Seattle raises minimum wage to $15/hr

[slaterd]

I am another guy who rarely posts, but always disagrees with Sleeve, but I am with him on this one.

My argument: Most people think most things should be given to them. Its a rarity to see someone put in intense hard work for a long time to get to where they want to be. Raise my minimum wage because 8-9 dollars just isn't enough for me to have the newest cell phone or drive my BMW. No shit it isn't enough, you're flipping burgers! Your job requires no skill, and at best, your job helps make people obese!

You work a job when you are 16-21 where you don't get paid shit for your time, as a motivator to yourself, so you think, "Hell, I never want to work for so little again, let me better myself through education, or a worthwhile trade, etc."

If you are older and work in a shit show like Arby's/Wendy's, YOUR CHOICES got you there! Too many people like to pass the blame and come up with excuses as to why they are where they are, and they love bitching about their jobs and lifestyles, not realizing that the negativity they harbor in their minds spreads to every other aspect of their lives.

Call me an asshat, but I have no sympathy for anyone who isn't willing to put in a little work, get their hands dirty, and EARN a better quality of life.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Hell my job only required 40 hrs. a week. However I was assigned a shit ton of projects to coordinate. So I took the initiative to work hard and I've been working 50-60 hrs. a week for about 5 months now. Because of my hard work I'm lined up for ANOTHER promotion (I was just promoted to Jr. Project manager a few months ago). Just like my father always told me growing up watching him work 70 hr. weeks "Only hard work, perseverance, and skill pay off in life." I live up to that quote everyday.

[decay]

Didn't read you article decay, but the obvious thing about minimum wage earners not being savers is.......they don't make enough to save. They need to spend every last cent they make just to survive and pay bills. IF there is any little bit left, they do spend it as a treat for working a meaningful (they all are) job and barely getting by.

yeah, i know that very well. i spent the first 3 months of this year working an unskilled-labor job because i'd gotten burned out on startups and needed a break from the stress. it tied with my deployment to iraq for "hardest time of my life"; 12-16 hour days to pay the rent, and i still watched my savings dwindle.

hence my argument- business owners are not the "job creators". people who spend every cent they have, whether they have to or choose to, are. our economy's recovery will come through the increased purchasing power of a lot of people. it will not come from the continued consolidation of wealth into the hands of a small segment of the population (which is what a low minimum wage enables)- we need only look to banana republics in africa to see the endgame of that scenario.

edit: and if your reason for opposing the raise of minimum wage boils down to "that's more than i got! not fair!", you are being incredibly short-sighted.

[mrsleeve]

yeah, i know that very well. i spent the first 3 months of this year working an unskilled-labor job because i'd gotten burned out on startups and needed a break from the stress. it tied with my deployment to iraq for "hardest time of my life"; 12-16 hour days to pay the rent, and i still watched my savings dwindle.

You seem to have traded one stress for another. If you have skills for start ups why take a job as a sandwich artist or burger flipper or other totally unskilled position??? Why not take those problem solving skills and intimate market knowledge and move to a less stressful yet better paying job as cubical furniture for this time in your transition between start ups?????

hence my argument- business owners are not the "job creators". people who spend every cent they have, whether they have to or choose to, are. our economy's recovery will come through the increased purchasing power of a lot of people. it will not come from the continued consolidation of wealth into the hands of a small segment of the population (which is what a low minimum wage enables)- we need only look to banana republics in africa to see the endgame of that scenario.

Bull shit.....

Spending every red cent whether you have too or not is what got us into this down turn market collapse debockel in the 1st fucking place. Its placed a burden on those that have a job low payed or not, with the idea that "Well at least I have a job" to pay all those bills and debts they racked up by spending every red cent they make each month. In doing so you do nothing but place your self into indentured servitude to your banker and employer. The notion that there is someone walking into the front office every day hat in hand, with a resume looking for something to do, and might be willing to do it for less is also a key factor in all this.

Saving money allows you to have more choices in your life and what you do with it over all. It lets you ride out a down turn, a slow week or month, a job loss, a emergency leave of absence, or other unforeseen, issues that come up in life. Banks and the "small segment of the population" you mentioned LOVE people who think like you. Why because they will sell them selves for a new fucking cell phone, TV, or trinket bought on credit or always keeping them selves BROKE. Those people then HAVE you by your balls and they know it. They know you have to have that 350 bucks on pay day or you wont have food to eat a roof over your head or gas in the tank for the week, and they know you will do almost anything they ask of you to get it, including working for just enough to pay your obligations. They love guys like that, they are model employees because they are scared for their jobs and will not argue, bitch, or if they do will normally knuckle under when push comes to shove to keep their job to keep the lights on for 1 more week. Yet somehow those old people that saved every red cent they ever made need to be punished because they now live in paid for homes, drive paid for cars and dont have to go to work right..............................


back on topic A minimum wage was never intended to be a living wage, its intended to keep people from working for free, and should be its own built in incentive to make something of your self......

Excerpt from Mike Rowe's Recent testomy before congress

In all 50 states, everybody I talked to who owned a small business said, ‘the single biggest challenge we’re facing right now is finding people who are willing to retool, retrain, reboot and learn a truly useful skill from the ground up — and work, show up early, stay late and work,’” he told members of the committee.

“I know that sounds old school, but it really did become a recurring theme,” he added.

When a Democrat lawmaker suggested immigration reform would help, Rowe responded that a shortage of skilled labor isn’t as much of a problem as is the attitude many Americans have toward blue collar jobs.

Raising the Minimum wage to some arbitrary number that just sounds good and like a decent value is not going to solve this problem, we have to figure out how to solve the problem Mr Rowe is pointing out..............

edit: and if your reason for opposing the raise of minimum wage boils down to "that's more than i got! not fair!", you are being incredibly short-sighted.

If thats what you took away from my comment then I applogise for not be clear. It will hurt those that are already in that wage bracket because they are going to feel the biggest pinch in how far their earnings will actually go. Think about food prices at the grocery store when you have to pay all those people more (everyone knows the grocery business has thin margins) the land lords are going to be charging more for rents because everyone will be able to afford more, same for cheap houses with more people making enough to maybe get a mortgage, sellers will know this and will be wanting more for selling their stater homes. The fun things like dining out or going to the movies will go up when you have to pay the zit covered kid 15 bucks an hour to bus tables and wash the dishes or check your ticket stub and clean the shitters. What about all those parks and municipal services, well taxes and use fees are going to have to go up to pay all of those entry level people and summer help. Those people that already make 14-17 bucks an hour will feel their "real" purchasing power decrease to the level of those newly "empowered" minimum wage earners ...... Like Doom said you will trying to help those at the bottom at the expense of those close to it by dragging them back down to the new bottom, either way they are still on the bottom and you have just put more people down there with them.

And really does a sandwich artist really deserve to earn 31k a year when working a standard 40 hour week.


edit:
Slaterd: Your Dad sounds much like my grandfather. He had a similar saying that has gotten me to where I am today and though A LOT of very rough times, there is not a day that goes by these words dont ring in my head...... Nothing worth anything ever comes easy...

[decay]

You seem to have traded one stress for another. If you have skills for start ups why take a job as a sandwich artist or burger flipper or other totally unskilled position??? Why not take those problem solving skills and intimate market knowledge and move to a less stressful yet better paying job as cubical furniture for this time in your transition between start ups?????

you clearly have no understanding of the california job market. i am in the better-paying-but-less-stressful job now; it took those 3 months to find that job. no matter how talented you are, things do not happen overnight. you can't just hop from one to the other, because unlike in minnesota, lots of people live here. there are lots of people competing for these jobs. you have to prove you're the best candidate.

Bull shit.....

Spending every red cent whether you have too or not is what got us into this down turn market collapse debockel in the 1st fucking place.

wrong.

what got is into this debacle (spelt correctly, often the sign of someone who knows what they're talking about) is lending institutions extending credit to people they knew couldn't make good on the loans, and then packaging up and reselling that toxic debt to someone else.

then the government took the money that you and i pay in taxes, and gave it to the people who bought these bad loans, to cover their losses on their own bad investment.

that's what happened.

Saving money allows you to have more choices in your life and what you do with it over all. (et cetera, yadda yadda)

as Todd pointed out, that's all well and good when you have the option of saving money. the whole point is, people on minimum wage *don't*.

back on topic A minimum wage was never intended to be a living wage

wrong again, that's *exactly* what it was intended to be.

If thats what you took away from my comment then I applogise for not be clear.

that comment was not directed at you; it was directed at all the daddy-quoting millenials who are swinging on your nutsack. (looking at you here, slaterd.)

It will hurt those that are already in that wage bracket because they are going to feel the biggest pinch in how far their earnings will actually go. Think about food prices at the grocery store when you have to pay all those people more (everyone knows the grocery business has thin margins) the land lords are going to be charging more for rents because everyone will be able to afford more, same for cheap houses with more people making enough to maybe get a mortgage, sellers will know this and will be wanting more for selling their stater homes. The fun things like dining out or going to the movies will go up when you have to pay the zit covered kid 15 bucks an hour to bus tables and wash the dishes or check your ticket stub and clean the shitters. What about all those parks and municipal services, well taxes and use fees are going to have to go up to pay all of those entry level people and summer help. Those people that already make 14-17 bucks an hour will feel their "real" purchasing power decrease to the level of those newly "empowered" minimum wage earners ...... Like Doom said you will trying to help those at the bottom at the expense of those close to it by dragging them back down to the new bottom, either way they are still on the bottom and you have just put more people down there with them.

this is the part where you get to explain to me why none of these things has happened in San Jose, my hometown, in the article i quoted above.

And really does a sandwich artist really deserve to earn 31k a year when working a standard 40 hour week.

and this is the part where i repeat the bit about:

"that's more than i got! not fair!"

[mrsleeve]

you clearly have no understanding of the california job market. i am in the better-paying-but-less-stressful job now; it took those 3 months to find that job. no matter how talented you are, things do not happen overnight. you can't just hop from one to the other, because unlike in minnesota, lots of people live here. there are lots of people competing for these jobs. you have to prove you're the best candidate.

I dont live in MN, I dont work in my home town I dont even work in my home fucking STATE, Why you might ask BECAUSE THERE ARE NO FUCKING JOBS HERE. I go where there is work for me to do, then when its all done I come home, sometimes you have to be willing to do something you really dont want to do to further your self, and not wait for opportunity come to you, but this is a topic for another thread. Well good you have the job you wanted, I was referring to your interim between "preferred jobs" there was not something where filing copious amounts of TPS reports available in your fair city????

wrong.

what got is into this debacle (spelt correctly, often the sign of someone who knows what they're talking about) is lending institutions extending credit to people they knew couldn't make good on the loans, and then packaging up and reselling that toxic debt to someone else.

then the government took the money that you and i pay in taxes, and gave it to the people who bought these bad loans, to cover their losses on their own bad investment.

that's what happened

Like I said, people buying things that are above their means, the banks were just taking advantage of all of us stupid people. As you should know I was never a supporter of TO BIG TO FAIL tax payer funded bail outs

Pardon the spelling, its not a strong suite of mine. Not entirely correct but in the most basic sense. People were willing to SPEND EVERY CENT they made each month to get into those loans. No one put a gun to their heads and forced them to sign on the bottom line. Yes the Govt OWNED mortgage institutions were under writing the entire thing and had largely incentivised the banking industry to make risky bets. These facts do not negate the underlying causes of society as a whole letting every nickel burn a white hot hole in their pocket, while trying to keep up with the jone's next door.

I used to think the govt was totally at fault for this whole deal and I have been on record as thinking such for a long time. Its only recently I have started to look at that from a different more fundamental perspective. A totally different way of thinking and looking at where we are going compared to where we have come form so to speak. You see its this whole culture of buying things you cant really afford on credit and extending your obligations to the limit when you do is the fundamental underlying cause of the mess we are in. 50 years ago you worked and saved for the things you wanted or needed and if you did take loan it was on very short terms by todays standards. The banking industry was just preying on all of us fools to stupid to realize just what we were getting into. I got bit too and hard, my credit scores still bare the scares of those hard learned lessons, I am just very glad to have learned these lessons in my late 20's

as Todd pointed out, that's all well and good when you have the option of saving money. the whole point is, people on minimum wage *don't*.

Not disagreeing with that on the whole, but this is still a choice that can be made. Low skill entry level jobs, are just that ENTRY LEVEL. As in entering the work force, traditional occupied by teens and board housewives needing extra spending money. With the current trend of doing more with less after the last issue thanks to some of the reasons I outlined in the last post. Many of those better paying jobs are not coming back forcing those displaced higher wage earners to displace the traditional occupants of ENTRY LEVEL JOBS. This does not negate the fact they are ENTRY LEVEL. You dont pay a kid off the street Journeyman Carpenters wages when he does not know which end of the hammer to use, or that a board stretcher is a joke. You dont pay a guy that yesterday was a cab driver Master ASE mechanics wages when he has no clue what the pointy end of a screw driver is for....

The point is they are entry level jobs and just because you have a masters in basket weaving or native studies and were paid 38k a year at your last job giving tours at your local heritage site, does not mean you should be paid a similar wage to make my peanut buster parfait, or come out to spray my lawn for ticks, skeeters and weeds.....

wrong again, that's *exactly* what it was intended to be.

when the federal Minimum wage was enacted in 1938 and adjusted to inflation, it would be worth about 4 bucks today NOT a living wage then, and even now its almost double what it was worth at its inception.

http://economy.money.cnn.com/2013/02/14/minimum-wage-history/

that comment was not directed at you; it was directed at all the daddy-quoting millenials who are swinging on your nutsack. (looking at you here, slaterd.)

this is the part where you get to explain to me why none of these things has happened in San Jose, my hometown, in the article i quoted above.

We are talking about an isolated area and a very wealthy one at that. We are also talking about a 10 dollar Min wage not 50% higher than that that. Also according to the chart you have brought M/W buying power back to about its 1968 high level when adjusted for inflation. Something that was more than likely appropriate for that smaller localized area, even with that said it seems as if ALL of those things happened there

http://badideaca.com/media/san-jose-minimum-wage-study.pdf

and this is the part where i repeat the bit about:

31k a year is 6200 5 dollar sammich's a year just cover the W2 wages of one employee. If you have 10 employees then you have to sell 62000 sammiches or about 170 sammichs a day. By the time you factor in the 3% employer SS contributions, the unemployment, workman's comp, insurance premiums lets round it up and say your having to sell a minimum of 200 sammichs a day give or take just to cover your annual employee over head with out taking into consideration accounting costs, possible health care requirements, or even any other benefits . Lets be optimistic and say it takes 3 mins to make a sammich from start to finish of customer orders to walking away. thats 600 mins or 10 hours a day of productive employee work time JUST TO COVER your basic wage costs for 10 employees......... This structure does not even touch your building, your taxes, your supplier costs

According to this guy that would equal about 1/2 of your days sales

https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080325191910AAbLAYA

[einhander]

I am another guy who rarely posts, but always disagrees with Sleeve, but I am with him on this one.

My argument: Most people think most things should be given to them. Its a rarity to see someone put in intense hard work for a long time to get to where they want to be. Raise my minimum wage because 8-9 dollars just isn't enough for me to have the newest cell phone or drive my BMW. No shit it isn't enough, you're flipping burgers! Your job requires no skill, and at best, your job helps make people obese!

You work a job when you are 16-21 where you don't get paid shit for your time, as a motivator to yourself, so you think, "Hell, I never want to work for so little again, let me better myself through education, or a worthwhile trade, etc."

If you are older and work in a shit show like Arby's/Wendy's, YOUR CHOICES got you there! Too many people like to pass the blame and come up with excuses as to why they are where they are, and they love bitching about their jobs and lifestyles, not realizing that the negativity they harbor in their minds spreads to every other aspect of their lives.

Call me an asshat, but I have no sympathy for anyone who isn't willing to put in a little work, get their hands dirty, and EARN a better quality of life.

Your lack of empathy is un-American.

Whether or not someone made poor decisions leading to employment at in an unskilled job is irrelevant. The important thing is that they're working and even if they're flipping your burgers, they're providing you with a service.

Also, a lot of people flipping burgers work two fucking jobs so they can pay their rent, put food on the table, and if they're among the luckiest, save ten dollars a week.

I know working poor who put in 16 hour days and hustle as much or more than anyone on this forum. They don't want hand outs, but I think they're justified in asking not to be even further left behind the already sickening wealth gap.

You should go and talk to some of these people. You'll have a much better understanding of where your burgers come from.

[BraveUlysses]

I don't see how anybody can even live on $15 an hour unless working 60+ hour weeks.

Now imagine trying to do so @ 7.25/hr.

A better option is to enhance the earned-income tax credit. Let people keep more of their money.

Then again, only 30m people make minimum wage so raising that threshold will certainly cause some job loss, but at the same time a number of people will move out of poverty/working-poor and consume more.

Tricky one.

Tax credits allow you to keep more money than you've paid but they cannot be instituted on a localized level like this can be.

Must be fun to live in your world, I wish I didnt have to live in reality.....

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/31/study-states-with-higher-minimum-wages-had-higher-unemployment/

You raise your over head you have to raise your prices. You dont have to worry too much about keeping a competitive edge because all your competition has to do the same. All that extra money has to come from somewhere, and I dont know a business owner thats not out to make money for him self, so cutting into already slim profit margins (in many of the service industries that employ large amounts of Minimum wage workers) is going to be one of the last things on the list to "absorb" the increased over head costs.

Congratulations, you don't even know the definition of 'overhead'. Nobody is denying this will have additional costs for employers.

How about we totaly get rid of the Income tax and move to the fair tax and let everyone keep all the money they earn

Just move to a 3rd world country no need to bring that shit here.

I am another guy who rarely posts, but always disagrees with Sleeve, but I am with him on this one.

My argument: Most people think most things should be given to them. Its a rarity to see someone put in intense hard work for a long time to get to where they want to be. Raise my minimum wage because 8-9 dollars just isn't enough for me to have the newest cell phone or drive my BMW. No shit it isn't enough, you're flipping burgers! Your job requires no skill, and at best, your job helps make people obese!

You work a job when you are 16-21 where you don't get paid shit for your time, as a motivator to yourself, so you think, "Hell, I never want to work for so little again, let me better myself through education, or a worthwhile trade, etc."

If you are older and work in a shit show like Arby's/Wendy's, YOUR CHOICES got you there! Too many people like to pass the blame and come up with excuses as to why they are where they are, and they love bitching about their jobs and lifestyles, not realizing that the negativity they harbor in their minds spreads to every other aspect of their lives.

Call me an asshat, but I have no sympathy for anyone who isn't willing to put in a little work, get their hands dirty, and EARN a better quality of life.

Ok, you're a judgmental asshat.

31k a year is 6200 5 dollar sammich's a year just cover the W2 wages of one employee. If you have 10 employees then you have to sell 62000 sammiches or about 170 sammichs a day. By the time you factor in the 3% employer SS contributions, the unemployment, workman's comp, insurance premiums lets round it up and say your having to sell a minimum of 200 sammichs a day give or take just to cover your annual employee over head with out taking into consideration accounting costs, possible health care requirements, or even any other benefits . Lets be optimistic and say it takes 3 mins to make a sammich from start to finish of customer orders to walking away. thats 600 mins or 10 hours a day of productive employee work time JUST TO COVER your basic wage costs for 10 employees......... This structure does not even touch your building, your taxes, your supplier costs

According to this guy that would equal about 1/2 of your days sales

https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/questio...5191910AAbLAYA

Citing yahoo answers for your arguments is beyond stupid.

This is great math for a third grader. So, you got that going for you, which is nice.



Your anger over this issue is 100% pure sour grapes.

It has nothing to do with economics (because if it did, you wouldn't be googling your way through this argument). It has everything to do with your personal and political beliefs that the poor just don't have it shitty enough in this country and don't 'deserve' to earn enough money to be able to live without significant concessions to their standard of living or being forced onto welfare in order to survive.

[ParsedOut]

Your lack of empathy is un-American.

Whether or not someone made poor decisions leading to employment at in an unskilled job is irrelevant. The important thing is that they're working and even if they're flipping your burgers, they're providing you with a service.

Also, a lot of people flipping burgers work two fucking jobs so they can pay their rent, put food on the table, and if they're among the luckiest, save ten dollars a week.

I know working poor who put in 16 hour days and hustle as much or more than anyone on this forum. They don't want hand outs, but I think they're justified in asking not to be even further left behind the already sickening wealth gap.

You should go and talk to some of these people. You'll have a much better understanding of where your burgers come from.

Correction, his lack of empathy is Capitalism in a nutshell...and what is more American than that?

My father told me something when I was in my late teens and entering the workforce that stuck with me until this very day. He said son, "It doesn't matter what job you have or what you do, as long as you strive to do a better job than you did the previous day and do so with a humble attitude and pride in your work. Make your superiors understand you are always pushing for the next rung and you will go places you never realized were possible." That is paraphrased, but the gist of the conversation. Over the last 15 years his words never failed and simply by working hard and pushing for the next level I've had incredible success, more so than my formal education should allow.

People who do not share the same drive should not reap the rewards, this whole trophy for everyone mentality is causing greater ripples in our society and economy than most people realize.

[CorvallisBMW]

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/31/study-states-with-higher-minimum-wages-had-higher-unemployment/

Ignoring the fact that this right-wing website has a clear and present agenda to show only 1 side of this issue, let's break this down a bit:

Focusing in on 16-to-19-year-olds, researchers found that the “mean annual average teenage unemployment rate in states with minimum wages above $7.25 per hour in 2013 was 22.5 percent, which was 2.0 percentage points above the 20.5 percent mean annual average unemployment rate in states with minimum wages at $7.25 per hour.”

You're only focusing on 16-19 year-olds? What about the rest of the population? This age group represents about 10% of the population and is by no means representative of the workforce as a whole. Cherry-picking a specific data set in order to arrive at a predetermined conclusion is NOT how you perform a study like this. By only looking at less than 25% of your workforce, and by segregating that sample pool to a range that is unrepresentative of that workforce as a whole, the study makes clear that it has no desire to be unbiased but instead has selected it's data in such a way as to support the predetermined conclusion that it's readers want to hear.

These figures are worth noting, said the authors, because teenagers made up 24.2 percent of all minimum wage earners in 2013.

Also note that they simply lumped in every state with wages less than $7.25 and then compared them to every state with wages of more than $7.25. This would be fine if the ONLY thing that contributed to unemployment rates was wages, but there are hundreds of factors that go in to those numbers, maybe even thousands. Correlation =/= causation. Again this is not how you perform a study. You cannot, with any level of statistical significance, assert than the unemployment rates are tied to wages when your data is this poorly organized and analyzed, and when you assert that only 1 variable is contributing to the observed shift. It might as well be an article on space aliens.

Now, how about some real data to put this whole argument in to perspective?

Ten years ago, San Francisco raised its minimum wage from $6.75 to $8.50 an hour, a 26 percent increase. Since then, it has gone up at regular intervals to its current $10.74 an hour, the highest big-city starting wage in the country.

The city has slapped other mandates on businesses, including paid sick leave and a requirement to provide health-care coverage or pay into a pool for uninsured residents.

What have the effects been on employment?

Almost none, according to economists at the University of California, Berkeley, who have studied San Francisco, eight other cities that raised their minimum wages in the past decade, and 21 states with higher base pay than the federal minimum.

Businesses absorbed the costs through lower turnover, small price increases at restaurants, which have a high concentration of low-wage workers, and higher worker productivity, the researchers found.

But what about prices, you say? I'm glad you asked:

Potential price increases at restaurants was the biggest negative impact identified by the Berkeley researchers. The cost of eating out went up 2 to 3 percent when the minimum wage rose 25 percent.

Wow, 2-3%? Holy shit, that's like... 50 cents on a 20 dollar tab. Call 911! The sky is falling! Now that 25% increase in purchasing power is, like 22%, it's the end of the world!!!!


Let's move on... Let's expand and look at the nation as a whole. This study was completed in 2013 and looked country-wide at employment data from 2000-2012:

The report reviews evidence on eleven possible adjustments to minimum-wage increases that may help to explain why the measured employment effects are so consistently small. The strongest evidence suggests that the most important channels of adjustment are: reductions in labor turnover; improvements in organizational efficiency; reductions in wages of higher earners ("wage compression"); and small price increases.

Given the relatively small cost to employers of modest increases in the minimum wage, these adjustment mechanisms appear to be more than sufficient to avoid employment losses, even for employers with a large share of low-wage workers.

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf

BTW there are 84 references used in that paper, compared to the 0 listed in the Daily Caller article

Would you rather have the TL;DR version? OK:

other economists have done similar studies at the state and county level when a minimum wage change makes labor more expensive in one jurisdiction than in a neighboring one. The chart above shows the results of more than 1,400 different studies. The x-axis shows the size of the employment effect, and the y-axis shows that statistical power of the analysis.

The results have clustered around the finding that a moderate wage increase – in line with the administration’s proposal to increase the minimum rate in 95-cent increments – has zero effect on total employment. And the higher a study’s statistical power, the more likely it is to fall on the line showing zero effect.

“I really think that’s a very compelling takeaway,” said Hall, who has testified before multiple state legislatures on the issue. “It puts the lie to the notion that it’s going to be a tremendous job killer.”

I'd also point out that 80% of Americans (Including 62% of Republicans) support increasing the minimum wage. In fact not 1 single demographic that was surveyed showed less than a 60% approval rate for the $10.10 increase. http://www.nelp.org/page/-/rtmw/uplo...pdf?nocdn=1%5C

So, let's recap: The overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed (i.e. legitimate and properly-done) research papers show that increases in the minimum wage and little-to-no increase in unemployment rates.

"But it's common sense!!" I hear the conservatives on this forum crying. "Duh! If you raise the minimum wage, employers will have to higher less! It's the simplest, most common-sense thing in the world!!!" Well I hate to burst you bubble, but this is one of those very complicated issues where common sense doesn't match up with reality.

Think about it this way: 1000 years ago it was common sense that the earth was 5000 years old. 600 years ago it was common sense that the earth was flat. 500 years ago it was common sense that the earth was the center of the universe. 300 years ago it was common sense that slavery was perfectly OK practice, and 100 years ago it was common sense to keep races segregated. There's a lot of "common sense" floating around out there, but in this case in particular the actual, real-world data proves that common sense isn't correct. Now if only we can get the Flat-Earthers to listen...

sources:

http://economics.mit.edu/files/3279

http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Dube1.pdf

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15038936/Dube_MinimumWagesFamilyIncomes.pdf

[The Dark Side of Will]

that means, when you give them more money, they go out and *spend it*. do i need to explain why that's a good thing?

That's a bad thing.
It means that when they need to dip into that savings and it isn't there, they'll be on SS which will be funded by my, or my childrens', tax burden.

If they have the skills to command a higher wage in the labor market, good for them.
The government mandate to pay more for less is just going to distort the labor market and tie unskilled minimum wage earners to Seattle, because they won't be able to earn a living anywhere else in the country.

This is the real result of a $15/hr minimum wage: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...flipping-robot

[CorvallisBMW]

I'll also go ahead and point out that the same people who believe that a hike in the minimum wage will have significant effects on unemployment and the economy are THE SAME PEOPLE who believe that this represents "lack of consensus":

[Turf1600]

Seriously though - on a larger scale there would certainly be a push to replace some of these jobs with technology and/or increase efficiency.

My question is - if minimum wage goes up will my pay go up too? Let's say I get $4x to manage people who get $2x - with minimum wage being x. To continue to attract quality candidates our current 2x employees will require a wage increase if we want to stay competitive in the job market. How far up the stream does this go? Will my pay increase by $1.5x?

[Wschnitz]

No this is bad, say goodbye to low income jobs that can be replaced by kiosks.

Food and local shopping prices are already high here in comparison to other states, do people really think raising the Minimum wage means that all food and local item prices will magically stay the same and everyone can afford everything? No, raising the minimum wage just means everything will be more expensive.

Yay $10 burgers!

[Turf1600]

Maybe it's just because I work in healthcare - but making low quality food less accessible to the poor isn't the worst thing in the world provided that other grocery prices stay relatively stable. $1 bacon cheeseburgers have long term costs much greater than $1.

[bmwm42]

I dont see the big point here shit goes up every year for everything yet most wages stay the same. If anything it will all balance out to be pretty much where everything is now. Remember $1 whoppers at bk now how has that gotten more expensive to make in the ten years to command a 500 % increase on that's right beef prices gas etc etc rich get richer..... and r3v gets poorer and poorer. Companies aren't going to leave and off they do they didn't care about their employees or customers just the bottom line, and without the employees or customers there isn't a bottom line to look at.