commentaries

If we raise the minimum wage to $9.80, do you thing the people who currently make $10 will get a raise? Probably noy. all we would be doing is creating a bigger group who make minimum wage.

Yes. We should raise our minimum wage and continue to price ourselves out of the world market. This will insure that we continue to produce overseas while we have high unemployment at home. All the Chinese students attending the University will cheer and celebrate the wise article from the elist university professor. I was just looking at a product that we were thinking of bringing back to US production-but now I can go in and tell management we will never have the chance. Thanks, wise professor with tenure.

From the article: "Most of these arguments are based on classical models of the labor market that ignore recent decades’ advances in labor economics.... Fully two-thirds of all low-wage workers are employed by large companies with more than 100 employees..." In addition, the majority of minimum wage workers are women (which accounts for a large part of the gender-based income gap) and adults, not teenagers.

If the minimum wage had kept up with productivity increases over the last 30 years, it would be over $16. What it really boils down to is employers not wanting to pay their workers a living wage, and as a result, those people have to rely more and more on government assistance.

What strikes me is that the people who oppose raising the minimum wage are overwhelmingly the same folks who oppose tax increases. It's a bizarre contradiction. Every person living below the poverty level is someone who requires more assistance, and that assistance comes from the taxes we pay. Raise the minimum wage and we not only have more people who can live without assistance, we have more people who can purchase goods and services and help us grow the economy.

What it really boils down to is employers not wanting to pay their workers a living wage, ---- lets do away with trite phrases. Please define " living wage". What items need do wage earners need to be able to afford with a "living wage"?

And why should the govt be involved in how much someone gets paid? Wages like prices should be established by the market - what is your skill, education, experience, industriousness, motivation, talent etc. worth to an employer / the market? The govt has no business passing laws and regulations telling people what they can get paid. This is clearly part of the socialist nanny state and erodes the exceptionalism that used to differentiate America.

If you are trying to raise a family on minimum wage you aren't very smart. Learn English and get an education. No one works for minimum wage unless they can't speak English or aren't very intelligent.

Despite what this paper tells you there will be job losses, also this increase proposed by Obama is 2 fold, you do know the unions get a raise every time the minimum wage is increased.

---What strikes me is that the people who oppose raising the minimum wage are overwhelmingly the same folks who oppose tax increases. It's a bizarre contradiction. --- Not a contradiction at all, in both cases you are asking the govt to interject itself in the market, and in both cases it skews the market resulting in allocations of resources and inefficiencies.