Should Congress Raise the Nation's Minimum Wage?
A bill has been introduced in the United States Senate that would raise the federal minimum wage to $9.88 an hour. Good or bad idea?
A U.S. Senator from Iowa had introduced legislation in Congress that would raise the national minimum wage by more than $2.
Now, the national minimum wage stands at $7.25 an hour. U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat, wants that minimum wage workers making $9.88 an hour.
NPR reports that, according to the Economic Policy Institute, if Harkin has his way and the minimum wage was actually raised to $9.88 an hour, it would increase wages for 30 million Americans — 10 percent of the country.
Harkin, in the NPR report, argues that most people making the minimum wage spend just about all their money because they don't have much left. Giving them a raise, he says, woudl mean more for the nation's gross domestic product.
From the report:
Harkin estimates that his minimum wage increase would mean about $25 billion more for GDP, 100,000 more jobs and 28 million Americans would get a raise.
To those that say raising the minimum wage would actually increase unemployment, Harkin says there's simply no proof of that. He says they've found that when minimum wages were increased, employment actually went up.
Opponents say raising the minimum wage would have a reverse affect—creating higher unemployment rates than the ones plauging the country today.
According to NPR, 18 states have set minimum wage rates slightly higher than the national level, while four states actually have exemptions and even lower minimums. Missouri's minimum wage is the same as the federal minimum wage.
What do you think? Should Congress act on such legislation and raise the nation's minimum wage to just less than $10 an hour? Or do you think raising the minimum wage will create more burden on small business owners already struggling to survive?
Anne Klein
6:40 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Yes, it should be raised. As far as I know there is no data that shows raising the minimum adversely affects business.
Ralph Pfremmer
7:22 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Sure, but you can expect higher prices and a further erosion of small business endeavor--specifically in the service industry--at least, for those businesses who will able to adjust. Why don't we go ahead and mandate what businesses can charge for services too, and while at it, have government dole out more oversight, reporting and compliance measures, and seek to penalize these businesses when possible for errors in non revenue producing tasks required by the government to simply "be" in business, Go ahead, further nutralizie the entrepreneurial spirit. This is absurd.
Elizabeth
7:30 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Go ahead and raise the minimum wage. It will just make lower wage / looser regulation countries like Mexico, China and India look like a great place to move your business. That aught to shore the economy right up.
CSloan
11:18 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
I certainly hope you're not suggesting that the key to global competition is seeing who can maintain the world's most miserly labor standards. It's already far cheaper to have people snap iPhones together until they feel like throwing themselves off of a building, and it will be no matter what we do to our minimum wage.
Workers who earn more push more of those earnings back in to the local economy. They're also happier, more productive, and less likely to quit. Reduced churn is good for business for obvious reasons--it's significantly cheaper to keep an employee than hire and train a new one, and long term employees mean better customer relationships and better customer service. I don't care if a business wants to keep overhead down by shortchanging its people, but there's a pretty good chance it will come across in the quality of their service.
There's no need for the Chicken Littles to come out. It's an election year, so this isn't going anywhere.
Devon Seddon
11:55 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
"Workers who earn more push more of those earnings back in to the local economy", or so it would seem. At least until the prices of everything they buy goes up because of that wage increase, I guess. Or until the business can no longer afford to support the same number of employees they used to because of the wage increases, or maybe even have to shut-down?
You're missing the point, this is what happened to all of the other businesses that used to be out there competing for workers by offering higher wages, benefits & in-turn, producing better products. But, at least they aren't out there being greedy & "keeping overhead down" at the expense of their employees (now jobless), and their quality (no longer providing competition to keep the rest of those greedy businesses meanies from taking advantage of not having someone right down the road doing it better with higher wages, better benefits --therefore better employees-- producing better quality products). Do they not teach simple supply & demand in school anymore? Not at Harvard apparently.
It IS an election year, that's why we need people who understand these simple principles, instead of people who keep asking for more & more of the problem because they'd rather think with their emotions, instead of looking at reasons & results.
George Lenard
8:06 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Index it to CPI once and for all and be done with it. Build in some more appropriate exemptions for trainees and teens maybe. Why do we need to have this debate every few years, as if we have nothing better to do? Unless you just want no minimum, raising it to keep up with inflation is a no-brainer...
Devon Seddon
12:43 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Again, sounds good, until you realize it's one of the major reason for the inflation in the first place, as well as the reason why it has to be brought up every other year, because it doesn't work. See, it's not a "no-brainer", you have to use your brain to understand it, and see the results of it not working, ever.
Miguel
2:42 pm on Monday, July 16, 2012
On the other hand we can deal with inflation instead. And what about if we go through a deflation? Will minimum wage go down? I think this is Absurd. If people can no longer afford to live because of inflation, it is because of our debt money system. Tackle the problem, not one of the myriad of symptoms.
Jim
8:24 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
This senator is obviously not an employer. What this legislation will do is lose jobs when some small businesses can no longer afford to pay their help...
Juanita Carl
9:14 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Anyone who works full time is surely worth a wage at least 20 percent above the current poverty level. The actual earnings of most Americans have been stagnant or falling for more than 30 years. If working Americans were still paid at the true value of their work, then the economy would be recovering a lot faster. There is way too much emphasis on "job creators" and far too little on job doers these days.
Kevin Lane
10:58 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
It's a dog chasing his tail. Raising minimum wage raises prices, costs jobs, and only results in having to do it again & again (like the clueless welfare-state next door).
Get off the backs of business and promote competition. More business means more jobs and more job options for workers, forcing businesses to compete for the better employees by offering better wages, and even better healthcare insurance, like businesses used to have to do before we all became conditioned to think the government has to do everything for us.
It's the same thing that caused the "need" for the new healthcare taxes. We need a seperation of business & state.
And James, these days, not many of our politicians are employers, most have never been employees (including the Pres & 92% of his administration). They don't know the simplest thing about how money, the economy & business work. This suggestion proves it.
We gotta quit electing people that think that government is the solution, when it's exactly what has created all of these "needs" in the first place. Competition fixes the economy, not government involvement. There's proof above, and there are thousands & thousands more pieces of proof upon request.
Elizabeth
12:17 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Minimum wage doesn't just apply to full time it affects all employment. When you raise the min. wage you force employers to pay even higher wages for their lowest level jobs. Good employers will feel obligated to increase ALL pay after a min wage increase so that it doesn't make higher paid employees feel like they got a decrease. Many other employer expenses are based on their payroll figures. Such as liability insurance. Min. wage increases sound great because it appeals to our emotions of wanting everyone to make more money, but there are real consequences to business owners. It sounds great when you feel like you're sticking it to companies like GM or BOA where the CEO's make millions, but the reality is it hampers small business owners more. Especially manufacturers who have to compete with overseas wages and regulations and public demands for cheap prices. People seem to think that business owners have some magic money tree that they can just pluck from every time someone wants more pay, better insurance, more benefits, more time off, less work to do, cheaper prices, etc. It ain't so. If you've never owned a business or never been a bookkeeper for one you don't truly get the full picture.
Elizabeth
12:34 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
CSloan - So according to you, keeping the minimum wage as it is currently is going to allow US employers to become third-world sweatshops? Who is the chicken little? I guess you already know that the average wage in the US is $41,600 (or $20/hour) right? And that the bulk of min wage jobs are those that require little to no experience, education or skill? So in other words , most jobs pay more than min wage and at and average of $20/hr they pay well over min. wage. When you increase the cost of doing business in this country you decrease that company's ability to compete with imports exponentially. Cause and effect.
CSloan
2:09 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Where exactly did I say that Elizabeth? You claimed that an increase in the min wage = a really good reason to send labor overseas. Those reasons are already there, and they would be if we knocked our minimum wage down to $3/hr.
Elizabeth
3:14 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
CSloan - Where did I say that we should globally race to the bottom? Don't like words put in your mouth? I don't either. My point was that in our current condition, burdening employers further by raising the min wage just pushes those already on the fence to move their operations just as legislation like this has for years. Your point was that suggesting that raising the wage was a bad thing right now was chicken little antics. Are we all straight now?
Mark Wilson
3:15 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
All of you read Nickel and Dimed and then comment, please.
jimmiebigballs
3:20 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Unemployment is high....get it to go higher? Makes great sense. Add some inflation....Must be coming from Obama.
Rich Pope
3:47 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
If I were a business owner and the minimum wage was increased, I would raise my prices and pass this increased cost to the consumers.
Benjamin Israel
3:59 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
I support increasing it. In 1992, two Princeton economists, Alan Krueger and David Card studied the effect of the minimum wage on employment at low-wage workplaces in New Jersey and Pennsylvania after New Jersey raised its minimum wage from $4.25 an hour to $5.05 while Pennsylvania just across the Delaware River kept it at $4.25. Employment actually increased in New Jersey compared to Pennsylvania challenging most economists' assumptions. Since then other studies have reinforced their findings while others have contradicted them. Nobel Prize winners like Paul Krugman and Joseph Steiglitz have endorsed their findings. Anyone who says that no economist endorses raising the minimum wage law doesn't keep up with debates among economists. Krueger now heads Obama's Council of Economic Advisers
Most minimum wage jobs are in service industries that cannot move overseas. McDonald's isn't going to move its restaurants overseas so it can pay lower wages.
One group that would benefit from a higher minmum wage is college students. In 1968, a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia could earn enough money from a minimum wage job in a three-month summer vacation to pay for full-time tuition and room and board in the dorms. Today it wouldn't even come close. The last time checked, work-study jobs at MU paid the minimum wage and many students work for minimum wage in restaurants and retail while in school. Increasing the minimum wage would help students graduate with less debt.
Devon Seddon
11:52 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Any of them ever run a small business? We got books, where's the experience?
We already know employees go where the money is. 2 months into your scenario though, NJ had 6-cent inflation & 987 fewer jobs to offer than before (& zero new stores).
If the price of everything the surviving minimum wage employee buys goes up, what happens? They're in the same place they were before, only now, they (& the newly unemployed) all have to deal with inflation too.
Krueger's results with Obama speak loudly, any percieved need to justify them with accolades stipulates that.
Look, there are more people in this country than ever, paying higher tax-rates than ever (multiplied for business), yet it hasn't worked & they STILL can't stay within or even commit to a budget. How can they even be sure they need more?
Just for the sake of pointing it out, if this works why do we have to keep doing it? In 1992 & especially in 1968, things were different in 1 very major way, the amount of government involvement was a tiny fraction of what it is now (especially on a Federal level). Taxes were nowhere near as high, and they weren't conditioned to think of more government as the only solution. Today, many think it solves everything (lack of results & detriment to the economy aside).
You make some great points though, pointing out how things used to be. I agree, we should all look more at how we got here, so we can get off this path.
Also, rule of thumb, Illinois is not a role-model, they're lost.
Devon Seddon
9:52 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Ok, so they are anchored, you got 'em trapped here, why is that a reason to exploit them? Does that mean prices won't go up? OR, how long does it take for the quality to go down enough to need the government to come in and regulate it more? Well, we already have that, you got what you wanted.
Students with less debt? If that were a goal, why take student loans out of the private sector, where there's competition, and start dictating them? Know what you got before asking for more.
AND stop spending when it's gone. This is a Yahoo! tm headline from 7/12 -
U.S. government records $904.2B deficit through June.
I wonder how they know, the Senate hasn't presented a budget in what... 4 years?
Sandra Eskridge
1:13 pm on Friday, July 13, 2012
If we were to eliminate a couple of the “results” of an increased minimum wage as an option, things might better fall into place. I am a firm believer that we should not be allowed to outsource in country or out; in company or out! If you want to sell it here, hire your workers here, pay them what the job is worth, and they in turn will buy it here. Will some of the obscene profits now being bagged by companies be dented—sure will. Yet those same companies will still be able to afford to do business here with more reasonable profits. The law of supply and demand would kick in not in raised prices, but producing more to fill the demand of the additional quantity that would be sold. That, of course, would mean more jobs The prices only go up when the manufacturer doesn’t meet the demand! If they want to do business overseas, then do it all over there and leave the opportunities they have left behind to entrepreneurs who want to economically support their country. And as far as quality is concerned, I have yet to buy a foreign made product that can fall within acceptable quality ranges. ..the only exception being automobiles.
Devon Seddon
2:45 pm on Friday, July 13, 2012
That's not how business works & it's not how raising the minimum-wage has worked in the past. Great ideology, but it's not applicable.
We keep placing more burdens like this on business, then blame them for leaving or out-sourcing. We use it as an excuse to keep pinning them with the new expenses of those they used to be able to employ. Who decides "Well, They make enough money, so they need to allow us to take more"? What? Apply that to DC.
We chase away business, then penalize them for leaving as if it's their fault. We force them to resort to alternatives, then blame them for it. Get off their backs, they are what keeps the economy going, not a government that's against them.
Please listen as I say this again... We have the highest corporate tax-rate, and the most regulations on business, in the world. That's what caused this. Fix that, and you fix the entire economy.
You'll never be able to mop up all the water, until you fix the leak. Think!
This administration on supply & demand:
"We can't just drill our way to cheaper gas prices" Can too. It's simple supply & demand.
"It's a world market", yep, but it works like every other market, more product = lower prices.
"It's a middle-east problem", you mean the ones you buy from instead producing your own? Is it smarter to pay $100/barrel or earn $100/barrel ($200 turn-around)? Or to keep funding our enemies in 2 different wars? We have our own oil, but it's better to keep buying their ONLY resource?
It's foolish.
Elizabeth
2:12 pm on Friday, July 13, 2012
New Jersey currently ranks 46th with an unemployment rate of 9.2% while Pennsylvania ranks 27th with 7.2%.
PMS
7:56 pm on Thursday, July 26, 2012
To all the people against raising the minimun wage I say this. Try raising your family on $7.25/hour. It makes for a sad, lonely, miserable existance. I am educated and by no means lazy, just can't find a job that pay's well! I have lost all my benefit's and have been forced to subscribe to food stamps and government insurance for my children. Do you think people enjoy that? You wonder why violent crimes are so much more prominent today than 5 years ago. People who used to be middle class are breaking and it is only getting worse.