Not really, a lot of the negative affects people talk about aren't there or are overblown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage
If people have more money in their pocket, they tend to spend it. Spending stimulates the economy. There is also less turnover, so less training which costs......... money. So money/time is saved there.
One thing you don't understand is a "forced" higher consumer surplus. When someone has more money, corporations will want more of it. This essentially takes the same $5 hamburger and turns it into $7 (to pay employees more, or keep it at $5 and run other small businesses out). What has changed? You wen't from $9.32 to $15, but you still have the same spending habits. How does this stimulate the economy by creating jobs when it's economics 101 states that it's false?
The demand for labor will be negatively sloped in all types of production for two reasons. First, a rise in the wage rate increases the costs of firms producing the commodity, forcing them to raise their selling prices. As the price of the product rises consumers will buy less of it and less output will be produced and sold. This means that less labor will be used. Second, since a rise in wages makes labor more expensive relative to capital, firms will substitute capital for labor. This means that less labor will be used to produce whatever output the firms in the industry sell.
It hasn't kept up like it was supposed to/intended, Republicans keep voting against it, blocking it.
Exactly, because it hurts, more than it will ever help. There will be more people on social programs, keeping American's sucking on the teet of the American government and voting liberals with these views to continue the suckle.
Although I don't believe Wikipedia to be 100% truthful, here is a counter argument to your graphic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates - Notice the United States starts at 0%, whereas almost all the other countries have a higher flat tax system to help pay for all the social programs they have.
$7.25 an hour, c'mon. I'm not saying anything like $20 but $10.10 doesn't seem bad.
When Obama signed the $10.10 in, it just so happened to be the time of the Fiscal Year that many contracts were up and needed to be bid on through RFP's. As in most cases, the lowest bidder wins the contact. They will have to pay $10.10 at a minimum per employee. As they bid so low, they are not making the profits that they wished (and help their investors out), so they cut back on labor or make extensive policies to overwork people by mandating two 15 minute breaks and 1 hour for lunch (using time systems like Kronos with ID's).
As Kronos tracks by the minute, a good employee may get fired if deemed necessary due to it giving them a point for being even a second late (or early) clocking in because they're at a higher rate (say $25/hour before this).
I've seen people that were "over paid", get released because they were seconds late and points built up on their employee record for 1) clocking in a
second early or 2) clocking in a
second late. In addition to that, I've seen contracts be bid on so low that they need to be sub-contracted out from corporations like Lockheed Martin to smaller businesses so that $10.10 can be paid. This keeps LM profiting without dispensing their valuable assets around the world (human assets) with relocation expenses, cost of living adjustments, etc.
So tell me, how is $10.10 or even $15 helpful to anyone with an education of economics and a little bit of what I've seen in the government contracting world?
I would just like to propose an alternative and keep the minimum wage in America as is, easing it to no price floor at all. This will create competition among corporations of who pays more and who can hire the most qualified workers. Surely, this will give Wal-Mart a wake-up call as other retailers would pay more to compete with insider knowledge. What are your opinions on that? Nonsense? It borderlines that, but it may be effective.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/what-will-15-minimum-wage-do-to-seattle-th8Feb8iTnCse9gSzdriyQ.html - First speaker (Richard Vedder, Ohio University Professor of Economics) hits it hard in 45 seconds, then you have a liberal speak tip-toeing around the issue like they always do (if you're right, just stop watching, though Richard Vedder goes on more to teach you some more economic principles).
