The problem here is that the gain in income for a minimum wage employee is unlikely to be discretionary income.

I would agree...but do you think that most people who make mw would save the extra amt? I doubt it. Look, if you get a raise did you quick squirrel away the extra money from your checks? Did you celebrate? What'd you do? Maybe eventually you'd start saving, but initially you'd go out and be fluid with the money.

Which only gives you a brief bump, not bankable revenue.

well, no, b/c you are assuming that by raising the m.w. the average business would have more customers, and this is just not true, since there are businesses that cater to the lower classes, who, indeed, might see increased revenue, but there are just as many--if not more-- that cater to a class that will have less revenue if the minimum is raised, the crux is that the middle class get squeezed the hardest when the MW goes up, the small and middle sized businesses..from 5-50 employees.. get saddled with the increases ( and thusly pay less taxes to Uncle Sam) but also can't afford to hire middle management because the ground floor troups are more costly, and there's a place down the street with family or hiring illegals or walmart, so increasing prices is not an option. The wage increase comes out of his pocket, and he spends less...tumble down/up eco


did I use even a single period? sorry...........

On the same token, we aren't naive to think that other factors make being a small business harder today. Distribution, ads, etc all are more costly for small businesses, and that's just a short answer. Plus, you mentioned Walmart, but they have been undercutting prior to a hike in mw. I understand where yr coming from completely, but I just think that some of the problems you outlined are problems from other sources as well.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned (and forgive me if they did), but the episode of 30 Days in which they tried to live a month on minimum wage. Couldn't happen. They lived in an impoverished area, and used the so-called places that cater to lower classes and still got the bum rush.

I make over minimum wage, and I still have to work 2 jobs. It really sucks when you work hard, and really care about your job(s) in yet have to worry about groceries, or how yr going to pay next month's rent as yr living paycheck to paycheck.

And since we already bandied about the drug thing, after so much substandard living,isn't the easy escape drugs for many? its established sociology, then comes the downward spiral. But Do we just say such is life, turn republican, or do we become "bleeding heart liberals?" Both have patronizing stances.

This from the guy who buys DVDs like they are crack.

I think at this point, the only real "hike" in minimum wage is basically a COLA allowance. i.e., just keeping it at the level of inflation. When was it last raised? 1996-7? Hell, I was buying gas for 75¢ a gallon, and weeg was $25/quarter... I think both have gone up considerably sense then. (Last time I earned mw these were my primary expenditures, so you may be onto something about most mw-earners not being the primary income earner in a household )

It's not harder for small businesses today, and though I'm not going to put much, if any effort into actually proving it, it's probably easier. I run my own small business, and I work primarily with other small businesses. There is a Darwinist churn that kicks out the bums each and every year. These people tend not to understand simple concepts like, "you will lose 1/3 of your customer base every year, guaranteed", "be nice to people, because word of mouth is a powerful tool" or simple positioning.

As for Wal-Mart and other big businesses, they may be undercutting on price, but people make decisions on factors other than price every single day. This story is a great example of why many small businesses don't do a good job of that, and it has nothing to do with price. Also, Stihl has just announced that they will not offer any of their products in Home Depot, only smaller hardware & powertools stores. That's a nice competitive advantage to have, too. I've been to enough silly networking groups to see that so small business is all about give and take. Unfortunately, 95% of these bozos are only concerned with taking, not giving. That's why I quit going to them, even if you do get a free lunch.



I saw this, and Spurlock is full of shit. I'm not saying you can support yourself or a family on minimum wage, but we first get back to the fact that most MW earners, aren't the sole earner (Democratic Policy Committee says 36%; United Food & Commercial Workers says 35%, hardly heartless right wingers, who claim closer to 15%). Secondly, Spurlock once again padded his argument with non-quantifiable health problems. I'll leave his wife's UTI untouched, but his "my wrist feels broken" from doing a day's worth of manual labor, was bunk. It provided a vehicle to get himself into the ER at the very beginning of the demonstration, which furthers the impossibility and drama.



But how old are you? Mid-to-late 20s, right? I'm turning 30 in November, and I'm having the best income of my life. It wasn't easy getting here, but I can see that my work has paid off and I'm turning the corner. That's the way it's supposed to work. We are near the bottom rungs of the ladder, and as idealist as it sounds, it will get better as you continue to build more experience and put in your time.

Two years ago, I was seriously considering moving away from here, because the skyrocketing house prices were outpacing my income bigtime. If everything stays sorta close to plan, however, I am looking at finally getting my own house within the next 12-24 months…even after the housing prices went up from two years ago.

That all being said, I actually have no problem with them raising the minimum wage.

A bunch of comments...

Ya know...I just don't buy the business owner argument...if just because its basically just an argument that the lower the wages the better...pretty much what kept slavery around for so long.

Being told you could keep more people working if you don't actually have to pay them enough to feed, cloth and house themselves doesn't really sound like you're doing society any favors in my book.

Then, there's the drug dealers make less than minimum wage comments. Yup, but that's just the junkies that are used to run the streets and make the small deals..take all the chances and don't get paid shit. Go up a couple levels and we're talking serious stacks of cash. A couple rungs up and the guys are laughing at the street dealers.

The, the satallite dish and car thing....just because someone is poor doesn't mean they have to listen to you, me or anyone else about how to spend what little money they have. If they have 500 bucks a month and would rather live in a run down shack, sit on the floor and eat mac and cheese twoci a day but spend their cash o a satallite dish...that's their business.

Relatedly, projects are hardly full of people making mimimum wage. Minimum wage people are the working poor who often don't get government houseing or healthcare or anything else becuase under the way thigns work, in exchange for the government mandating a minimum wage, they are pretty much told to fend for themselves if they've got a full time job...although there is some help in food stamps and/or medical for children.

And, while there are plenty of teenagers and students making mimimum wage, you're out of touch with large segments of the country if you don't think there are plenty of adults out there trying to support themselves on minimum wage.

And, to TinyE...

Good luck out there. Glad to hear you're fine now, but wait 20 years until your teeth fall out without getting dental care...your health fails and you have to wait weeks so you can sit in a grimey wiating room to get medical care at a clinic by a doctor who just got his liscence and is only working there to get his student loans written off...

Either do whatever you have to do to improve your emplpoyment situation for the longer haul...or at the very least fight the system with any mean necessary.

In a country with our vast resources there is no excuse to pay working people so little that they cannot even afford a decent, non-roach infested place to live, basic healthcare and decent food.

Minimum wage is about the only system we have in place to at least attempt to make this possible for the very large group of Americans out there who would rather work and support themselves than just say fuck it, lose their job and attempt to go the welfare route. To say the only way we will make even a token effort to impriove the lot in life of this group of people is to show a commensurate financial benefit to the filthy rich is nothing short of horribly evil and I would feel no shame in personally sticking red hot pokers into the tmples of each and everty politico who favors such a proposition.

35% of minimum wage earners being sole wage earners is still a shitload of people, ya know. I guess your world view is OK with just saying fuck you...starve for all I care to a couple million people in favor of those who are doing more than just fine just because it may help a few people who could do without the extra help, but I'm gonna have to disagree.

And while most people on this board can expect to blow far past minimum wage, considering I think as a group this board would be overwhelmingly college-educated, white, and probaly from a family where at least one parent had a pretty solid background...that's not exactly representative of minimum wage earners...nervermind the country...as a whole.

From E.J. Dione, Washington Post:

"But I would argue that this is the week in which conservatism, Hamiltonian or not, reached the point of collapse.

The most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled spasm occurred last night when the Senate voted on a bill that would have simultaneously raised the minimum wage and slashed taxes on inherited wealth.

Rarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism than this measure. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase in the minimum wage.

So the seemingly ingenious Republican leadership, which dearly wants deep cuts in the estate tax, proposed offering nickels and dimes to the working class to secure billions for the rich. Fortunately, though not surprisingly, the bill failed.

The episode was significant because it meant Republicans were acknowledging that they would not hold congressional power without the help of moderates. That is because there is nothing close to a conservative majority in the United States.

Yet their way of admitting this was to put on display the central goal of the currently dominant forces of politics: to give away as much as possible to the truly wealthy. You wonder what those blue-collar conservatives once known as Reagan Democrats made of this spectacle.

Last night's shenanigans were merely a symptom. Consider other profound fissures within the right. There is an increasingly bitter debate over whether it made any sense to wage war in Iraq in the hopes of transforming that country into a democracy. Conservatives with excellent philosophical credentials, including my colleague George F. Will, and Bill Buckley himself, see the enterprise as profoundly unconservative.

I guess I don't completely understand how saying that the government doesn't need to increase minimum wage is saying fuck you to people who have minimum wage jobs. I guess I don't feel that it's the government's responsibilty to provide job security and a bigger paycheck for people.

I would be curious to see what would happen if the government did away with all minimum wage or mandated wages and see what happens across the board in big corporations and small business alike. I don't think you would see too many successful businesses that attempted to pay their employees (actual U.S. citizens, that is) wages that were horribly low.

Also, I know plenty of people that have never graduated high school, who are primary income earners in a household, with kids, that make much more money than I do (who has one of those wonderful college educations). In fact, the only people I know that even still make minimum wage are people who are either still in highschool or people that are getting some crappy summer job on their college break.

Hell, is it even that hard to get a job in some random factory that pays at least 10 bucks an hour for some mindless assembly line job?

I put more responsibility on the individual to make things happen. For some it is way harder than others. However, anyone can do it. It's not hopeless and those who are adamant to the point of anger over raising minimum wage (not say you're one of them nobody) seem to be subtly implying that people are helpless and can't overcome whatever obstacles exist. Perpetuating laziness and a hopelessness that exists is what could possibly be a residual effect of continual minimum wage increases. My grandfather, a first generation Sicilian, was a dry cleaner employee his whole life with a few years taking bets at a horse racing track, and my father was still able to fund his whole college and medical school expenses becoming one of the wealthiest people I personally know. I can't imagine, in my understanding of financial dregs, that my father came from much worse than what people claim to be a part of in the contemporary world.

...and again Harry jumps in with the liberal mantra that not taking something away from someone equates to giving them a hand-out.

First off, the 35% number came from two pro-increase factions, to illustrate the point that most, i.e. a majority, of minimum wage earners are not the primary source of income for themselves or their families.

Secondly, raising the minimum wage won't end poverty, even if you make it $100/hr.

Finally, I hope your job doesn't require reading comprehension, or you're overpaid.

Or put another way... the traditional American principles of looking out for the little guy (principles that created a middle class upon which our nation's unique, unprecedented strength was built) have been contradicted and rolled back for the last 30 years... with an uncritical acceptance of what this will mean for our future.

Liberal is good. Conservative is evil. Americam reclaim your language from the the brain-dead! Your ontological vocation is to increase life, and fight against death.

This is where I think the US version of Libertarianism (unbridled capitalism) goes from an interesting theory to downright insanity. I'm sorry, but corporations are greedy by their very nature and they'd shit all over their employees if government regulations weren't around to protect workers. Have you ever read about working conditions in the 20s? The United States was a true third world country before labor movements demanded that the government step in to protect workers in the 30s and 40s.



30 years ago, no. But today, especially in Cleveland, factory jobs becoming a thing of the past, and those people are now working for shit wages and virtually no benefits.



Yes, it's important for the individual to be responsible for making things happen, but I think people should also feel entitled to certain things like education (even up to the university level) and universal health care. I always hear stories about how a husband/wife suffered their whole life, worked three horrible full time jobs to help pay for things like food, shelter, education, etc. for their family, but that doesn't mean it should be that way, especially considering how fantastically wealthy this country is.

And continual minimum wage increases? People's purchasing power has actually been going down for decades now due to a LACK of minimum wage increases. If anything, the average person should be making at least $10 an hour. You're attacking the wrong people dude.

Well, I think that you make some interesting points, but I don't think I am attacking anyone. I have no love for the big corporations. But, people whining that the Feddy government isn't giving them what they deserve is a load of shit.

It's a work ethic, plain and simple. Yes, there will always be people who despite their best efforts will fail and not be able to overcome, and those are the ones who deserve help, but some random schmuck that doesn't want to exert himself to progress doesn't deserve a mandated wage, and it seems like more and more there are loads of special interest groups that are spouting off some right that they deserve. It's not a rich person's fault that someone else is poor. I also don't think it's the government's fault unless they are sepcifically oppressing people and purposefully making it so that success is impossible. And, I don't feel that is the case right now.

And I am not attacking corporations because attacking corporations is a whole different subject.

I don't think that puts it another way at all. Don't forget, your vaunted middle class needs someone to put 'em to work. You want it should be the government, comrade? Here in Chicago, the middle class won't be shopping at the new downtown Target. Good thing, because those jobs were really bad things from which we've been protected.

This is the lie that keeps being promulgated... that government is the enemy of our interests. I consider this unAmerican and unPatriotic. If you don't like the government why don't you leave... go away to some place where unfettered gansterism has full control... go to Russia. You Russian sympathizer.

Reclaim the American promise! Don't let the death-addicted conservatives continue their unamerican lies!!! Ship all the conservatives to Russia where they belong!!

I'm too lazy to find numbers, but I bet the average person already makes more than $10/hour.

There's no reason to pay some turdshucker in a Church's Chicken costume $30,000 to wave at cars.

"Average" is a shadow that hides lies too. The "average" person doesn't have cancer, so let's not help those who do.

You've changed the quote but you make no sense. How does your change respond to the point that directing social policy to a median or "average" point is misguided.

I'm too lazy to actually debate, but it's cool that we have harrys and billzebubs on here.

It responds because when you direct social policy to a median or "average"" point, you can only do so at the expense of those who strive to do better than average.

You're an educator, IIRC. Do you give all of your students a "C"? Do you withold texts and exclude better students from lectures in oder to make it easier for the less accomplished and the lazy students? Isn't that directing policy to a median or "average" point?