Quote:
Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule
Schneed, but labor cost is not just the minimum wage. With new healthcare and family leave initiatives, labor cost is going up far more than the 1960s or at any other time in the nation's history. 3 years ago, the owner of the company I work at had several positions in the general warehouse section that if their pay hit $10, they were capped there and most often chose to leave. Now the lowest paid employee starts at $9.50, even with min wage at 7.50, or whatever it is. And the company has raised several standing prices twice in the past 3 years, when it hadn't raised them in the first 7 years I worked here, and longer than that actually. It's certainly only one company's story, but we pass our costs on to the hospitals we serve, so their facility costs have gone up and with more government regulation they are actually using our service more which increases their cost another step. Which brings us back to the OP of the thread - Regardless of whether there is a line on a receipt that says Min Wage Fee or not, raising the min wage will be paid for by the consumers in society.
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Absolutely. But when poorer or working class workers get a raise from $7 to $10, or from $9.50 to $12 as you're noting, there's a much higher velocity of money with working class folks than there is with higher income folks.
Meaning when a working class person gets a bump from $9.50 to $12, that money gets spent almost immediately, mostly in the communities in which they live. Which helps offset some of the concerns we're talking about here with unemployment and higher costs to consumers. When higher income folks get a raise, it tends to go to savings or get invested, which doesn't directly help the communities in which they live.
There are winners and losers, for sure. But overall minimum wage hikes are not damaging - you can go back and look at unemployment statistics and inflation rates shortly following each minimum wage hike in the past, no significant damage shows in the data. That really is the end all be all to this discussion - if you can't show that unemployment or inflation was impacted by minimum wage hikes, then you have no argument. It's all there on the Bureau of Labor and Statistics' website, have at it.
The bottom line is the minimum wage is there for a reason, to enable a person to get by with the most basic of necessities. The minimum wage has historically been worth anything between $6 and $11, in today's dollars. The current wage is on the low end. It needs to be brought up so that these folks don't have to be subsidized by the government in the form of food assistance.