I wouldn’t say its exploitation for most scenarios. Being paid for your talent and worth to the company should be taken into consideration. Finding another Fry Guy to dip the potatoes in oil is hardly a hard job to fill or one that requires much talent. Minimum wage positions are generally the entry level menial task positions, you start to make more as responsibility and experience increase. Starting everyone out at $15/hr like in Seattle is just asking for a huge wage inequality issue. You will end up with Managers and Shift leaders etc. making the same as someone off the street with no experience, that doesn’t really bode well for employee morale. It’s just a bad idea all the way around. If a company wants to offer higher wages for its employees because it has run the math and decides it can do so than so be it, to force companies to pay what you think they should regardless of margins and sales revenue is overstepping. The "minimum" is a guideline that when increased to what is considered a high wage for entry level will only do damage to the middle class and broaden the gap between middle and upper class.

So High School kids looking to make some extra money to pay for gas, car insurance deserver $100/hr? Wal-Mart greators who stand around and hand out stickers deserve it as well?

The jobs that are going overseas will go overseas regardless. US low-skill workers in movable industries can't compete with those workers from China/India/etc, and no one can compete with robots.

As for wether it's worth it, on average, unionized workers make 10-30% (varies between types of jobs and age groups) more than non-unionized workers in the US. The highest premium is for low skilled jobs, because people in higher skilled jobs on average have more leverage to negotiate pay, but even for them they benefit around 10%.

People that make $10 an hour will make about $20000 a year working normal shifts, which would be bumped up to about $23000 (on average) for the comparable unionized worker (using a reasonable estimate of 15% better pay). Meanwhile, union dues for such a worker would only be around 350$ a year.... So it is definitely worth it.

High school kids deserve $200/hr at least. How are they supposed to learn if they're working at he same time?

Walmart makes billions of dollars, is increasing wages to $100/hr really going to hurt them?

Until the capital that was supposed to be used for investment into more productive equipment is diverted to wages and everyone loses their job because the company that paid lower wages had the capital to increase productivity and undercut you.

Same things where said 100 years ago, when Henry Ford almost doubled the daily paychecks at the Ford Motor Company. Instead, that's where the US economy REALLY took off and mass motorisation ensued. Why you might ask? Well, because wih the higher wages, people could spend more money on consumer products, thus helping the economy of the entire country, especially after the other companies followed suit (they did so because their skilled employees left their companies in droves to get hired by Ford, and had to stop that situation asap) and raised they wages too.

Yeah, I was wondering how a local business that probably employs very few people could be THAT impacted by 10 minimum wage. Your link makes way more sense than what the op is saying. But hey, blame the minimum wage and lower it to a deplorable 7.70 an hour, enjoy that drop in quality from workers as well

The minimum wage should be whatever it costs to pay a single person's rent, food, phone bill, car insurance, gasoline, car payment and gym fee, while living in a studio apartment. Take the total amount of all those things find the average and add $200 just for good measure. Then divide by 40. There's your unofficial minimum wage.

Also there hasn't been a federal minimum wage increase since 2009, and before that it was something like 6.50 an hour. $7.25 an hour only gets you about $986 a month at full time. Rent for most studio apartments is $500-$700 alone. Should people live off cereal, have no phone, no car, and work 40 hours a week? That's 3rd world country conditions.

Also, all those corporate jobs that force you to work 60 hours a week for "salaried" should go out of business. That's just another way to pay below minimum.

Agree with the move, but not with the principle.

I don't think the minimum wage should be the vehicle to boost people out of poverty. Raise the earned income tax credit instead. i.e., more help for single moms, less help for high school kids living with their parents.

Totally disagree with the, "Don't ask what do I get, ask what can I do." mentality. It's a nice lesson to teach your kids, but on a macroeconomic scale, it's a sucker's move. It's a relic from a time in which Germany and Japan were in shambles, and the developing world had no infrastructure.

We need to get with the times. Working people making low wages need help.

I agree that we need to do a lot more to help the working poor, but I disagree with the bolded.

I feel like the idea that everyone needs to have their own place (no family, no roommates) and everyone needs their own car (no carpooling, no public transit) is a pretty America-centric idea.