Raising minimum wage irresponsibly (why 15 dollars why not 10?

) has an unfavorab
le impact on everyone. Companies have very little say on what employees make. It
is heavily correlated to the price the market is willing to pay for goods or se
rvices. In other words, a services and/or goods are worth what people are willin
g to pay for it (market price - cost = profit). What companies do have the abili
ty to control is cost hence the capitalistic environment of the United States. I
f a companys profits are down and their revenues are up they are still having a w
orse YOY performance. Also, when you drive up and down the street in any city yo
u will see the majority of companies on the sides of the roads are small mom and
pop companies that cannot afford to pay out 40% more to their employees without
having an unfavorable impact to their business. The companies will likely cut h
ours or employees to keep their profit flat. Everyone immediately jumps to the W
al-Mart example. If you really attack the root causes of the number of people li
ving on minimum wage using techniques like ishikawa you will find that paying pe
ople more money would be addressing a symptom rather than the actual reason peop
le make minimum wage. People dont make minimum wage because minimum wage is minim
um wage. Using a 5 why technique you will see there is an underlying reason. The
lower class will never be eliminated. It will always exist no matter what you m
ake the minimum wage because the market will be inflated. As an example if you t
ook a Pareto of statistics pertaining to people on minimum wage I am sure there
would be some similarities that may pop up (i.e. lack of education, bad investme
nts, also uncontrollable bad luck). When you raise the minimum wage it takes awa
y the desire for people to go out and learn a skill because their starting wages
will be similar to that of someone with an associates degree. It will be okay to b
e average which is the opposite of what you want in a capitalistic environment.
-from a fellow CWRU alumni