Folks are talking about this, so heres my carefully deliberated comment on the minimum wage hike. The tl;dr version (a minimum wage hike only helps those at the minimum. It HURTS the rest of us). a) minimum wage was never meant to be something you stayed at. Its a starter wage that youre supposed to move away from as you grow in skill and professionalism. b) the economic situation has made it nearly impossible for those at the minimum wage to move upward and the trend toward more and more technologically-proficient and/or mental knowledge-based career paths means it is harder to move from minimum wage to anything else without college c) college costing what it does now is making it harder for those with minimum wage jobs and no experience to move into a better income bracket, because once they do, they have to start repaying their college loans - the net result is a higher-paying job and a higher-rated knowledge level, but the same amount of expendable income for the majority of college students (save certain degree/career paths with exponential pay-growth rates). d) increasing wages means that those at the minimum wage level have more spendable income, which will (naturally) be returned to the economy, resulting in an economic boost. The same can be said by the government giving out bonus checks to every member of the nation - extra income gets spent, more often than not, there nearly always being something that people are not doing because they cannot afford it. This increase will be just as short lived as any other nationwide check-giving effort or incentive, such as cash for clunkers - which increased the sale of vehicles, having a positive effect on the economy, but which ended as soon as the program was ended - meaning no actual long-term benefit was obtained. For clarification - One particular comment is valid - Just because minimum wage gets bumped up does not mean that everyone elses wage does so as well, meaning everyone else has their valuated income reduced by the same amount as the minimum wage increase (ie. if you bump minimum wage up a dollar, you decrease everyone elses valuated income by a dollar, since they are now closer to minimum wage). Addendum - Increasing minimum wage will mean that more people have more money to spend. As a result, the law of supply and demand will mean that, since more people have more money, the same items will increase in cost, since more people can afford to purchase it. The more who can afford it, the less there is. The less there is, the more valued the item becomes, until equilibrium between supply and demand is met - in a minimum wage argument, equilibrium will inevitably end up with the item in question being valued HIGHER than before the minimum wage was increased - a direct (and traceable) result of increasing the minimum wage. Please note - I am a Democrat by voting history and always for the betterment of those who are less well off - BUT... Increasing minimum wage helps only those at the bottom tier and does damage to everyone above. Since the lowest tier has more money, they can buy more, but you and I, who do not work at the minimum wage, see our actual purchasing power go DOWN.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Apr 2014 20:13:37 +0000
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