed you, and you are an exception to the rule, and not the rule itself. With the proper education, skills, and experience along the way, by the time you're mature enough to raise a family, chances are you'll be making a whole lot more than $5.15 an hour. Simply raising the minimum wage in our country will not provide for a family. That's not at all what it is intended to do. Say for example we determine that in order to raise a family it will cost $50,000 (just an arbitrary number) a year. That translates into roughly $24.04 an hour. So what you're saying is raise the minimum wage to whatever it takes to support a family. Do you have any idea what doing that might do to the cost of a simple hamburger at McDonalds?

No matter what kind of job you have you should at least be able to afford the necessities. At $5.15 an hour you couldn't afford rent for a month so you definitely couldn't raise a family on it unless you work more than one job and even that's pushing it. And someone wrote on here that people who can only work at a place that offers minimum wage shouldn't have a family...that's real compassionate. What if they are taking care of their parents or something like that? Shouldn't they have a right to make a decent living? I think so. And Congress has absolutely no problem giving themselves raises. Do they need it? Nope so why not give something back to the people. That would be refreshing.

No, you couldn't. Actually, you really shouldn't be attempting to start a family on $5.15 an hour. You should at least try and graduate high school first and heck you could get a job a WalMart for more than $5.15 an hour.

Minimum wage isn't meant to live on just as Social Security wasn't. Minimum wage was meant to be for school kids and college students not something to make a career of or support a family on. Anyhow, suggesting that we should pay Congress min. wage is stupid. If you worked as hard as most of them to get where they are you would deserve to make good money too.

"So Congress thinks that min. wage should stay the same. 5.15 an hour, could you start a family on that?"

Only if the family also received:

1) food stamps, or other assistance for buying food

2) housing assistance

and

3) had 2 adults earning minimum wage full time, and at least one working part time on top of that. That would allow a family to survive. Prospering would not start until the minimum wage earners at least doubled their wages.

Minimum wage is not meant to support a family. It is a stepping stone to better wages and jobs. You get better jobs & wages if you educate your self. You get better wages and jobs if you try to excel at your minimum wage job. If you are supporting a family on minimum wages put a damn rubber on and work hard to advance. Go back to school - there are thousands of grants and gov't funding available to people who want to learn and better themselves.

Where do you stop raising the minimum wage - $8.00, $13.00, or $25.00? $13.00 to $25.00 is the wage for skilled workers. Why should an untrained, uneducated person make the same amount of money that a trained educated person makes. The trained person had to struggle and work hard to acheive his wage and now you want to give it away to someone who has no drive, desire and is producing childern without being able to support them. Sterilization would be a better option that way the person only has to support themselves and minimum wage can do that.

While we at it - why don't we just take away all the good grades that hard working studens achieve and give them to underachieving students. This way we can dummy down society and make us all dependant on socialism and liberals.

why not just make it mandatory that everyone gives all their money to the government, then the government redistributes that money to everone equally.

Raising the minimum wages increases inflation and has a washout effect on the lowest earners in society. Not only that small business suffer, and will eliminate one job for every five to replace each dollar increase in the minimum wage. Further, the increase in labor demands for those that keep their job must meet the shortfall of the terminated employee.

We should not raise the minimum wage. We shuld eliminate it. It is a shackle that prevents people from achieving their goal. If you want more money, then you need to improve yourself. It is not the responsibility of your employer to pay your bills and provide for your family. It is yours. If you want to make the life of your family better, get a better job or start your own business.

Why do people think they are entitled to a minimum wage of any amount? If you don't like the wage don't take the position. If you can't raise a family on the pay don't have a family. If you have a family than don't accept the pay. This is America you know. America does not owe you anything you owe America everything.

If you are making min. wage, why do you want to start a family? You need to go to school and get an education so you don't get paid minimun wage. If you are a teenager, $5.15 is enough for you. This is supposed to be a motivator to stay in school.