Do people just not understand the minimum wage?

Very solid arguement met by wild theory instead of sound economics. Let's boil it down... I'll type slowly...

I have a small business. I can afford me, another professional, a receptionist and a clerk at minimum wage $5.15 an hour (19 states set it higher than the federal minimum wage). They both work full time - 40 hours a week. That's $412 a week or $21,424 a year. Let's say Congress raises the minimum wage to $7/hour. At the same hours that's $29,120 - I have to come up with an additional $7,696 with all other things constant. In a small business, that could be their annual profit - should I NOT make money because YOU think it's the right thing to do. No - I will have to cut hours or lay off one of the minimum wage workers - it's reality, check into it.

The VAST majority of people working in minimum wage jobs are teenagers (trying to make extra money for CDs or video games) or seniors (who like to work for the extra money) - NOT people supporting families.

The argument against raising the minimum wage are familiar, we hear them every time anyone suggests raising the lowest paid workers . Those who make the arguments against raising wages are motivated by free market ideology or narrow self interest .

Economists have reams of data on wage hikes , they found that past disasters haven't happened.

A group of 56 economists looked at the issue last week and released a statement contending that raising the minimum wage as proposed is unlikely to affect jobs .

To the contrary , most likely it will increase purchasing power and could yield other benefits for businesses, such as reduced turnover and lower training cost.

Raising cost is a part of business life and they adjust .

If a worker loses his job because of minimum wage hike , he will be paid a higher wage in his next job .

Actually, market theory might tell you this, but market REALITY has proven otherwise over the last 50 years. The market is more than able to absorb a modest increase in the minimum wage without spurring unemployment. Of course, if you raised minimum wage to $50/hour than you might have a small problem, but no one is proposing this. Look it up -- the minimum wage has been raised REPEATEDLY and **never** has unemployment spiked with it.

As for spreading money to the populace, we were willing to do this with those "tax cuts", which by the way didn't help low-income workers diddly. Yet, raising the minimum wage is a far better economic enhancer because all of that money is spent back into the economy, whereas tax cuts to the rich are saved.

But I guess your rationale only goes as far as supporting your political views, not reality.

Just a cursory look at gross compensation to executives, which is outrageous by any measurable standard or historical perspective, will tell you that the labor pool is not being spread in a way that makes business sense.

The final nail in the coffin here is that minimum wage, historically, is at its lowest point EVER relative to other indexes. So if you are telling me now that we can't afford a higher minimum wage when we are at 50 year lows, you are full of it.

The minimum wage in China is 45 cents an hour and all sorts of American operations are closing down and outsourcing the work to plants in China where cameras, radios, Xboxes, Ipods, computers, TV sets and clothing is all being made for American consumption.

More and more companies are oursources customer service to telemarkerting companies in India and Pakistan.

Of course that means all the Americans who used to do this are in the unemployment lines.

Once upon a time Admiral in Chicago made TV sets.

It's not that simple. Under your theory, the minimum wage should be $0.25 an hour. There has to be a balance so that people on minimum wage can make enough money to live, yet it isn't set too high that employers can't afford it. This requires increases every once in a while for inflation. It hasn't been raised since '97. Most economic advisers say that it is time for an increase.

That's not really the point, Nate.

The real point is that there is desperation in America today.

Not only have Ford and GM laid off tens of thousands, so have mortgage lenders, like Countrywide (just announced 2500 layoffs). In addition to the well-known outsourcing in the high-tech sector. Good jobs are being cut by the thousands, people who are highly skilled are begging for minimum wage jobs but still need to support families and homes.

So the real point is that the economy in general sucks. Many politicians, instead of addressing the real problems, take the easy way out of raising the "minimum wage". Many politicians, unfortunately, understand exactly what is happening but they don't have the guts or strength to fix the real problems.

Plus many companies would have to raise their prices to help cover their increase labor costs, which would most likely offset any increases these low paid employees would gain from their pay increase. Much of this talk about increasing minimum wage is to help the people whom make more feel better. They don't understand how people might be able to survive on such little money.

Eventually all prices will rise, including the price that is paid to the bottom of the pay scale.

This is an economic argument that is partly based on emotions.

You are correct that there is a threshhold, but there are other factors too. Insurance and energy costs are huge issues for small businesses, that needs to be addressed as well as raising the mininum wage.

At the corporate level, executives make way too much money compared to the front-line workers. The corporation is an entity like a person, but has a specific set of rules that it must operate under. Some of these rules need to be changed to prevent things like Enron from happening and Oil execs from making hundreds of millions of dollars for doing almost nothing. I always believed that the highest paid worker in a corporation should not make more than 20 times that of the lowest paid worker, all forms of compensation considered. After all, the corporate vehicle is a gift that we have given companies to protect against personal liablity, and it has been stretched to extremes and needs to be fixed.

I agree. The minimum income isn't designed to be a "residing income." that's meant for human beings working area-time or fairly beginning up at a interest. i think of of that's noticeably uncommon for an autonomous, felony guy or woman to artwork at a minimum income interest for greater useful than a pair of months. In that component, they're going to the two come across a distinctive interest or earn a develop. that's even rarer for somebody to hold that minimum income interest as their oftentimes used source of income. An guy or woman with a minimum income interest is many times attempting to earn added money to augment their prevalent interest. There are fairly some felony, able-bodied adults helping a relatives on the minimum income for longer than some months. somebody who can now no longer do greater effective than a perpetual minimum-income interest is probable so handicapped or dysfunctional that they could be on public or charity suggestions to boot.

That might be true initially but it would balance out. Plus that is a hard argument to make to the people who are making minimum wage or close to it that cant survive off of it.

We arent talking about raising it 10/hr for god sakes. The minimum wage has been raised before, was there all sorts of chaos then?