$10.10 by 2016 isn't going to make a dent in the problem.

Pretty soon minimum wage will be the standard.. Think about it for a moment. A worker earning ten dollars an hour right now is making 150% of the minimum wage. When the minimum wage is increased to ten dollars that worker will no longer be making 150% of minimum wage, but minimum wage will be what he is making. I know of no employer that will raise wages to 150% of the new minimum wage as they are paying now. They will keep paying the same wages but the worker will suddenly be making only minimum wage.

Otherwise there would be no need to pay 150% of minimum wage. So while employers may not raise the wages of such employees in the short term, the same forces that led them to pay 150% of minimum wage in the first place will eventually prevail.

They get by. Their largest liability is payroll. It doesn't matter if you are selling products or services, your prices are figured out to the penny. If you give your employees a fifty percent raise you must raise prices by a substantial amount. Most small businesses can not do that and stay in business. A huge chain like McDonalds or Walmart usually has enough profit to absorb such an increase but your average Mom and Pop organization does not. Such a huge increase will either put some out of business or cost many their jobs. I am not against raising the minimum wage but not by so much so quickly. I think the repercussions will be to great.

The repercussions of not raising the minimum wage are already too great. The repercussions are a diminished economy, higher taxes, and unnecessary suffering of the hardest working Americans. Your neighbors' spending is your income. That's how the economy works. It trickles up, not down. Putting more money in the pockets of poor working Americans has an immediate benefit to the economy. It's not as if they are going to invest it. There's also the residual effect of a diminished tax burden from subsidizing poor working Americans through public assistance to the poor. Raising the minimum wage actually raises all boats, especially small business.

Wait--I mean it has never resulted in massive job loss. Quite the opposite, as I'm sure you're aware!

The chicken littles who claim that businesses can't support a higher minimum wage are the same as the ones who cried about the end of child labor and the beginning of the 40-hour work week. In each case the pro-business contingent has issued stern warnings of guaranteed doom, and in each case they've been shown to be completely wrong.

Anyone who argues for a static minimum wage is actually arguing that their own wages should be strangled.

[font color="red"]on edit: I'm replying to you to highlight the lame rebuttals typically offered against the argument you're making, and not because I think you're arguing against a higher minimum wage.[/font]

I pay my employees the absolute best the business can afford. There is no way in hell I could give my employees a fifty percent raise and stay in business. It ain't going to happen. I pay elevin dollars an hour for basic labor eg. delivery driver. We are already scrambling to meet basic costs, rent, heat, freight etc. I want to keep my prices as low as possible but still am unable to compete with Walmart and the big box stores. If i were to raise my prices to cover a fifty percent raise I would go out of business. It ain't gunna happen. I actually run a business not just write gibberish on an internet forum.

It means you have no idea how to run a business. I've been on both the labor and management side and have hired and fired more employees and manage more payroll per year than you've probably managed in your lifetime. I know exactly what it means to run a business and have been doing so for quite some time quite successfully. Believe it or not, it's not all about you. If everyone has to raise their wages, then it's a level playing field. Yes, costs will go up, but that simply reflects the true cost of labor. If everyone's labor costs goes up and they stay in business when you can't, then you probably were going to go out of business regardless. If you think Walmart is going to pass on the additional labor costs to their stockholders instead of their customers, you have no idea how they operate. You are simply parroting out small minded libertarian gibberish. It's the exact same anti-union mentality that says organized labor breaks the back of business. There have been numerous minimum wage increases throughout US history big and small and each time businesses big and small just kept right on truckin' and in fact employment increased rather than decreased in almost all instances, including small businesses.

through falsified time cards and extra unpaid time doing cleanup.

America needs a raise and CEOs need a reality check. We desperately need to bring back the progressive tax rate in addition to raising minimum wage to a living level. If a business can't function with its employees being paid double what the minimum wage is now, it doesn't deserve to function, at all.

to supplement with food stamps, housing and other basic needs.

Best political articles anywhere (oh, excuse me, except here of course )

Employers just end up making more of their employees part timers. We need more people to unionize and unions that will negotiate contracts that require employers to have a larger percentage of full timers with benefits and part timers with some benefits.

Health insurance shouldn't be a benefit. It should be mandatory for all employers via payroll deduction to a single payer system. Paid time off for vacation and sick leave should be part of FLSA, mandated by the number of hours an employee works. Hiring part time employees as a loophole to avoid payment of benefits should be closed by law which will remove the incentive for employers to do so and will ultimately benefit everyone, employers included.

Unions shouldn't have to engage in negotiation for things that everyone should have already. Unions should be negotiating for pay and benefits over and above what every working American should already be entitled.

Unions, a living wage, regulations, and affordable housing and healthcare... a rather scary notion to half-wits and the greedy.

Some very progressive European countries don't even have a minimum wage because trade unions cover pretty much all employees.

A good union has the ability to negotiate for pay and benefits that don't bankrupt the company, but provides for as big of a piece of the pie as they can get. This goes beyond a living wage and allows employees to capture the fruits of their labor rather than an insane amount going to the financiers, management, and other mostly parasitic elements.

Lets see, at 10 an hour, she would have to work 1.37 million hours in one year to be equally paid to her boss. Equality in pay programs suddenly became a bit more defined, eh?

13.7 million dollars for a years work? wow. Isn't that special?

.. which we now have on steroids.

It's pseudo-economics nonsense.

Explaining the concept to my teenage daughter. She could not stop laughing. She couldn't believe anyone would fall for such a scheme. I got really insulted and told her to stop laughing at my generation. Of course being a teenager, this only made her laugh harder.

A so-called economist named Laffer (I'm not kidding) drew out the concept to Cheney and Rumsfeld on a cocktail napkin back in 1974 and the dipshit GOP has been running with the trickle down ever since even though it's been debunked countless times. A study that Shrub himself commissioned with hand picked economists even proved it wrong.

I'm going to read up on that. Laffer, can't wait to share that with her. She's a freshman in college now. Has not decided on a major yet, but is considering economics as an option.

Why aren't they thinking of their future?!?

Leaves you feeling queasy at the indifference and cluelessness.

(finger wags) YOU'RE fault that YOU didn't prepare or had a great job, because they're in SUCH abundance (finger wags)!!!

You would end up creating a downward spiral that hurts most people far more than it would help.

If you cap a CEO's yearly salary then that person will end up wanting more time off for that pay. Then more and then more still. The fight will not be about money, since that would be maxed out already, but about time off. Eventually you will have CEOs making the maximum wage with very little time at work.

This would "trickle down" because other people in the company would need to do the work while the CEO is off. These people would be getting less pay than the CEO (presumably the cap applies to them also) or maybe the same amount but working slightly more.

It is a death spiral where nobody wins.


Reasonable tax laws are the way to go. They have been proven to work and can work again.