Millions of U.S. workers to see pay raise with minimum wage hike to $7.25

And now we will be even less competitive on the world market.

Disagree. Raising the minimum wage it induces firms to hire fewer workers, and to cut back on hours. This in turn hurts the poor, keeping people on welfare, and encourages high-school students to drop out. Way-to-go dumb Dems!

some states already are at 7.25 although this move is just to keep the unions happy

Hey JP I don't mean to take a shot at you but if you think $7.25/hour is too much money; why don't you go try to live on it? Greed has been the underlying factor all along. Even small businesses. I live in a tourist area and I see these small business owners paying jack to their employees. But the owner has to do that because the spouse and kids want new snowmobiles for Christmas, or 4-wheelers, boats, vacations etc. My son-in-law works for a company where the owner ragged on everybody and their annual meeting because he had to down grade from a $5 million home to a $3.5 million home because sales and production was down.

Lemongrass Grill - Manhattan (pasted from another article)

The suit says delivery workers made as little as $2.08 per hour, and some kitchen workers made as little as $4.23 per hour — below minimum wage, even when reduced by an allowance for tips. Like is stated: GREED, GREED, GREED, even from the small business sector.

This is not the right policy. In California the minimum wage always outpaces the rest of the country. I would hope that Texas would not immulate their economy after that of California. Until we get our trade deficit under control we will just keep contributing more money to China via the Large Box Retailers who have had total disregard for the workers of the nation.

Wow, what a joke. How is anyone supposed to get by on $7.25 an hour. Its fine I guess if you live at home with mommy and daddy and have no bills!

RT
www.privacy-tools.tk

#6, it's true that California has the nighest minimum wage. It's also true that California is millions and millions of dollars short of the money it needs to keep in operation.

aazippo2, no one is suppose to "get by" on $7.25 an hour. It is an entry level wage. Why should a company be forced to pay a pimply faced teenager who doesn't show up to work on time $7.25 to shove a greasy burger in a bag?

Most union contracts are tied to min. wage, btw.

They are talking about how many millions of people are going to have improved lives from this minimum wage increase. According the the US govt, only 1.7 million are at, or below the minimum wage, which is 0.56% of the American population. Even working a full 40 hour workweek, the extra $0.55 an hour only works out to $28 extra dollars a week, minus taxes.

The discourse over minimum wage is skewed, the vast majority of people who earn minimum wage are able to quickly increase their pay if they are good, reliable workers. Even here in Georgia McDonald's, not known for their wages, starts worker's pay above minimum wage. Most restaurant type work will give a raise to a good worker in less than 6 months. The raise in minimum wage allows the lowest denominator workers increase their pay without any sort of work ethic changes. The people who don't care about their job/work shouldn't get pay increases.

I don't understand. To everyone who opposes this, how much of high school economics do you remember?

For the greatest GDP, no minimum wage should exist. The demand for wages intersects the supply of wages at a fixed amount of total wage. A minimum wage artificially raises this intersection point, so a nation with a minimum wage will always have an unemployment rate that exceeds its natural rate.

The problem isn't that people can't live off $7.25/hr, it's that some people are living off it while others cannot. I'd rather see two people struggling with $5/hr, than see one person work hard while the other lives off unemployment checks.

As one who is receiving less than $7.00 an hour i would like to impress on people, that think it to much for min wage, to take your bills for every month ,just the ones necessary to get buy, and see if you can pay them on just $7.25 an hour.i am currently working overtime every week and if i were on my own and not married i would not be able to survive without gov. assistance, which i do not currently receive.

I won't trot out the usual arguments against minimum wage, just point out a few fundamentals of economics.

"...the federal minimum wage increase will serve as a valuable stimulus factor in an economy that needs all of the stimulus it can get."

- This is simply an basic economic fallacy. Raising the minimum wage does not drive economic activity or create wealth. The increased wages paid out to workers correspond to reduced income for the businesses and their owners, who buy correspondingly fewer goods and services. Net economic gain: 0. There may be a social gain from greater income equality, but to tout a min. wage increase as stimulus is a joke.

"in real, inflation-adjusted terms, the new minimum wage will still be below the $9 per hour minimum wage of the late 1960s."

- Welcome to the law of supply and demand. Middle- and high-skill workers are in much higher demand today than in the 60s, and the overall percentage of the workforce having unskilled jobs has dropped dramatically. Combined with an influx of cheap immigrant labor, you have no upward pressure on wages of low-skill jobs.

There is no economic reason at all for minimum wage to be a 'living wage.' (Insert talking point about teenage/transitional workers here.) In fact, as long as it isn't, there is greater incentives for workers to acquire more education and skills (and to help them do this, there are massive and generous state/federal programs). A more educated and skilled workforce leads to higher productivity and wealth creation. But the closer the minimum wage is to the average or median wage, the less of an incentive there is. That's an unintended consequence for you.

Raising the minimum wage will be good for employees. It is a huge warning that inflation is going to come back in the double digits very soon. In the past, min wage hikes were the last things to go up. This must be some kind of sign that the higher ups are worried that the wage is way off. Watch for your houses and anything that is property (goods you buy) will go up accordingly. The min wage should be at $20 by now. I am an employer and would make the adjustment somehow.

Raise your hand if you're commenting on this article and your take home pay is less than $8000 a year.

Hand still down? Now shut up.

@Keith #14

If you truly believed what you just said you would start paying your employees $20 an hour. Then you would start getting '$20 an hour' production from them.

Forcing businesses to pay more for the same work when the demand for workers is low will only increase prices and INCREASE inflation. When you suddenly have people that have more money to spend, the demand for products go up as the supply goes down (because businesses will cut back on production to save on labor costs) increasing the prices for those same products.

"@7-15-2009 @ 11:12AM
Patrick said..."

1.7 million at or below minimum wage in USA? if you believe that you're an idiot. the problem is they can't quickly increase their pay if they are 'good'. it's minimum wage. it's not like people always have a choice to get better pay. min. wage people take their job seriously, more than you do, because it's the only thing between them and homelessness. Paying workers less to give them incentive to find 'better jobs' is as useful as raising taxes on cigs to keep people from smoking. it hasn't changed a thing. min. wage isn't there to make people try harder because there aren't enough NON min. wage jobs in america to employ all of these people you stupid little man. obviously you're still 18 or have lived a sheltered life provided by mommy and daddy. min. wage isn't necessarily entry level pay, most of the time it's all the pay you're gonna get. if anything it's the companies that need incentive to pay more.

in the UK min wage is 2-3 times higher than the USA, relatively.


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@"7-15-2009 @ 11:22AM
JMiller said..."

"There is no economic reason at all for minimum wage to be a 'living wage." another idiot. if a person can't live off their wage, i.e. afford food, bills, a little extra, etc. then there is no incentive to work. if a person can't afford a place to stay from working then they are homeless. they can't bathe, or cook, or do laundry...try working when you can't even come in with clean clothes or can't afford to get there. It's pretty bad when you can make a better living off welfare than you can off min. wage.

if anything welfare/system cheating is a 'non competition' buy out. you're paying these people to not be working, to keep them from stealing your job and creating too much competition or an over abundance of supply in your field of work and to keep your high pay. because if suddenly your field of work had a double in the amount of qualified, your pay would drop in half or more. It's in your best interests to have a high demand field with a low amount of qualified otherwise if we have a sudden flush of rocket scientists, their wage would drop to min. wage relatively.

In regards to minimum wage being an "entry level or teenage employment wages", is simply not the case. A lot of what's left in the small manufacturing sectors, rely on temporary services companies, on a full-time basis as to not pay for employee benefits, such as, health insurance, retirement benefits, worker's compensation, ect. The term that these employees are referred by is, "Permanent Part-time Workers", which technically dissolves any and all rights, to a better standard of living, while absolving the consciences of employers, for keeping people at a really "low standard of living", while they themselves, are not or would not tolerate those wages, for themselves! The justification for keeping people from earning a *livable wage*, by calling it "a training wage, or a teenager's salary", is basically denial, to keep the status quo, for their own benefit, while justifying the use of domestic slave labor in the U.S.


A lot of employers *use* minimum wage as their "base salary" for every employee they hire, and then "nickle and dime" them with minuscule yearly raises between twenty-five to fifty cents, which *does not* keep up with the rate of inflation!


Republican's, Conservatives, and Libertarians, also like to trot out the old argument of a deregulated, non-unionized workforce, and people should just get more education, and be better citizens! Then they have the *nerve* to supplement "their workforce" by either moving their manufacturing overseas, to support Communist countries, like China (using U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund the move), or they have their tech sector of American workers, like Microsoft, force to train H1B and L1 workers from places like India, to replace them, while holding their severance pay hostage, because these "new employees" will work for less than half the pay of their American counterparts.


Then, we have the same political group of people, who would rather just forget the H1B, or L1 Visas altogether, and just hire illegal aliens, for even less than minimum wage, and reap the profits, by cutting out unemployment insurance, health insurance, worker's compensation, retirement benefits, ect. They also, are at the whim of the employer, to work extra hours for free, use unsafe equipment and/or tolerate very hazardous working environments, on account of their illegal status.


Basically, in a nutshell, Republicans and Conservative types, would like nothing more, than to recreate a *permanent aristocracy* that would put the majority of the workforce, as low paid serfs, while the upper five percent lived the "high life"!

The thing that Republicans and Conservatives do not *understand* is, the better the wage scale for the indigenous population (U.S. workers), the more good and services would be sold, creating larger demand for their products, and will lead to greater profit margins for the company, and a richer, stronger, more civil country over-all!

You cannot argue the prudence of a "federal" minimum wage simply because the cost of living is so drastically different across the country. Having a small business owner in New York City paying $7.25 an hour probably would not have much effect, since that wage is a much smaller proportion of total expenses, vs an owner in Small Town Mississippi where leases and revenues are much lower. Likewise, $7.25 an hour to a worker in the same Small Town whose rent is $400 a month goes a lot further than for a worker in New York City whose rent even in the poorest neighborhood is $800 a month.

@Keith

20 dollar minimum wage are you nuts that's 41.6 k per year for cleaning toilets or flipping burgers. Have the damn country would be unemployed if labor cost that much.