Do minimum wage increases actually help the poor?

PBS NewsHour asked:

In 2015, 29 states will have minimum wages above the federal minimum of $7.25. While supporters herald the move as a victory for low-wage workers, critics argue that the policy “squeezes…

New Site

21 thoughts on “Do minimum wage increases actually help the poor?

  1. NoName NoFame

    glype proxy

    all empirical evidence actually support diana – the white haired idiot is
    an ideologue who keeps ranting his dogma – get him to start a business and
    pay everyone a lot more than their work is worth and see how long his
    business lasts. 

    Reply
  2. skye hartl

    New Site

    In Australia we just had a minimum wage increases, The 3 per cent pay rise,
    lifting the minimum wage to $640.90 a week, or $16.87 an hour, will affect
    people on the minimum wage and award-rate workers, including Australia’s
    lowest-paid cleaners, retail and hospitality staff, childcare workers, farm
    labourers and factory workers.

    Reply
  3. 2007suprasport

    free themes

    I seriously don’t understand? That ladies reasoning? I mean how is raising
    minimum wage hurting the individual who’s who’s being affected by it? I
    mean your providing them with a higher income so they can survive. I mean
    the price of living keeps going up why shouldn’t the minimum wage worker
    hourly wages go up. I mean you know these minimum wage workers can’t even
    get by on what they make. I guess this lady if for the super rich, that 1%
    who give each other bonuses of 250,000.00 dollars when there company just
    reported they had to lay off 5,000 workers. And the United states than uses
    tax payers hard earned money to bail them out or gives them a tax break so
    they like 0 taxes while some average worker making minimum wages have to
    literally pay 1/3 of there salary and can’t even afford to buy peanut
    butter and jelly sandwich. 

    Reply
  4. srercrcr

    hydroplane racing

    A business hires an employee to accomplish a task that will lead to
    increased sales. Raising the bottom end of the wage scale won’t change
    that need. Besides…..if we never changed the minimum wage we’d still
    have workers earning $1 an hour!!

    Reply
  5. ralphinator2

    Credit Unions are better

    The smug old hag assumes that jobs have a fixed worth. Every job is worth
    whatever you can find someone to do it for. And regardless of the skill
    level involved, if something needs to be done, then someone will have to do
    it.

    It has been proven when wages have been increased in the past, that more
    disposable income creates more retail and manufacturing activity. When
    wages barely cover rent and utilities, there will be limited retail and
    manufacturing.

    REAL economic activity increases immediately following a wage increase,
    ALWAYS. If you pretend that costs don’t go up when wages aren’t increased,
    that’s an obvious fallacy. Inflation happens anyway, and decreases the
    value of currency anyway. So if an employee is doing the same job this
    year that he was last year, why should he accept 3% less value for his
    labor?

    Civilized first world nations match wage increases automatically to the
    inflation index every year, and they shame America when it comes to living
    standards and poverty.

    How is it that Republican congressmen can grasp the idea that the budget of
    the Pentagon needs to keep pace with inflation to maintain current
    capabilities, but somehow the idea that household income also needs to
    match inflation blows right over their heads??

    Reply
  6. TheNobleBard

    Life Insurance

    Oh I understand what the woman is saying. She saying that the employer
    needs to see the value in their employees. That they can actually be worth
    the money they are being paid. it’s kind of like the profit margin for the
    ratio of what the employee is making for the company verses what the
    employees are name for their self. Each employee kind of has their own
    earning potential. She’s saying that companies aren’t going to want to pay
    people $10 an hour if they aren’t particularly high earning for the company
    because the company has no incentive to do so. Particularly because of the
    high number of unemployed people at the present time.

    Reply
  7. Marcus Porcius Cato TheYounger

    net present value

    Dear Mr. Dumb ass white hair moron Why don’t you learn some economics. The
    Congressional Budget Office Est. that Obama’s increase in the minimum wage
    will cause 500,000 people to lose their jobs. Every 10% rise causes 3%
    unemployment in the unskilled labor market. Raise the Minimum wage and
    production costs rise this is passed on via higher prices for the product.
    The higher price will mean less sales. Less sales means less production.
    Less production means you need less employees. So employees are laid off:
    usually blacks are the first to lose their jobs. You seem ignorant and a
    racist

    Reply
  8. Mojokuku

    TI

    As a poor American, living well below the poverty line, I say no it doesn’t
    help. By the time prices increase to offset minimum wage increases we
    actually have less money in pocket, than we did before the minimum wage
    increase. 

    Reply
  9. TheNobleBard

    Travel Ideas

    Good on your PBS. I seriously thought when watching this interview for the
    first time that the woman was going to be pro raising minimum wage and the
    white male against. You totally erased my misconceptions about the
    situation and made me think about my bias. You just gave me a very powerful
    lesson on how complex people really are and why prejudice is a dangerous
    thing.

    Reply
  10. Richard Ruppe

    is it safe

    Wow! He just said 500,000 jobs lost and immediately said that was
    insignificant. I didn’t know we were so “jobtastic” right now that we could
    just get rid of half a million MORE jobs and be just fine. It seems to me
    we need to do something to create more jobs before we go slashing jobs to
    improve the people’s living conditions. I wish we could do both, too, but
    we certainly can’t make 500,000 more people lose their jobs right now. It’s
    already the 3rd circle of hell for a lot of folks right now.

    Reply
  11. Scott E Baboyian

    3 Score

    If you are working for less than 8/hr, as an adult, it practically costs
    you more to work in terms of personal expenses on transportation, clothes,
    laundry, child care, etc., than you are making. So even if this lady is
    right, losing jobs that make less than 8/hr is not that big a deal, those
    people were already f*cked.
    Also, Chili’s is not putting iPads in to save money on employees, they
    already don’t pay their waitstaff anything but a couple dollars per hour.
    They’re putting the iPads in because someone convinced then that a stupid
    gimmick like that would attract customers.

    Reply
  12. SevenRiderAirForce

    Italia Soccer

    You can raise the cost of labor, but you can’t raise its value. The lady is
    admittedly kind of like a benched Superbowl winner – technically on the
    winning team, just terrible at contributing to it.

    Tech is popping up everywhere. Why the hell hire someone if you can get a
    machine to do it for less? If you want to fatten the paychecks of the folks
    at Apple, Google, and Samsung, just keep raising that minimum wage! Why
    hire an American when you can hire some foreigner at 1/10th the cost? Same
    damn reason you don’t pay more taxes than you need to or spend $15k on a
    car when you can buy the same one for $12k across the street.

    Reply
  13. Seth Caplan

    New Site

    The Automation argument Diana was making about the the Ipads is not
    convincing, historically if a human worker can be replaced with a machine
    then they will be replaced with a machine, weather or not the minimum is
    raised the economics will always favor automation in the long run. 

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *