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Support for increasing the minimum wage in a period of high unemployment is a minor negative.

The real question is who is going to restore the import tariffs, and restore American manufacturing and put everyone back to work. Do that and you won’t need to raise the minimum wage, the labor market will do it for you.

No, the real question is why we are bringing in 1.1 million legal permanent legal immigrants a year along with 640,000 guest workers annually. Immigrants are taking all the jobs.

In December 2014 there were 18 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the country who had arrived since January 2000. But job growth over this period was just 9.3 million — half of new immigration.

Between two-thirds and three-fourths of the new arrivals are estimated to be legal immigrants. Of the new arrivals 89 percent were potential workers 16 and older. In addition to the 18 million new immigrants, the native-born working-age population (ages 16 to 65) grew by 16.5 million since 2000; if we count natives over age 65, total native population growth was 25.2 million since 2000.

Job growth has not come close to matching new immigration and natural population increase; as a result, the labor force participation rate (the share working or looking for work) of native-born Americans 16 to 65 shows a significant long-term decline.

The share of native-born Americans 16 to 65 in the labor force was 77 percent in December 2000, 75 percent in December 2007, and 72 percent in December 2014.

The number of working-age natives not in the labor force (neither working nor looking for work) increased by 13 million from December 2000 to December 2014.

...who is going to restore the import tariffs...

This just doesn't work. The steel industry tried this and managed to get imported steel to just about stop. The estimate is that this saved about 5000 US jobs. Unfortunately, everyone who bought a car, refrigerator, or anything else made from steel paid a higher than necessary price because of it. The result is a transfer payment from all consumers to about 5000 steel workers.

Japanese steel was cheap because we bombed their capital stock into oblivion during WWII and then replaced it after the war. Yet, US producers tried to compete with factories still using 1890's technology. If you buy into the United Steel Workers argument that Japan was selling steel in the US below their cost, we should have bought all we could and driven the Japanese firms into bankruptcy. The arguments offered by the companies and the unions were specious and without merit, other than flag waving. The real motivation was to forestall modernization which would have lowered the demand for labor, but at a fairly high capital cost.

Tariffs and quotas simply don't work. They almost always benefit some small segment of the economy at the expense of some much large segment.

restore the import tariffs, and restore American manufacturing and put everyone back to work.

There's an old saying -- "You catch more flies with honey, than you do with vinegar."

Import tariffs are the proverbial vinegar, compared to the 'honey', which would be sharply reduced business taxes and federal regulations.

Understand that, those American companies that now have significant manufacturing operations outside the territorial U.S., will not be motivated to "bring the jobs home" if they're hit with yet another tax by their government.

Begin levying import tariffs, and lots of U.S. companies will finally throw in the towel on this country altogether. There's little stopping most of them from re-incorporating under another country's flag.

Wanna bring jobs home? Then do what it takes to make America a more attractive place to do business, and businesses will respond accordingly.

I agree wholeheartedly that the US government has seriously disadvantaged the USA in respect of trade. US goods are exported embedded with the full cost of the US government, and then the importing countries ADD their cost of government to the good. Advantage: FOREIGN COUNTRY!

Foreign governments rebate the cost of government to the companies that exported the goods and then the USA DOES NOT add the full cost of government to them. Advantage: FOREIGN COUNTRY!

IOW, exported US goods carry the burden of two governmets in their retail price in foreign markets and goods imported into the USA carry the burden, at best, of 1/2 a government.

Advantage: Foreign goods, both at home AND abroad!

I no wonder we have a huge and growing trade deficit!

The FairTax will restore the manufacturing base and level the playing field vis a vis USA manufactured goods and foreign goods.

Both at home and abroad, USA will be competing on a level playing field.

For more information, to to https://www.fairtax.org.