Try again once you've figured out what it is that you actually want to say and how to express that coherently. Indexing the minimum wage takes it out of the political hands of Congress and allows it to increase annually so that people on the other end don't become victims of it as they were for so long under Republicans.
That's about the fifth such suggestion, and all of them have been dumber than can be taken seriously. This is likely why you've had so few responses.
So in your world, prices are all fixed and there is no company that has or even could have raised any of them. Kind of makes you wonder how the cost of apparel could have gone up by 2.1% over the past year or medical care by 3.1%. No doubt you have some handy explanation for that.
A very small percentage.
I've never heard anyone claim it ONLY applies to that group. The relevant question is to what degree individuals or families rely on minimum wage as primary source of income. The answer is an extremely small number. Add on that most min wage workers are part time workers, and the min wage is not a significant issue as far as making ends meet as there are very few people making min wage in that situation.
Yes, I'm familiar with the law. My point was that a person classified as "at or below Federal minimum wage" is classified by wages. A tip-earner (and they are a significant portion of at or below min wage) is most likely making more than minimum wage once tips are figured in.
That while over 25 is a large portion of min wage earners, very few over 25 are min wage earners and the impact of any increase in minimum wage will be more on teenagers.
You're not the only one reading this, I would hope, so links are useful.
Left to languish as it has been by Republicans, the minimum wage has lost 30% of its purchasing power in 40 years. It is not enough to support many of the people who depend on it, forcing them into welfare programs that all of us pay for. That is a stupid situation that merely subsidizes the exploitation of low-wage labor and corporate externaliziation of their true costs of production. The proposed 20% increase is not at all enough, but it is a step in the right direction, and the indexing of it even moreso. Increases in the minimum wage have not been shown to result in any measurebale change in unemployment, which has of course been falling for some time. The minimum wage increase as proposed would occur in stages through 2015. The idea that this will be too much for the economy to bear coming from people who actually voted for Mitt Romney is simply laughable.
So walking away as quickly as possible from the statement that only an idiot would think [raising prices] is a good idea. In fact even in your world, price increases are a garden-variety, everyday event, isn't that the actual case?
If you don't, you have received a pay CUT. How nice is that? Keep in mind that cash is merely a chit or marker. It is worth only what it can be exchanged for in terms of real goods and services. If price levels go up and your income stays the same, you just got poorer without even trying.
Accountants deal with rules and order. They become flustered when dealing with the ever-changing dynamics of economics and economies. This may be part of why accountants make poor economists and poor entrepreneurs. It is an incontestable fact that in the real world, the prices of all sorts of different inputs change every day, and that low-wage labor is just one of those. The minimum wage has no more direct a connection to profits than does the cost of gasoline or electricity or advertising or any other input necessary in the production equation. Entrepreneurs are supposed to manage a business and do so in the face of constant and unpredictable change in the business environment. Those who can't do that may need to look into accountancy as a career instead.
So you would expect fewer principal earners among teenagers than among those over 25 who are married with a spouse present in the home. Me too.
It's common enough nonetheless. Minimum wage is just for kids and beginners. Used to be true to some degree perhaps, but it's not today. The same lack of actuality is found for the common claim that minimum wage workers are just high school dropouts who are lazy and poor decision-makers and therefore deserve no more than what they already get. In fact of course, 70% of minimum wage workers have a high school diploma and 60% of those went on to college.
The minimum wage world includes less than 5% of all workers, and even though it can rise to 10-12% and even beyond if one accepts all the near-minimum wage workers that the arguments of organized labor often throw into the mix, we are always talking here about small percentages. Not necessarily about small numbers of people however, and of course, even minorities have rights that include the right to expect protection against being exploited by those more numerous or more economically powerful than they are.
More guesswork. Some tipped workers such as the experienced wait staff at high-end restaurants can make a very good living. These are the tip of the iceberg outliers and exceptions to the rule. More than half of tipped workers earn an annual income of less than $20K. Their version of minimum wage has been $2.13 plus tips (less tip stealing) since 1991. If a raise would in fact be as insignifcant as you suggest, the hospitality industry would hardly have spent 20 years and so many millions of dollars trying to beat back proposals for an increase.
In the most recent BLS tables, there are 899K minimum wage workers who are teenagers and 1,933K who are aged 25 and over. That second number is 2.15 times the first one.
That's fine, just don't go to any bother on my account.
You meant 24 or under.
Did you find their place of residence in the tables?
33% of minimum wage workers are in full-time jobs. Can you tell us what six times that would be? And what do you make of the fact that about a thrid of all part-time workers used to be or have always wanted to be full-time workers and are part-time against their actual wishes?
China doesn't have a minimum wage. Perhaps you'd find living there to be a better idea than living here? There are many fine rabbit hutch cages in Hong Kong that accommodate people who work for less than a minimum wage, maybe you should reserve one?
More useless rant and ramble. I'm sure you do indeed harbor personal animosities of various sorts toward the foreign born population, but these are hardly grounds for policy of any sort. Undocumented workers are to be found at every level of society, from lettuce-picker to brain-surgeon. But the topic here has been the minimum wage, it's ever decreasing value (absent indexing), and its subsidization of corporate exploitation of low-wage labor and the externalization of the true costs of production, moving them out of corporate pockets and into the pockets of everybody else. Paying a wage that leaves a full-time worker eligible for public assistance is no different from simply dumping untreated toxic waste in a public park. Except of course that toxic waste dumping is a crime.