Minimum Wage: Don't people see that business managers -- even low-level po-folk -- will have no?

This is really a political philosophy question. Hard money proponents use deflationary tactics, such as lowering wage rates and increasing hours, to defend their treasure. This Victorian monetary system was in serious trouble in 1907, paving the way for the first US central bank since 1836. Shortly after it's inception in 1913, the Fed took us off the hard money (gold) standard then tried it again in the 20's. That precipitated the worst financial disaster in our country's history. As central banks around the industrialized world moved to defend their gold, including the US, matters only worsened. England didn't start to recover until they listened to Keynes. We began to recover next, when we adopted his methods and Germany followed third. France stood in opposition and created a gold bloc while they watched their financial situation worsen. By 1940, they didn't have the economy necessary to put up a fight against Hitler. France, to this day, has not fully recovered their position as a dominant world power, even though they dissolved their gold bloc. Switzerland stayed on the treasure course until 1974 but they finally switched because they could no longer ignore 40 years of overwhelming positive data from countries using fiat currency.

Deflation was the only tool for defending (hard money) convertible currency. Everyone knew it back then but there isn't anyone left to remind us. They're all dead now. Lower the wages of labor (because that's the biggest expense for any company) and make them work longer hours so production goes up but wages stay flat. This improves the balance of payments position, hopefully to the point where no gold leaves the country.

When the Roaring 20's came crashing down, when there was zero market liquidity, the Fed did the exact opposite of what you would expect, they raised interest rates. Why? To force companies to produce more, using the output to defend the treasure. It obviously just made matters worse so what did the Fed do? They raised interest rates again. Protecting the gold reserves was deemed more important than the condition of the economy, more important to the rentier class. In the end, it's always about the bankers and investors and their ability to influence government, isn't it? Using hard currency didn't help.

The problem is inflation. You go to the store and buy the cheap Little Debbie ginger bread man cookies, they used to be 79 cents now $1.99! They seem to be charging more and more for things and yet the buying power of us is shrinking and has been. I know they say it's because gas prices are high but what the heck. Unless they raise cash to people e will have not enough cash to buy things. Think about it. It's like Mad magazine had a deal on inflation decades ago and it showed a candy bar that was the size of a quarter, lol.

just what does a banker or Wall Street person do? The most powerful subcontract I took over on a nuclear construction job was the portable toilets. At first they treated it as a joke but parleyed it into power as I could stop any thing to remove a portable toilet. Had to ride herd over the guys cleaning them also at 4 am in the morning, got tight was the unions and upper management

But when inflation drives prices up double and triple and they say their is no inflation and you leave a minimum wage a 'zero' people will starve. Look at the cost of the American autos vs others. i know they say congress only voted themselves a measely $40,000 in raises during the period before they raised minimum wage, but still people have lost half of the buying power of the dollar and that is the problem.

If gas is the cause then they need to include it in COLA.

Every society needs people to clean the toilets and serve the food. No matter what plans or schemes the left thinks up, the end result will always include an underclass to do those jobs. The key is to make the whole society rich so that these people can still live a pretty good lifestyle. And if we are being honest with ourselves, we can see that is exactly where we are today in the USA. The vast majority of our "poor" have cell phones, color flat screen TVs, heat and AC, and even cars. They are not in poverty by any objective standard.

Supply and demand in the labor market has many folks in Ohio happy to get a minimum wage job.

The "rust belt" is spreading. Cincinnati is a dying town, it has lost 40% of its population since 1950. All the business (except insurance and banking) went across the Ohio River to Kentucky, which is thriving.

Obama wants shovel ready jobs? We need a new bridge across the river on I-71 which is also I-75 and they have to share the bridge. It's a bottleneck.

Lots of folks in Ohio would love a full time minimum wage job. Anyone making $15/hour here is halfway to rich.

A few months ago someone asked a similar question about why shouldn't we lower minimum wage so that prices could go down and the low income people could afford more, I went into greater detail about why decreasing minimum wage is bad and why the opposite would be a good thing. All the information is there so I won't bother to rewrite it. (Also Compliance Charge's would be in violation of free trade agreements currently in place and ending/ altering or violating a free trade agreement would impact more than just our economy.)

"Saddly its not that easy, infact decreasing minimum wage would only serve to complicate our economy and slowly crush it as family would end up with less and less money available to spend.

Now this is the point where most people would attempt to correct me and say "But Keldaria, the economy would respond by lowering the prices so they could in fact afford more" however this is simply a half truth. Sure some prices would indeed lower, however if you cut minimum wage in half (for example) the most other prices would fall in response would only be a fraction of that leaving these families in a worse case scenario. That also ignores the bigger issue of cost which wouldn't decrease, such as fuel prices and housing, but I'll get to this later, for now lets focus on why prices won't fall in equal proportions to reduction in minimum wage.

Why this happens is simple, labor rates are not all of the cost when it comes to the cost of goods or Inflation/Deflation. There are many cost that simply aren't affected by what we set our minimum wage to here in the US. That said even if a US manufacturer was able to cut their labor cost of manufacturing a product in half, thats only one part of the product, the materials portion of the cost wouldn't fall equally to match. Now here comes again when people attempt to correct me and say "But Keldaria, material prices too would fall because they would get the same savings on labor" and yes that might be true for those in the US but lets face it, not much of anything is 100% US made anymore. Even that "Made in the USA" electronic you bought last week (god knows where you found one) has parts or raw materials from China or Japan shipped here then assembled. Those costs wouldn't change, and that doesn't even take into account other "Stable" cost like the cost of energy the run the factory, or Fuel cost for the trucks which ship the freight.

When it comes to these "Stable" cost companies and families alike would still have to carry the cost of housing themselves and putting fuel in their vehicles, gas for heating their houses ect. Yes these would slightly fluctuate a little with the inflation/deflation cycle but that wouldn't even come close to matching the decrease in minimum wage, especially housing prices because a banks not going to willingly lower the amount you own on your house or building because deflation kicked in and its worth less.

Now you want to create jobs? you might be surprised to learn that doing the opposite would actually be beneficial to our economy. Why? for the same reasons mentioned above about why lowering it is bad in the first place. Studies have shown that doubling the minimum wage would only equate to a minimal increase in the % of a products cost, well below the % of increased pay for these workers. This means that you'd effectively be doubling the spare money available for all of those workers while increasing the cost of the products they buy by minimal amount allowing them to "Spend More".

In addition doubling minimum wage would effectively be like raising taxes for the federal government because the more they make the more the government gets, so it helps our deficit issue. But thats not all, it would help a lot of families get off food stamps and other government provided subsidies thereby reducing the governments spending in those area's also decreasing our deficit.

Then as more spending occurs due to more money on hand by these workers, more jobs well be created as demand has increased. Yes inflation will jump up alittle but will quickly be outpaced by a booming economy. Its also important to note that minimum wage is well below 50% of past values adjusted for inflation so if you ask me we're slowly crippling this economy by not raising it with inflation.

If it were up to me I would raise minimum wage in 4 steps over the next 2 years until its double what it is currently, then tie all future raises (once per year) to the rate of inflation (or deflation) to keep it at a sustainable rate for the future."

First, this isn't really a question. You're making a statement, violating the Guidelines for this site.

Second, "elsewhere on their books" -- yes. They can make the compensation to top execs and major shareholders -- who currently get almost all the revenue -- more reasonable, so the employees are able to eat every day. It's only right.

"dent in the problem"? Which problem? That of most workers being barely able to survive? It would put MORE than a dent in that problem. It would also put more than a dent in the unemployment problem, because there will be more people with more money to spend on goods and services, driving up demand, and therefore decreasing unemployment. It would also reduce need for government assistance, reducing spending, AND increase tax revenue, thus, helping with the deficit and debt.

So it puts more than a dent in a LOT of our economic problems.

I agree that telling businesses how to run their business is like stepping on a balloon. While part of the balloon is flattened unnaturally, another part just inflates more. I like the idea of making foreign countries EARN access to the biggest market in history. We can make great things, here, just like Taiwan (where I'm from but am now an AMERICAN), can.

F*ck the minimum wage. Reinstituti slavery. At least plantation slaves got food AND shelter. You can't say that about minimum wage jobs.

a $15 minimum wage will boost employment for semi-skilled $15/hr workers, who will replace the unskilled $8/hr workers, who will become unemployed. a higher minimum wage will cause more investment into labor saving technology, robots and tools, or outsourcing labor intensive low paying jobs overseas, such as call centers, which will also lead to higher levels of unemployment.

How does Compliance Charges fix any issue? Low wage workers need more money so they can spend it. Raising the minimum wage creates more revenue for businesses.