Should the Minimum Wage Be Raised?

Raising the minimum wage adversely affects O. group in particular more than any other: young black males.
And, it doesn't just affect the cost to hire minimum wage employees. It also means that to KEEP above minimum wage employees, employers will also have to increase pay to those employees as well, which increases costs across the board--not just for the minimum wage/entry level employee. These are some trickle up costs that no O. ever even considers when they discuss minimum wage.

Here's a good article. There are many.

http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2011/05/11...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams60.1.html

Here's a good summation: http://www.dailygazette.net/standard/ShowStoryTemplate.as...

Here's another (if you read deep into it) that explains more trickle up costs and another angle of the trickle down economy. http://keithengel.hubpages.com/hub/Unemployments-Hidden-C...

I could post dozens of them. But they will all say the same thing. When you do any hard research--not opinions---but actually research the numbers, increasing minimum wage results in decreased employment. Just what we need, right? (sarcasm)

I really wish I could get in the mind of a liberal. Their ideas on how to make lower class better are just, well insane.

I think I understand what you mean about American businesses. It's not as easy as giving someone more money, and they are happier, have no stress, and more money to spend. In fact, I don't think people will have more money to spend. I think raising minimum wage, will cause prices to go up. If you have to pay millions of people more, you have to make money somewhere else. Things will cost more, so will that make what they end up with the same? Will it make people spend less, because of the price increase...and then jobs have to be cut?

Even economists are torn on whether it will help, or people will be in the same hole. I think he has to try something, so I guess that's where he is starting. I guess it's a wait and see thing. I wish there was an answer hat had guarantees, but those are few and far between.

When is the last time any of you have worked an easy minimum wage job? They are usually the HARD physical jobs, like scrubbing shirts or working outside in the heat or the cold, or slinging burgers while standing up all day long. Or being a "sales associate" in a store that doesn't pay commission.

What a minimum wage job usually isn't, is a job that requires a lot of brains.

Teens with these jobs are learning. Adults who have no education and no experience have these jobs. And adults who have lost their jobs in a bad economy and can't find something in their field sometimes have to take minimum wage jobs in order to eat.

To actually say that people who work minimum wage jobs do it so that they don't have to work hard is a slap in the face to a lot of people and simply not true.

I don't believe that minimum wage will ever be a living wage. However, it will go up as a matter of course, though not much. Businesses like Dana's that pay better end up having good employees who are probably very loyal to her and are more productive. Not all businesses can do that. And those that employ teenagers know that they have a pool of unexperienced and mostly temporary "bodies" doing a job.

Dawn

Where in the world is it indicated that minimum wage is to support a family? This is for unskilled and inexperienced workers!

My daughter is a college student and is a server in a local restaurant. She is paid minimum wage plus her tips. Her paychecks are very low because she is taxed on her total food sales...if she actually gets the 22% in tips or not.

I was never going to settle for minimum wage after college. There needs to be a gap because those educated and skilled workers and entry level workers. Raise the minimum wage and I will expect my salary to be raised as well because I do a heck of a lot more than a minimum wage job. There has to be a gap.

I feel the need to address the perceived inflated pay of CEOs. I have spent the better part of 20 years working for Fortune 100 companies. These CEOs are held accountable to shareholders, if they don't cut it...they are gone. People buy company stocks and expect results, if you have a person that is just doing a job without motivation and consequences, it's just a regular job.

Minimum wage ignores cost pools. Hell it ignores economics!

Say you have a cost pool for all employees, your work force includes 10 unskilled laborers (reads teens) and ten trained employees(reads adults). The teens would work for five an hour the trained workers work for 15 an hour. The teens work 10 hours a week the trained workers are full time. The cost of the widget is fifteen dollars and they produce 1000 widgets a week.

So at the moment the labor cost per widget is 8.50, materials are 5, misc storage, utilities, insurance (building) is 1.00, profits before taxes .50 a widget.

So we raise the minimum wage to 7 dollars where does that extra 200 or .20 a widget come from? Do you dip into the profits? Do you cut an adults job?

What tended to happen as minimum wage increased, the teens were cut, an adult's wages were cut, though not hours, until eventually we have adults that are supposed to be supporting a family on minimum wage.

Say we push the cost on increasing the widget's cost by a dollar, say the average consumer buys 40 widgets a week, say said consumer got a 1 dollar an hour raise that year, well now his real wage is back down to what it was pre raise. I hope gas prices didn't go up cause dude just got a pay cut.

So then our generic consumer goes to his boss and says hey! I can't make it on what you pay me. So he gets another dollar an hour raise but to do so his boss has to raise the price of his widget. This is called inflation.

By the time the next minimum wage talks come up it is being increased to make up for the loss in real wage because of the minimum wage!

If we removed minimum wages teen unemployment would drop and yes they would be making five an hour, so what?! I worked for 3.10 an hour when I was a teen and I made enough to put fuel in my tank, insure my car, and yes I bought said car for 800 dollars and it had 230,000 miles on that car and it was beautiful!! That would open up the cost pools to pay adults, supporting families, who are willing to learn skills needed for their company to earn a wage that they can support said family on!

Minimum wages distorts and does so in such a way that most people don't understand.
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Oh so to recap, instead of having two jobs paying five dollars an hour you will have O. paying 7.50. The people holding minimum wage jobs do not support households. They are held by kids, spouses, second jobs, supplementing transfer payments, retired supplementing SS. You increase wage you decrease jobs increasing full employment. Not unemployment which is why you don't see an increase because they are secondary jobs!

Minimum wage does not hurt business beyond efficiency, it hurts the country because it reduced household income. Not unlike what Obamacare just did to a mess of full time workers who are now part time. Business adapts, people get screwed!

I do think it should be raised, yes. I am a small business owner, and I personally bring home less money because I believe it's important that my employees earn a living wage. Even my entry-level employees make enough to pay their rent and feed their families. I don't think I could sleep at night if I paid them so little that they could qualify for welfare. I don't feel American taxpayers have the responsibility to subsidize my business that way. (I think it's shameful that some larger businesses don't seem to have a problem with it!)

I don't think there should be any shame in honest work. Not everybody is going to become a CEO (or even a middle manager). If a person is willing to show up every day for work, and work hard, they shouldn't make so little that they are still under the Federal poverty level, and have to rely on food stamps or welfare to keep from starving. Even at $9/hr, that's certainly not enough to live a lavish lifestyle, but it's an extra $59/week vs the current minimum wage. That's something.

In any case, no, as a small business owner it would not break the bank for me, because I already pay every single O. of my employees more than that, just as a matter of principle.

The idea that it would hurt business is laughable. Wages increase 725% for CEOs from 1979-2011. For everyone else? 5.7% That doesn't even keep up with inflation.

No, it should not be raised, not yet. Businesses are just now beginning to feel the effects of Obamacare and his tax regulations that are burdening businesses. The economy has to get under control before you can add more burden to it. At this point, adding more expenses (which Obama likes to do) only hurts the economy. Cut spending, help businesses before burdening them more.

Minimum wage was SUPPOSED to be for UNSKILLED WORKERS, i.e. high school students, ENTRY level, etc.

Now, since we have a society that is leaning so hard on the government for support, a minimum wage job is what many people have so they don't have to work "real hard".

Raising minimum wage will force employers to pay employees more than they are worth....therefore affecting their business and hurting them as well as America. This is the reason we don't have much of a middle class anymore because we don't have entry level jobs to give people the experience they need to move up.

Too many are expecting $65K a year when they get out of high school...they don't realize they need to EARN it.

It is a great idea. I have always paid my employees substantially more than the minimum wage. Even the ones who are minimally skilled and require lots of training. Even in an economy where I have way more qualified applicants than there are positions and I could pay minimum wage. I cannot see paying an employee less than someone might be able to live on. I also have ALWAYS provided health insurance for my employees. I run a small business (<10 employees).

For my family personally, I don't think it will matter much if the minimum wage is raised. In our case, the cost of living has increased so much more than a wage increase that it is getting harder and harder to survive. My husband is a techie, so he has a good job and we are blessed that I get to be a stay at home mom, but that may soon change. We are finding that most of our disposable income which we would put in savings is all going toward our taxes, insurances, food, gas, etc. I've been out of the workforce for almost 10 years and now I may be re-entering. (Yeah, good luck trying to find a job in this economy. Even though I have a college degree and a skill set, competition is tough for a decent paying job).

The only workers that I see that will benefit from the increase are those who who don't use their income to pay any bills associated with supporting themselves or a family. A teen who works at McDonald's and lives with his parents probably thinks that the wage increased is a good idea.

Minimum wage hurts jobs, hurts businesses. I can't for the life of me understand the logic that says raising it is a good idea.

Someone presented the restaurant server example. A waiter or waitress makes around 3.00/hour. Ok, say the restaurant has to pay them 10 now. You think the restaurant is just going to eat that extra cost for all their servers? No, they will pass it onto the consumer, which means that your meal now costs three times more than it used to, and the server gets three times less the amount of tips they used to. More likely, the restaurant can't afford to stay open at all and everyone loses their jobs.

This isn't a difficult thought process.

The problem is our whole economy is skewed toward benefiting the super rich. It's become a slot machine they tinker with to pay out more and more wealth and increase their own net worth, not really creating anything of value or substance for their country or the middle class.

The middle class is no longer made up of workers who share in the success of the company but replaceable pawns who are increasingly squeezed to try to survive on less and less.

All Americans should watch The High Cost of Low Prices, a movie about Walmart and what that O. company has done to our country on the backs of minimum wage workers. Job creator some say, more like middle class destroyer. They are the best example of a company profiting off low wage workers while raking in huge profits and decimating local small business in the process.

Until we all decide we are not going to support this anymore, insurance companies, mega food companies poisoning our kids, stores stocked with cheap imported products, subsidies for Ag-corporations we are destined to be their slaves on minimum wage. If a business can't afford to pay a living wage then they go out of business. That will happen to some but the vast majority will still be profitable, with a much more content, less overwhelmed and more productive work force. People who can live a decent life make much better employees then someone who is worried about whether or not they can feed their kids.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112402

I totally understand that argument.... making a livable wage is really important. I believe, in Austin Tx, they want all new businesses that come to Austin to pay what they determine as a "living wage" ...

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2012-11-30/victories-...

However, what will happen if they do raise the Federal minimum wage? It will cost businesses more..... and they, in turn, will increase their prices.... which will hurt all of us once again...

It is a vicious cycle... and in the end, no O. wins. (Except maybe the Federal government.... they end up getting more in taxes that way.)

I think it is more important that a family be able to eat than a big corporation give out another huge bonus to someone who sits on their asses deciding that joe schmoe in janitorial doesn't deserve $10 an hour to clean the toilets and mop the floor.

it's such a catch-22.
the obvious answer is 'of course.' but there's always more to the story, isn't there?
i'm certainly not worried about walmart or the fast food chains. they can afford to take better care of their employees.
but it DOES have the potential to hurt small start-ups, which are our best hope. and the sneaky backlash is that once wages go up, so do rents and services.
it's unfortunate that the 'agin' arguments tend to imply a mindset of keep 'em poor and desperate and able to be manipulated. but the problems are real enough to be factored into the discussion.
when the pedal meets the metal, i say yes. but with reservations.
khairete
S.

We are basically a market economy. As our spending goes up, so do jobs.

It makes more sense to raise the minimum wage to a livable wage. Who cares if it's original intention was for teens and unskilled workers. The fact is that these jobs are no longer available to many teens because, college educated adults are having to take them to support their families. Who the hell can support their families off of minimum wage?

There are already 15+ states that pay over minimum wage, and they are surviving and moving along and not all of these states are 'expensive' to live in. They've managed, why can't the rest of the country?

I also thing minimum wage should be straight across the board. Waitress get paid well below minimum (in my state it's something like $3.00 an hour). The last time I checked a tip, was not something someone has to leave. So why should tips even be figured into their hourly wage. This is true in many other jobs also, waitressing just popped into my head.

So yes, minimum should be raised to a livable wage. Then we might not need so many social programs.

It will hurt business and ultimately the consumer.

Small and medium-sized businesses are getting squeezed from every angle. This is just another way to choke them to death.

If I was a large company I could hardly invent a better way to burn out my competition than to have the government (who does my bidding thanks to my lobbying $$) increase regulations, health care costs and the minimum wage.

Less competition ultimately means higher prices and fewer jobs.

Wages are not the problem - true inflation is. I don't care what the government says about inflation; all you have to do is go to the grocery store or the gas station and you quickly see that your dollar buys less and less every week.

As the wife and daughter of two small business people I have seen this first-hand. And believe me, CEO wages did not increase 725% for either O. of these guys. People often confuse the large multi-national corporations with your local and regional businesses. They are not O. and the same, and they are actually enemies of O. another in a certain sense.

So my net answer is no - it's a bad idea.

ETA: both of the small businesses in my family provide health insurance and have done so for a long time.

ETA2: I also think there are industry-specific issues as well, which are rarely discussed.

If you raise the minumum wage and a person who started their own business currently employs 50 people, with increase un costs for both employee hours plus increases passed on by other companies. That person will have to lower his work force by about 15 people to stay where they are but if too many lose jobs and can no longer buy his product then more if not all lose their jobs. So no don't raise it.
there are many ways to increase the paycheck from education,, buying american, more jobs here due to increase in us soil production means more jobs supply and demand for workers would then naturally raise the income for people without stressing already at risk employers

Why in the world would it hurt American businesses? Gee, allow people to make more money, so they are less stressed, happier, and willing to spend more money. Fairly certain this is a cycle.

**Sorry...I'm just in a pissy mood tonight. I realize there's a lot more to it, but the minimum wage shouldn't be below the poverty level. Then again, my family falls more than 135% below the poverty level...so maybe I'm not the O. to answer this question. Again, sorry not to put more thought into my answer...I'm just fed up with it all tonight. I guess my brain doesn't want to think this O. through. ;)

**And I realize they have to make their money somewhere else. Greed is really, really a sad thing.

I truly don't know on this O.. Minimum wage affects all low-wage workers, including teenagers working summer jobs, college kids, people working part time or second jobs, etc. Do they all deserve to make a "living wage" at every job? My teenagers should be paid a fair wage, but let's be honest - they're not supporting themselves or a family. If they were supporting themselves or a family, they wouldn't be working minimum wage jobs. When I worked low-wage jobs, it was when I was a student and paying for things like car insurance and tuition. I didn't expect to be able to pay rent and support myself working the Burger King Drive-Thru.

I'm usually pretty liberal but I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around this argument, that every job should provide a living wage. How about, everyone who needs to support him or herself qualifies for a job that pays a living wage? I'm sorry but no O. should expect to live off of cashiering. Not every job is worthy of providing a living.

What I do think is that welfare should be re-structured so that there is a set minimum household living income level based on where you live and how many people are in your household. Those who truly can't find work that pays this minimum level of income (due to, for example, lack of ability or opportunity - no good jobs in the area, no transportation, limited childcare etc.) should be allowed to access assistance that bridges the gap between their income and the minimum standard of living, then as they make more, assistance gradually decreases until they reach a humane standard of living via their own income.

FWIW I don't think that business would increase the price of goods and services so much as they would just hire fewer people.

I think if minimum wage goes up so does the cost of electricity, the cost of natural gas, the cost of gasoline, the cost of living always goes up to match it so it doesn't matter if it's raised or not. It won't make any difference.

It happens every January. When SSDI letters come out with the raises, if there is O., shows up then I can almost bet that within the next few days there will be a letter from the utilities saying that the cost is going up due to a cost of living increase. It is usually more than our check went up so we actually lose a bit more money out of our left over after bill money.

Please - no more politics.

I know your mortal enemy posts her political threads, but that doesn't mean all of us need to keep the pot stirred.

It should not be the governments business what a business is willing and able to pay its employees.

The minimum wage was established during the Great Depression, when hundreds of thousands of Americans were out of work. It was not a magical panacea -- it didn't end the Depression -- but there is no evidence that it was harmful either. It had a small but discernible positive effect on the economy, since it gave low-wage workers more discretionary income, and they could afford to buy more.

Since its establishment, the minimum wage has been increased 22 times. At no point -- not once -- has an increase been associated with a spike in unemployment or with a slowdown in hiring. States with a higher minimum wage (e.g., Washington State) generally have lower unemployment than states that use the lower federal minimum wage. Granted, these states were in comparatively good economic shape when the enacted higher minimum wages, but the increases did not harm their economies.

That said, I do understand that an increase in the minimum wage would be hard for small, marginal businesses like family restaurants. I would love to see an exception for businesses like these, but I'd like to see that exception for true family businesses, not multibillion-dollar franchises. I'm not optimistic that this can be done.

It might hurt business, I don't know. Small business, probably. It's a good idea in some ways, but like you said, it's still below the poverty line. But either way, I think the American middle class is on its way out. I think people living near the poverty level is going to be the new normal.

In how many large companies, have wages for the majority of workers fallen or stagnated while the CEO's and upper management continue to get bonuses and raises? The only segment of the American population whose income has continued to grow is the (less than) O. percent.

Re the perceived inflated pay of CEO's, as mentioned above -- it's not perceived -- it's factual. A few decades ago, CEO's were not paid millions, as they are now. They were paid handsomely, but not excessively, as they are now. No company needs to pay millions to find someone competent and experienced. There are numerous people out there who could do a CEO's job for much less, something reasonable like, even $400 or $500 K? Why isn't that enough? Also, unless things have changed recently, those CEO's who "don't cut it" still walk away with huge payoffs.

Whenever I do go back to work I would like to see a nice paycheck with all the work i've done.Right now we fall poverty level why because my husband had to choose a job that was either higher pay with no family health insurance benefits or a lower paying job with family health insurance benefits so since we have a family we had to go with the insurance benefits.Been there donethat with no insurance and it sucks.We do what we need to do to make it work.His line of work was highly effected with layoffs and still is not his company but his type of employment

If the minimum wage goes up, do you really think the American businesses would be hurt? Nope. Because they would just pass along the increases to their customers. If the minimum wage goes up, everyone should be prepared to pay more for their fast food, groceries etc.

It is NOT a livable wage. But the statistics show that the vast majority of people working for the minimum wage are not supporting families. They are teens.

I think the government needs to become less involved in American businesses rather than more so. Government is too big and gets in the way.