spurgeonryan said:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/minimum-wage-set-to-drop-in-missouri/ar-BBDP27V?OCID=ansmsnnews11
ST. LOUIS -- Cities all over the United States have been boosting their minimum wage. It's up to $15 an hour in Seattle, but it's going in the opposite direction in St. Louis, Missouri.
$10 an hour two months ago made it expensive to stay open. So he's cut back from five to two days a week for lunch. His hamburgers are smaller, his entrees pricier and his customers scarcer.
Hawatmeh believes it's not the government, but a combination of worker determination and customer demand that should set the correct wage.
"That's how I built myself," he said. "That's how I'm teaching my children to build themselves. Don't ask what do I get, ask what can I do."
And Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens agrees. Next month, the minimum wage will return to $7.70 an hour -- ten bucks an hour was a mistake, he says.
See rest at the link above^
I am willing to bet that alot of business will stay higher because they are already used to paying the 10 dollars. Especially since most should be getting cheaper items due to fuel prices being so low for the past year or so. They can afford it.
What say you about this reversal?
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I live in the St. Louis area. Just to be clear it was only St. Louis city that had the minimum wage at $10, if I recall. The rest of Missouri had the normal minimum wage. I'm conflicted on this issue. I used to feel that minimum wage jobs should be held by mainly highschoolers tryin to earn some side money, but now that I've taught in North county St. Louis where there are a lot of poor people that depend on their family members working those jobs in order to make a living because they couldn't afford (or didn't want to, etc.) to go to college, I've changed my perspective on this. I still, in general, think for most of the country that minimum wage should not be high because it encourages complacency and laziness (I used to work full time as a para in schools and make $15 an hour, some places paid $13-14 an hour, and now people flipping burgers for $15? I doubt they will ever try to move out of that cause that's easy money), but in low income areas like the area I teach in, the minimum wage probably needs to be higher.
All this being said, it's ridiculous that people are setting up a standard for the national minimum wage to get to (such as $10 or $15). The living standard in Missouri is a LOT cheaper than living in Illinois, New York, California, or any other highly liberal state. The more liberal a state is, the higher taxes you have (Illinois is a COMPLETE nightmare in taxes, and they are STILL spending billions of dollars more than they have in tax revenue). So $10 in Missouri gets you a lot more than $10 in New York, therefore we in general probably don't need a minimum wage increase as much.