Federal minimum wage is unconstitutional

[Lord N]

mrstickball said:

 

 

Do you realize that when we raise the minimum wage, we're going to have more unemployment and a higher cost of goods for basic needs that those on minimum/low wages rely on? Why not raise minimum wage to $50/hr? I mean, $50 is a more livable wage than $10, right?

The minimum wage has nothing to do with with inflation or, as you put it, higher cost of goods. Inflation happens when there is too much money chasing too little goods. For example, when the government of Weimar Germany was in so much debt after WWI, it simply printed billions of marks to pay off the debts, and that caused the value of the currency to decrease, which led to the mass inflation which was seen.

It's no different than the US going from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation during the Reagan era. As a result of this, the treasury began to function like a printing press, which continues to this day. When the US govt. owes money to foreign governments, it simply prints more of it, which causes the value of the US dollar to decrease.

But you actually already have it your way, because the minimum wage has actually decreased in real dollars since the late 1970's while the pay of CEO's and high level executives has skyrocketed. In many ways, a minimum wage is actually a maximum wage that employers are willing to pay while the top 1-5% are allowed to make an almost unlimited amount of money. Raising the minimum wage would not cause inflation to increase, it would just mean that more of the wealth would go the the middle and lower class instead of into the pockets of the top earners. For example, if the executives who ran Wal-mart were to take a 10% pay cut(which would give them far more money than anyone could reasonably ever spend. I mean, how many mansions and cars does one person need?), then the rest of the employees could make $18/hour and have full heathcare benefits and a full pension.