NYT endorses Obama's minimum wage proposal, but called for scrapping it in 1987....

It sounds like your business is run on such thin margins that if tomorrow unpaid internships became illegal it would collapse.

All of the most successful ones..

Its not disastrous for me, but for the high school kids I had to lay off, you know the ones the minimum wage is supposed to help, the unskilled workforce.
Don't think that the people that made their way to $9 and $10/hour on merit by working hard aren't going to want a raise now too. Sure, let's just inflate the economy at a time when unemployment is as high as it is. I think this would be a great move for King Obama.

I don't believe you have ever owned a business.

Not at all. Care to tell me what's changed besides 30 years? (although it's really less than that if you do the math right )

The 80s were the "great experiment" of Conservatism, which failed horribly as America's industrial base, the rights of American workers, and our educational and physical infrastructure were all sacrificed to enrich a few wealthy Republican plutocrats.

with unemployment among the youth at an all-time high, a higher min wage (the huge bulk of those who earn it being young unskilled workers) will only result in higher unemployment.

When you raise the COST of labor to $9, but do nothing to raise its VALUE to $9, you end up with job cuts. If the employees skills were worth $9 in the market, they would have been paid that much, but since they are not, they are paid a lower amount.

Now, if the min wage was raised to $9, why would a business continue to hire someone whose skills have a market value of only $7.50? They would just as soon fire the person they paid $7.50 than pay them $9 while their skills are only worth only $7.50, and then hire someone else who has the skills commensurate with a $9 pay rate, since now they are forced by law to pay that amount...even if the employer does not need that higher skill set right away, why pay more for an unskilled person, when you can hire someone for the same pay with higher skill that then you can employ to do additional work that the skills allow them to do. The result: HIGHER unemployment for the young and unskilled workers....

it really is not rocket science...basic logical analysis and 'put yourself in their shoes' logic is all that is needed for this concept to be understood....however, the ideologically driven either lack that ability, or purposefully blind themselves to the logic.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

I think the problem is, there are certain jobs that only have a certain length of rope tide to it. If you raise the tide too high, the rope will sink the boat.

If there is a job that an employer values at $8 an hour, that job will be sunk when the minimum wage tide is raised to $9.

I disagree with the premise. Right now you can contract a lawn-care outfit to maintain your lawn for say $400 a year. The law care industry heavily relies on min wage workers. So if we increase the min wage to $9 then the same maintenance contract would be at, say, $450.

No big deal.

I still cannot believe some people want us to be a society in which a person working full time would be in poverty. We are better than that and can do better than that.

I disagree with the premise. Right now you can contract a lawn-care outfit to maintain your lawn for say $400 a year. The law care industry heavily relies on min wage workers. So if we increase the min wage to $9 then the same maintenance contract would be at, say, $450.

No big deal.

I still cannot believe some people want us to be a society in which a person working full time would be in poverty. We are better than that and can do better than that.

So if we increase the min wage to $9 then the same maintenance contract would be at, say, $450.

No big deal.

Glad to see you agree that we will see inflation and the things that people were buying when they made $8/hour will go up in price so their $9/hour wage will have zero additional purchasing power. I guess we forget the premise that we are actually helping people get out of poverty by increase the mandatory minimum, when all we are doing is raising the level of poverty.
So that you have a question to answer, tell me, if I can buy, let's say a pizza for $8 today, but after the minimum wage increase goes into effect, the pizza will cost $9, and this occurs across all sectors, how exactly is it helping anyone?

And when every lawn-care provider raise stheir prices, how many customers (throughout the whole economy) decide that they no longer wish to purchase $450 worth of services?

Let's say 5%. That's a 5% reduction in the demand for employed minimum wage laborers. That's 5% less work, which results in either 5% fewer workers, or 5% fewer hours worked.

As has been said, time and time again, this isn't reality. The vast majority of people who work for minimum wage aren't poor. They are retirees, students, working class, and part timers with more than one job.

The poor are those without jobs or full time work. So the question you should be asking is, why do people favor economic policies that create unemployment and reduce the number of full time positions? Minimum wage laws do just this.

Until the business loses customers, then the employees lose their job. and where do they end up......... in a place where they realize they can make more by not working.

cutting back on welfare would help the economy way more than raising the minimum wage.

1. Let's stipulate that raising the min wage causes some inflation. So say a full time worker on min wage earns X% of poverty level. Now we increase the min wage to $9 and you say this causes inflation and increase in poverty level. So now the $9/hr min wage earner is at Y% of poverty level. Don't you think that Y would be grater than X? That is, even stipulating inflation and rise in poverty level, the min wage workers will be helped?

2. Some one mentioned reducing welfare programs in order to help the economy. Is it far-fetched to think that increasing min wage would relieve some of the pressure on welfare programs?