If the minimum wage is a bad idea, then inflation will eliminate that bad idea over time by eroding the real increase in wages.  If it is a great idea, then yes another raise would be required.

Things aren't that simple. If only it was because everyone that disagreed with you only had nefarious reasons for thinking the way they do life would be so much simple. Last I checked, Europe doesn't think one way as a whole anyways.

Either way it's a bad idea in that scenario since it's the exact same thing. Bad idea (in your scenario)=inflation eroding away the increase in wages which would lead to another political need for another increase in wages.

Minimum wages increarsing inflation is minimal.  Let's say Walmart has 50 people working per store.  If there was a $2 minimum wage increase, for 8 hours a day, those 50 people would be paid $800 more per day per store.  An additional $.01 per item or items that are more frequently purchased and they'd make far beyond that $800 they lost.  How about that same $2 increase for a fast food restaurant where there's maybe 10 people working the entire day.  That's $160.  The cost increase in order to make that amount back for  the company would be next to nothing.

The same goes for the smaller businesses as well though.  They have less people working for them, so they have to pay out less.  If it's a fast food location like in the video embedded above.  The increase in prices would be $.01 or less to still be profitable.

Places that don't sell as many items, they might have to mark up items more depending on how many people working and how much business, but again, marginal increase.  A furniture store that sells a thousand dollar pieces of furniture might have to increase their prices by $.50 to a dollar.  I'd assume not many people go into a furniture store and make purchases on a regular basis unless it's somewhere like Sears, Walmart, etc.

prices for public transportation, food, energy, rent, and living etc goes up year after year while the minimum wage stays the same. That is not good, because now there is no such thing as a middle class as you know it. You're either homeless, poor, or rich.

That's a good point, every province in Canada sets its own minimum wage as its market conditions dictate. However, it goes up nearly every year sometimes more than once. In the Ontario election that just passed it was actual a major issue the incumbant goverment used to win the election by saying that would raise it to 11 dollars.

I don't know much about the economy, so you can classify this as the ramblings of a madman, but I've always wondered what the 'trickle up' effect of this would be.

Some background: I live in a state where minimum wage is ~$8, and I started working at a company that started out low level people at $10, and there was a slightly higher up department that paid people $15. Those were the 2 lowest departments, and it went up from there in pay etc, etc.

If minimum wage is bumped to $15 then this whole system goes out of whack. All of a sudden the low level people who were making $10 are now making $15...but so is the high school kid flipping burgers at McDonalds. Is the company going to raise the starting rate to $17 so that starting pay is still slightly above minimum wage (as it was before).

Well how about the people in the next higher department who were making $15 an hour? They used to be making almost double minimum wage and now they are 1) Making minimum wage and 2) Making as much money as people in the lower department. Should they get bumped up to $22 to keep the original $5 difference?

If you're making $22 an hour, based on a 40 hour work week, that puts you at ~$45,000 a year. So now the people who make $45,000 a year will want an increase because people below them are now getting paid the same amount...

And this would go on and on up the chain.


I'm curious to see what happens.

If everyone went to Uni/college who would do these jobs, for our own needs we need to have people in these jobs, so we need to look after them, poverty and inequality is the main cuase of social issues in any country which cost society huge resources to cope with, why not get to the cause and get people a decent wage even if it costs more up front it will save us big in the long run

I live in Australia where we have a minimum wage, we almost never do tipping, people have a future no matter what happened to them, and society doesnt have to pay the consequences of all the social issues that's created by poverty

We all benefit long term by giving people a living wage  

Problem with your statement is that they weren't "very isolated."  He only mentions the isolated ones specifically.   http://escholarship.org/uc/item/86w5m90m#page-1  This was one of the sources (technically he cited Wikipedia) he referred to.
The quote he looked at was this one sampled on Wikipedia: "Study compared 288 pairs of contiguous U.S. counties with minimum wage differentials from 1990 to 2006 and found no adverse employment effects from a minimum wage increase. Contiguous counties with different minimum wages are in purple. All other counties are in white"

edit:  I am not claiming any of this to be absolute conclusive evidence.  However, I am just pointing out that raising the minimum wage most definitely has its purpose in improving the economy.

That seems incredibly flawed. What about the rest of those states? What about longer term effects?

Also, I can't read this right now and it may all be in there, but what was interstate traffic like, what were the populations of these counties before and after the study, and what was the exact order of events from minimum wage increase to the results that they found taking into account all of the variables?