If companies purposefully try to pay their employees as little as possible then why don't they?

Job competition. Yes you can hire at minimum but how long before someone else pays them a little more to work for them. It cost about 3-5k to hire someone.

There was a question earlier today, suggesting that the minimum wage be different, depending on the state, city or some other delimiter.

My original response was going to be "How many dishwashers in Manhattan are making minimum wage?". I decided not to use it because, frankly, I didn't know. But, give your BoL stats, it pretty much supports what I was going to write.

Of course, the follow-up liberal mantra is "livable wage", as opposed to "minimum wage". We can spend all day talking about how prices will simply keep increasing as wages increase.

Just for arguments sake, pretend that we can divide the world into skilled and unskilled people.

If Joe is an unskilled person, there are lots of substitutes. I'll pay Joe 7.25 an hour, but if he doesn't work out, I can fire him and find lots of others willing to work at that rate. In fact, for "general labor" work, like lawn care, filing, shoveling, basic painting, washing dishes, cooking fries, etc I'd prefer to pay less than 7.25, but that's the minimum wage by federal law.

Now, skilled workers are an entirely different story. If I need a chemist, I'll have to pay a lot. They are hard to find. And they have specialized skills that I need and value. So I'm willing to pay 50k per year because that's what they demand, and the last guy left because he said 47k per year wasn't enought...

In reality, there are many different types of skills. These skills have different values to different employers. So theres a market for skilled workers, with supply and demand, and prices vary.

Some companies do try and pay their employees the least they can as well as providing unsafe working conditions.Those in college are often like those making only 15,000 a yr who cannot pay their bills without minimum wage as well as their employers do not provide healthcare making them to be a burden on other taxpayers with the cost of medicine in the country. You seem to have a problem w/ dissenting opinions.

Because 35% of the population makes between 7 and 10 dollars an hour not even enough to support 1 person, or keep them above the poverty line.

It actually needs to be increased if you adjust for inflation. the minimum wage in 1967 would have to be 11 dollars today to keep up with the same purchasing power

In a healthy, expanding market employers compete for employees, and must offer higher pay and more benefits to keep the good ones.

In a miserable, contracted market, like the one we have now, employees compete for the jobs. The employer can hire the least expensive one and expect to keep him, because he has no place to go.

If we get this economy moving again, everyone's pay will get better.

If you really need to know what a livable wage is click on this link.

http://livingwage.mit.edu/

Everything is going up. Why do you think and how will they survive on that pay?

Those employees should work harder to improve their lot in life.

Liberals trying to pander to their small minded base is why