The minimum wage needs to be as high. Productivity has been rising way more than wages have and basically most people are actually underpaid for the work they do.

It's economically a bad idea to see so much money go to top positions.

No. Increasing inflation does not generally cause the value of a currency to drop significantly. This only happens in extreme circumstances.

My understanding is that the drop in the value of the Australian dollar was a combined effect of the Reserve Bank intentionally putting downward pressure on the AUD and the end of the mining boom.

Our dollar needed to drop as it was pushing $1.10 US, killing our exports (but great for buying games from overseas).

That said, I think a relatively high minumum wage is a good thing. I was on minimum wage when I bought my first house! In how many countires can people say that!? 

So as long as you don't go crazy and cause small businesses to stop employing people, increasing minumum wage to a level the market can tolerate is great!

The vast majority of buying power, is with the lower to middle class.

If you can move money into the lower classes hands, they will spend more => more sales (more than makes up for higher expenses of salary).

Society is healthier, less crime, more people that "own" stuff and are happier.

No, a minimum wage just causes unemployment for the worse of in society, how is somebody with no skills or experience (particularly in America, the black youths) who's labor is worth (for example) $4.00 an hour or less, supposed to get work when the enforced minimum hourly rate is $7.50, and we have a prat who wants to raise this even higher? Does he not want youth to work at all?

Also for people bitching about the income inequality, well try living in your means, saving 5-10% of your post tax yearly income, and invest this money in assets that either grow your income or grow your wealth (or both). It's no coincidence that since the 80's, when family savings dropped from an average of ~5% (it depends which state and which country, but this is a fairly accurate average for the western developed countries) to and average of effectively 0%, income inequality has boomed. 

It's a horrible idea. Though I do believe something had to be done. The first paragraph is why it is horrid idea, the second is what should be done.

I live the Midwest and $15.00 is more than most industrial jobs make normally, you are talking a hike that will blow inflation out of the water since it will affect more employers than just the service industry which are usually the only market affected by a hike. Here were are talking a hike for industrial, some administrative, logistics and a lot of other sectors. That means there will be more people who just make minimum wadge, and there will be more products that get price hikes, then a second price hike, then a third as the different sectors find a new equilibrium, this is what happened in the aughts when gas prices went through the roof causing the prices of logistics to go up, then service went up, then supply went up, then service went up again. (I use service here because I work in the service industry and its prices are affected easier since they are usually set to a low price to attract customers.) And in the end we will end up in an even worse situation than we are in now, where even more people cannot live on the money they make.

I do believe something should be done but this the cost of living being so much different across the country a one sized fits all minimum wadge will not cut it any more. I'm not certain but when the minimum wadge was originally passed the average cost of living was not as diverse as it is now. So instead of a minimum wadge they should pass a Cost of Living Wadge Law that puts the minimum wadge in the hands of the state who will make regions with in the state and set regional minimum wadges. It also gives the states more tools to attract and maintain labor(population) and industry by control the wadge. So lets say in New York you can have a $15.00 minimum wadge since the cost of living is so high, but in Wisconsin you have an $9.00 minimum wadge in the south east and an $8.50 in the rest of the state.

Hi I am an Economics Major going to get my Master's degree.
A high minimum wage can increase the prices of goods but not due to inflation. Inflation only occurs when the money supply increases greater than Real GDP growth.
A higher minimum wage forces firms to higher less workers and sell less product (due to having less workers). Society is at a loss overall with a high minimum wage.
The best way to increase prices is to increase the output of each worker or increase the amount of jobs available to choose from.

Except a higher minimum wage actually significantly hurts the middle class.

Right, okay...

The issue with minimum wage is not inflation. Inflation is a monetary occurrence, which I will describe properly later in the post. The primary issue with minimum wage laws is that it causes unemployment, and I will describe how:

Almost everybody understands the basics of supply and demand: people understand that as demand for something goes up, prices go up; and the inverse is true for supply (if supply goes down, prices go up). But the relationship between S/D and price is a two-way relationship. If a price is artificially manipulated outside of the marketplace by a Government agency, that will alter the supply and demand.

People understand this intuitively, too. People say that we should "subsidise" green-energy (ie, artificically make the price lower) to increase demand for green energy. People also say that we should "tax" tobacco (ie, artificially make the price higher) to decrease the demand for tobacco.

Where people lose this intuition is with wages, and I think one of the reasons for this is precisely because of the fact that we call it wages. A wage is nothing more than a price. It's a price for labour. Lots of people understand this when they buy labour on a temporary basis - getting your hair cut, washing your car, contractors to work on your house, in this situation, people understand that labour is price. But the same is true for more-permenant fixed jobs, too. Your hourly wage, or yearly salary, is the price of your labour.

It's a price, which means it's in a two-way relationship with S/D. When you artificially manipulate the price of labour, you break the S/D relationship. A minimum wage is a price-floor, meaning that prices can not drop below that level. This artificially increases the price of labour beyond the "market clearing rate", and thus you end up with higher levels of unemployment.

I live in Hong Kong, and in HK, the minimum wage is 32HKD per hour (which works out at $4.11USD). However, this minimum wage is actually BELOW the market-clearing rate. You will not find a job in HK advertised at minimum wage levels, if you walk into any fast food restaurant or supermarket, you will see jobs posted for 10-20hkd more than minimum wage. I have also noted that these jobs go primarily to immigrants and students.

I think for a lot of people out there, reading the paragraph above (if they got that far) would be entirely shocking. Why would McDonald's pay MORE than minimum wage? Those guys are evil bastards and would pay you nothing if they could. Which is true, they would. But they can't. Because the minimum wage is below the market clearing rate, it's effectively pointless. It's like if the Government passed a law saying that a Ferrari can't be sold for less than $1. It's not going to effect anything.

What being at the "market clearing rate" means, is that nobody is unemployed because they can't find a job. Every time a person enters the workforce, there will be many opportunities for work. Those employers bid eachother in the marketplace for your labour. The reason why McDonald's pays above minimum here is because if they didn't, you'd just go work at Pizza Hut or Subway across the road, who were offering more.

This isn't anecdotal, either. Hong Kong is at (well, very close to) full-employment. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/hong-kong/unemployment-rate

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"Inflation is a monetary occurence", this stuff is a bit more complex, and off-topic, so I won't go into it in too much depth.

People tend to forget that a trade is a two-way thing. It's not just the S/D relationship of the thing you buy, but of the thing you sell, too. In days of barter this is a bit more intuitive. If you're selling pigs for sheep, for example, it's easy to understand that the rate of pigs-to-sheep you get will be determined by the S/D ratios of both pigs and sheep.

The thing is, the same is also true for USD, or HKD, or EUR, or AUD, CAD, RMB, etc. Currencies have their own S/D ratio. These are obvious in between curriencies, these are called FX-rates, you will know about this if you've ever been on holiday in a country that uses a different currency to your own. Currencies also have their own S/D relationship with the goods and services you buy with them.

Again, like I said I won't give too much depth, but I will give a simple example: hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic (the name given to the period of time in Germany between WWI and WWII). During the hyper-inflation, http://www.usagold.com/germannightmare.html, prices exploded (look at the table on the left a little down the page). There is a famous tale of a man who left his house to buy a pair of shoes for his child. When he left, he had enough money for the shoes, by the time he got to the shop, he could afford nothing. Did anything happen to the S/D relationship of the shoes? No. This price change was entirely due to the S/D relationship of the currency.

Spoken like somebody who's never known what it's like to be poor. "Just save 5-10%". Assume someone makes $8/hr. Working full time that's roughly $17k per year. Take away 10% for taxes and you're left with $15,300/year.

Now let's say rent in Anytown, USA is $600/month. Good luck getting any place that isn't infested with cockroaches for $600/mo. That's $7,200/yr. You now have $8,100 left.

Now factor in food, utilities, bus pass/car maintainance, laundromat visits, incidentals, doctor bills, AND a health insurance penalty because minimum wage workers far and wide do not receive benefits like healthcare in the US, and I submit to you that you would not have "5-10%" left to save. Not only that, but you can bet with a reasonable degree of accuracy that if you're making minimum wage, you've attained a minimum level of education. You probably grew up poor in a poor neighborhood with lots of crime and went to a poor school with not-so-great teachers and are around other poor people who have no idea what investing even is much less how to do it. Poor people in this country (US) are not afforded the same opportunities through education as their middle and upper class peers.

I've made roughly one post a year on this site for the last 5 or so years. It usually takes something so incredibly ignorant like this to make me actually want to post, but you did it. Good job.

You had me at "higher less workers".

But seriously, as somebody who actually has his Masters Degree in Business, I can say that this is an incredibly simple and short-sided view. First, minimum wage does not "force" any business to "sell less product". You can make the argument fewer people will be employed, but those who are working will have more money, presumably to either save or spend. In our consumer economy here in the US in 2016, it will most likely be spent.

"Increase output of each worker". Wut. The US has the highest productivity of any workforce IN THE WORLD. In theory, what you're saying is correct. In reality, where the rest of us live, this s*** don't fly. If it were that simple, we'd all be economists.

That all begin said, a $15/hr minimum wage is a terrible idea. Not because I think it'll sink our economy, but because in my opinion, low-skill jobs deserve low-skill wages, and people need to be incentivized to make something of themselves in a capitalist society or they'll just become a drain. I planned to make this post more detailed, but unfortunately I have work. I might add on to this later.

So no, nobody wanted to read the article by the U.S. DOL? You know, an actual source on the subject?

http://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster