Minimum wage debates on the internet

[toaster little]

We all know there's talks on TV about raising the minimum wages in the US to $11, $13, or even $15 per hour.

Let's say for example that the current minimum wage is $7.25/hr. If you have a cashier who makes $7.25/hr and you have a sales clerk currently making $9/hr and the minimum wage goes up to $13/hr for everyone, should the sales clerk still make the same hourly wage that the cashier makes? If the sales clerk has always been getting paid more than the cashier, shouldn't the new wage for the sales clerk be higher than $13/hr? Let's say there's a secretary who currently makes $13/hr. If the minimum wage increases to $13/hr, should that secretary continue to get paid the same hourly rate? I tried to ask this question to other people when someone brought up this subject but everyone shuts me out and quickly changes the subject. People kept saying the wages of everyone else does not matter because they aren't getting paid minimum wage.

If this increase in minimum wage takes effect, how are employers going to afford paying everyone more? We know they're going to cut costs somewhere which means they might slow job growth and cut benefits for employees.

[FireIsTheCleanser]

I think one of the driving forces behind raising minimum wage is that people will have enough to make a living while still having money left over to buy stuff. If everyone has more money, more people are going to go out, buy luxuries and give back the money that's being used to pay employees more. Of course I have no idea if that would balance out but that's what I've heard.

I agree that raising minimum wage can be tricky because it can end up causing a domino affect for people who get paid wages. I think that if only minimum wage was raised it wouldn't be as big a problem for people who are already getting paid that if it's still enough money to live off it. It'd just be those people feeling like they were suddenly being paid less.

And that's about the reach of my "knowledge" on this subject goes.

[Member11]

Moved to the debate section.

Raising the minimum wage would actually be a positive for those companies, as the extra money those people get would be spent at those companies' stores giving them more money and more profit. It will also save the US government over $9 billion in food stamps. And just to compare, the minimum wage here in Australia is $16.87, up from $13.74 three years ago, and our economy didn't fail, in fact our economy is doing better than the USA.