Is raising the minumun wage a bad idea?

Question

What are the pros // cons of raising the minumun wage?

If they raised it, and say someone at wendys makes more now, would they have to raise the price of food to comensate for the payroll loss now>?

Answer 1

yep...
it's not like that money comes from the thin air....
The customers have to pay more...

Think of it this way.... Say you had a bread company... You have 100 employees. You charge 1.00 a loaf for your bread.
Now you have to pay your employees 25% more...
So you raise the price of your bread 25%. Now it cost $1.25 a loaf.
That means the employees will have to pay 25% more for there food......
Effectively raising the wage did nothing

Answer 2

Depends on who you are.

The economic research shows that after minimum wage hikes, unemployment always increases. This is because the employers are usually not able to pass along all the increased costs to customers. So if you keep your job, you may be better off. I say may because you still may see reduced hours. The only study result I have seen on an outright benefit to higher minimum wages is that after minimum wage increases, the total wage bill to all workers increases; that is, in the aggregate the wage goes up more than the employment rate goes down. Still that's little consolation if you are the one to lose your job.

Minimum wage increases tend to hurt the lowest-skilled workers, as they are the first to get laid off. That's why some politicians who support a minimum wage hike also support a lower training wage for new hires and teenagers in particular.

Most minimum wage earners are not the primary wage earners in their households, but are teenagers or second wage-earners.

Unions are big supporters of higher minimum wages, even though their members all earn well above minimum wage. This is because a higher minimum wage makes these lower-skilled workers seem more expensive than they were relative to union workers and thus makes union workers more attractive as hires.

Answer 3

The EXISTENCE of minimum wage is a bad idea!
Why/ Glad you asked!
With a government mandated minimum wage, the only class that is affected is the part time and auxilliary job holder's salary (nearly 95+%), as min. wage jobs are not the economic backbone of the American family unit.
Raising the Min wage only serves to increase costs of EVERYTHING across the board and the other classes do not receive an equal boost in theirpersonal income, thereby driven the quality of life and the value of everyone's income downward!
This information has been proven out in both the academic world and the 'real' world, time and time again!
And yet the Democrats, desiring to seem compassionate, continue to hoodwink the willingly ignorant into accepting their compassion. Even though it widens the gulf between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'

Answer 4

So relatively few people work for minimum wage that it doesn't really matter what happens with it. Any type of artificial price control is not good for a free market based economy because it's forced upon the market and that hurts the market and that's not good for anyone. So as long as price controls stay just with min. wage and PR wise the US public love to here that it's getting raised so politicians on both sides will generally approve it.

Answer 5

I worked at Sonic in high school, minimum wage raised by like a quarter or something, right before the minimum wage increase took effect we raised prices on everything! everything went up by like 20 cents or so. So insted of paying 4 bucks for a meal you were paying like 4.60, you apply that to every place that pays minimum wage on everything you buy and thats alot of money. So not only will it hurt small business owners and those who make minimum wage, but it will really hurt those who make more than minimum wage as they will not get an increase in pay, but they will still have to pay higher costs.

Also, it will tempt even more employers to hire illegals for lower wages putting even more american citizens out of workl

Answer 6

The conservatives claim it is bad because it is bad for the economy EXCEPT they forget to tell you that raising it is an immediate boost to the economy, to the income levels and disposable incomes NOT TO MENTION GOOD TO REDUCE POVERTY

As CEO salaries rise into the stratosphere it is funny that the right-wingers say raising minimum wage is bad for business but dont mind the millions these CEOs get paid (and half the time run the company into the ground anyway)

Answer 7

Raising the minimum wage is good for low salaried employees because their standard of living will be upgraded. However, wage increase will be bad for employers with little capital because their businesses might flop and they will be forced to closed resulting to unemployment. Thus, raising the minimum wage must be critically studied to balance the interests the workers and employers.

Answer 8

BS it isn't the Republicans, it's the government, REPS and DEMS, say different and you are a fool! They think they can buy us off with a higher min. wage, but the truth is all that does is increase the tax liability, and the payroll of small business. Maybe if they just decreased our F'ing taxes. But they would make as much of a profit would they?

Answer 9

one word inflation. Buisnesses would charge more because people are being paid more, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just business. What people aren't taking into account is the general population makes more than the minumum wage. It's true, find out what the min. wage is in your state then find out how much you make a b.k. It's more.

Answer 10

An argument against it is that small businesses would end up letting some people go because they could not afford the increase. Also, the costs get shifted down to the consumers.

A pro is the lower economic class would get more money and less welfare money would be spent.