What would raising the minimum wage actually do?
To answer this question, ask yourself this question. What doesn't change if minimum wage changes? Welfare, the international value of the US dollar, taxes, and the amount of physical resources available. These three factors are the most important to understanding the influence minimum wage would have on the economy if minimum wage changed.
The prices for everything would be raised by the same percent of minimum wage increase. This would allow people to get paid more, however, when people do get fired and if they did, it would be because that market was a market that tended to people on welfare, as the amount of money which goes into welfare wouldn't necessarily be increased, however, since more money is forced to circulate even faster than before, taxes would be pulled from the economy faster as well. This means that the federal government would have more spending power. This isn't even the worse of the matter.
The federal government which deals in international trade would have more money to spend on other countries resources while the value of the dollar would basically stay relatively the same as it was before, allowing for the bureaucratic class in our society to live luxuriously while the welfare class would have a more difficult time finding jobs or getting resources they need. The middle class would get a tiny bit smaller as the bottom portion would fall into a welfare state while the rest of the middle class, most of the middle class, would be slightly positively effected at first by the ability to purchase luxury items at a cheap price before the prices rise. People who can afford to go on trips to foreign countries and do business with foreign countries would also have more buying power, even though the number of those people would be smaller.
So let's now ask the question. Is minimum wage a good thing or a bad thing? It causes people to use less resources, that's for sure, but, it also causes some people who are already living in a miserable state to become even more miserable than before. It's no coincidence that the closer you get to a neighborhood of politicians, the higher the surrounding neighborhoods get into poverty. It's because people who have put the well being of others in their hands without letting people take control of their own well being, don't really care about the well being of others. Every idea that sounds good is really another step toward these people living better at the cost of you. If you're one of them, then yea, it's a great idea. If you're not one of them and live in poverty, you should consider leaving the country before it gets worse and becomes too late.
