A lot of people arguing against you are long time followers who just happen to disagree and are doing so in a civilized manner. Berating us by calling us names or reblogging other people calling us names is really not helping. You are promoting blog posts that are calling us shitheads and idiots, I’ve been a follower of you since I joined and you’re treating me like shit–why? I haven’t said all of these mean things about you.
I will offer a rebuttal though–comparing mass increases of minimum wage to this restaurant someone mentioned is asinine. $2.13/hr to $14/hr adding a 15% increase…You’d be tipping 15% anyway, so there actually is no increase at all in principle, and their wages are being raised significantly, probably to more than they would have made with tips. Almost every country in the world doesn’t have mandatory tipping and they are all doing fine, so that’s really a poor comparison.
On the topic of profit margins–they actually have massive profit margins, easily enough to handle a $5/hr wage increase. Considering CEOs are making 10s or 100s of millions a year, they can definitely handle this.
Lots of countries actually have no minimum wage and allow unions to discuss it–lots of socialist countries even, such as Sweden. Here’s the thing though–low wages in Sweden are worth more than low wages in the United States. With no guaranteed health care as a right in the United States, the second most expensive colleges in the world, etc, a living wage needs to be much higher in the US than in other countries.
You say that minimum wage is not for people with a “career”, but then concede that some people have a very very difficult time moving past minimum wage, and some people have a difficult time getting a job at all. So what do these people have to do? Get government assistance OR even go hungry every once in a while (or both). 15 million children in 2014 lived in food insecure homes–many of these I’m sure were in working families. What do you do when you work 2 minimum wage jobs for 60 hours a week and your kid breaks his leg and all of a sudden you have a massive medical bill?
Do you not see a problem here? Do you not think that all hardworking Americans–particularly those with families, deserve to be able to live somewhat comfortably? Because that isn’t the case right now.
And come on now, certainly you can’t support the current $7.25 minimum wage, I’m pretty sure the vast majority of Americans thinks it should be at least $10 (in fact I believe Wal Mart has made it company policy now).
Here’s a big reason though why people DON’T believe there’d be all of these layoffs–they need the employees! If they have less employees they will make less money, just a fact. Not to mention, there is data to show that there are not significantly increased layoffs following minimum wage raises, and that employee turnover rate is much lower (a link is provided a bit later). There’s a legitimate argument that prices will raise–but I don’t think this is true. Prices need to be competitive. They may raise a small amount, but I believe they will raise less than is needed to cover that extra $5/hr
If you don’t think higher wages stimulate the economy, let’s look at the states with no minimum wage (i.e. forced to follow federal minimum wage):
Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee
The 46th, 44th, 50th, 42nd and 45th lowest median household income states.
http://www.dol.gov/minwage/mythbuster.htm
Read all of this, I know you likely are fairly anti-obama(I actually hate Obama by the way, but probably for different reasons than you), but typically .gov sites have pretty good information.
Covers all of your concerns such as it being bad for the economy, lost jobs, damages small businesses, etc (all of which are untrue).
The one argument you could make is that $15 may be too much (even though it’d be implemented over a 7 year period). To that, I’m not really sure, perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t, but at the very least $10-$12 would be completely reasonable (the minimum wage was effectively that high in the past). Seattle is increasing their minimum wage to $15 by 2021, so we can see the effects of that on the economy. At the moment, there is no evidence to suggest that an increase to $15 would be negative to the economy, as no minimum wage increases in the past have been, it’s all conjecture.
What in your brain is telling you that you absolutely can’t be wrong? Could I be wrong about my opinion? Certainly. And accepting that you could be wrong is a huge part of education and growth. Calling your followers ignorant or promoting blogs calling your followers shitheads or idiots is not going to improve your education or growth. I really like most of your posts, unfortunately I imagine we disagree a lot politically, but that doesn’t mean either of us have to call the other an idiot or a shithead or ignorant or what have you. If you read this post, then perhaps you can disagree, but certainly you can’t call me ignorant or pretend that I don’t research.
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