[Fee]

Let's hear this again. Clinton increased minimum wages in 1993 and US unemployment went down in the years that followed. Minimum wage does not affect employment as much as an expanding economy that produces jobs in the US. Granted excesses in anything will kill its good intentions. Example $ 100 per hour minimum wage. You can keep the old minimum wage, but outsource jobs overseas, import H-1B workers willing to work for half of US tech workers, and hire illegal immigrants due to US open borders policy, and most Americans will face job insecurity and wage depression no matter what the minimum wage is. Furthermore it is hard for employers in general to complain, consider the fact many corporations have record profits and the CEO's salaries have doubled or tripled in the last 12 years while most working people just kept up with inflation and went up and down as companies hire and fire them, and they had to network to find the next temporary job after losing the last one to cheap overseas labor and mergers.

[kinoxi]

I put that out there. ($100.00 minimum wage) What do you think it should be?

[CindyDawg]

I have never asked how much profit a company made or how much the CEO was paid, when quoted a salary. I figured it was none of my business. I was either ok with the wages offered or I went elsewhere.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The so-called "minimum wage" law is nothing of the sort. It is a minimum productivity law. Without a "minimum wage" law, employers hire whoever is willing to work for less that the value of his/her efforts - so that it is worth the employer's effort to hire, train, and supervise him/her. With a "minimum wage" law, nobody is allowed to agree to work for less than the legislated minimum - and if a person is unable to find an employer who expects their productivity will be above that minimum, that person will not get hired.

That's all the "minimum wage" law can do. It might induce employers to increase some marginally productive workers' wages to the new minimum sooner than they otherwise would - but it is hardly likely to induce employers to help the hard cases who are fully adult and still not worth the new minimum. And it makes the prospective employer more skeptical about hiring an inexperienced new employee. And forces the employer to supervise the employees he does employ more intensively to get the productivity from them that will justifiy their higher wage.

There is IMHO no realistic scenario in which those effects can increase employment. I am not prepared to believe that a study which purports to prove the contrary of that is properly designed and has statistically significant results.