Come on. Minimum wage workers and illegal immigrants do the work Americans won't do. Pay them more so they can have just one job and still get another car or large screen t.v. like everyone else. And when inflation peeks its ugly head up and small businesses fire workers, don't bitch.

NEVER,NEVER trust a liberal

Yeah, I'm a small business owner, luckily still small enough to not have any team members that I have to pay. But, Illinois just upped the minimum wage from it's $6.50 to &7.50 starting this summer and a quarter an hour raise for the next three years. That was deemed better than an automatic COLA raise each year. BUT, but my math, based on an annual inflation rate of 3.14% since 1914 (see here), that would indicate less than a quarter raise each year. But either way, that's just going to make ME work harder so I don't have to raise MY prices to my clients.

Please make sure your train of thought carries freight.

You're right, Chris, it is a lot easier than corporate interests and the moneyed elite want you to believe.  You can empower people to pay for necessary services by providing them a living wage, or you can provide social services paid for by your taxes.  Alternatively, you can ignore want and suffering or let private charity provide.  Which charities do you support?

I worked three jobs all my life and I had an excellent education. I'm glad that I worked so hard. Stop the "fairness" whine--life's not fair.

NEVER,NEVER trust a liberal

Again, let me repeat it - Minimum wage is not supposed to provide for a house, a car, two TVs and PlayStation 3 or Xbox.

There is no such thing as a fair lwage. In fact, the only reason why any commercial transaction takes place is because both sides of the transactions are CONVINCED that they are getting the better half of the deal:

You give my company your TIME, do what I tell you to do and in exchange for that you get MONEY. You are going to get hired if and only if whatever you produce during that TIME is worth to me MORE than what I'm paying you. 

Likewise, from your perspective, you are giving me TIME during which you do what I tell you to do and in exchange for that you are given MONEY. The only reason you are offering your services to me is because you think that I'm an IDIOT who is willing to pay you more for your time than your time is worth. If you are not convinced of that you are not going to offer me your services, rather you are going to look for a bigger idiot who is going to be willing to pay you higher amount.

If you produce exactly for amount I am supposed to pay you i still won't hire you because it would be a waste of resources ( such as space, power, donuts ) to keep you around as you don't produce in excess of what you cost.

What the *f* is a "living wage"? How do you calculate it precisely? Give us the formula.

Then we can debate whether or not everyone or anyone should be automatically entitled to it. But we need to know how it's defined as step 1.

For a justification for raising minimum wage see this http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage_minwagefaq

I remember from my Economics class that wages trail prices.  The increase is required for minimum wage earners to start to catch up to inflation.  I don't know who the smartest person in the room is, but aren't you smart enough to realize that your objection has two possible answers a government can regulate wages or regulate profits.  Next you'll be telling us that people who run businesses are smart enough to get around any regulation of profit.  Greed will always find a way.  There is no perfect solution, only a better one.

paperhead  -CET  Convoluted Economic Theory by misterbill. Dreamed it up while under anesthesia for brain surgery. When you raise the min wage to $7, the current $5.15 employees run out and buy expensive consumer goods, HDTVs, Lexus autos, etc. This lasts for 2 months at which time a 15% inflation abruptly settles in. This brings the value of money back where it was, so everything balances (except the balance of trade which we have already f****ed up with NAFTA and plan to inflict more damage on Amreica soon with CAFTA.  See?? Easy. Oh yes, it also for those 2 months eliminates all those jobs Americans don't want. Then all the illegals go back to their native countries.

Two months later we start all over again. (All those year working in the financial district rubbed off on me. Even though I was only making $5.15 per hour there.)

That's right paperhead, anyone still working for $5.15 an hour must be a fool.

We have temp agencies and massive turnover in the low end markets because people want to beat the ***t out of their employer at that rate, after about 2 weeks, and I certainly don't blame them one bit.

I don't know any solution to the issue, but you can be as sure as I am that almost every small employer nowadays cuts their employees wages to the bare minimum, and loves that cash labor hanging out at home depo.

I don't understand a person who can go to work for 8 bucks an hour forty hours a week, then go to the supermarket and a frozen pizza is 8 bucks, a gallon of milk is 3 bucks, and a loaf of bread is 2.50 or 3 bucks, and they're happy, and stick with it, while they're employer who has 2 employees is going on millionaire, or the company is a mulitmillion dollar enterprise or a billion dollar market machine. I don't agree with it myself, and believe the greed is indeed out of control, and has been for quite some time.

I have some friends with small businesses that fought the giants and the unions to survive, but they paid their workers WELL, and are proud of that, even if they were cutthroat SECURING the work.

 That's what has gone wrong in my opinion. After the work is secured, the business decides to cutthroat their employees, too. Well, it's wrong, because it isn't for survival. There's the other side of the coin too, looking at GM, etc., and what the Union demands have wrought there.

 I certainly do NOT expect any politicians to correct the issue. Nancy Pelosi has her non-union illegal immigrant restaurant business, and she's the queen bee, behind Kerry, the billionaire democrat. If that doesn't tell these stupid democrats something, I don't know what will.

Just as I saw yesterday the general populace of the UK thinks, a good job for the average joe is any government job. It has a good wage, solid benefits, prescribed raises, security, a union backing, pension funds, and all the holidays and regulated short work hours.

 The studies already have shown average government jobs here pay 10-20 percent more than the private sector equivalent. You'd be a fool to want something else, unless it is big business, or your own.

 We're already there. The government still whines it needs to pay more to attract good people, and be competitive. It's a joke of course, especially when they by their own regulations hire idiots and fools and disabled and the correct color coding.

Then, when they get somebody good like Bolton, they do everything possible to "fire" him.

"Today, a student cannot do that. They can't even afford an apartment let alone college."

Hmm, I guess all those new apartment complexes that are typically found near college campuses were built so they could sit empty, lol. And, isn't college enrollment at or near all-time highs? Where do you guys get this crap, a tank full of talking-point-generating manatees?

Just curious, have any of you folks heard that a minimum wage was desired in South Africa because one known effect of a minimum wage is lost jobs and lost opportunities for blacks?

If they do, that means less people (those with limited incomes) will be partaking of those burgers being served by that evil red clown.  The Dims can claim that they helped increase the level of prosperity for the "poor".  Imagine that!  And all it cost was the downfall of one of the biggest employers (next to Walmart) of the very young and very old workers in the country.  Okay, maybe they won't go belly-up, but wait and see if the McDees in certain neighborhoods don't close their doors.  And the Dems will then accuse them of being elitist and racist and making them true "champions for the people taking on the Man".  Talk about a win-win for the Dems

That exemption would be an easy fix. Just ask your legislature.

Are there more disabled working in Arizona (or elsewhere) below the minimum wage than able bodied working at minimum wage?

Your article cites about 5,000 disabled workers who will "at least temporarily" be affected. This site, http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0917biz-minimumwage0917.html, SAME NEWSPAPER, claims about 10,000 able bodied Arizona workers will benefit from a higher minimum wage. Surprising that conservatives omit this interesting little tidbit.

Anyone who is living under the so called "poverty" level with dependants pays nothing in taxes and receives a grant in the form of the Earned ITC to help them out.  I am happy that people are working, but if you really want to help people out of the poverty, make it uncomfortable for them to be there. We have made it too comfortable for people to live at that level.

As to "poverty", when those who are in "poverty" have a roof over their heads, food on the table, clothing, a couple of televisions, and a car, ask me who is living in "poverty"?  Not too long ago, the MSM (in one of their few moments of intellectual honesty) discussed a study that was conducted concerning the "poor".  That study showed that most of those living under the "poverty" line had all of those things listed above.  Seems ridiculous to me that we can call someone who has these things "poor".  If these people don't have as much as the rest of us, is that our problem to fix?

"Don't forget, give the working poor more money and they will buy more products, but, will be less likely to buy more stock. Business will enjoy the increased spending."

There is one key word in this paragraph that puts this whole discussion in perspective. Can anyone pick it out?

You know, I for one would LOVE to see a Leftist state like CA go full board and create a state-government provided Nanny State.  It would be preferable to seeing the federal government do it, and the resulting hemmorhaging of business and people from the state would be illustrative to the rest of America (we all hope) on the follies of a Nanny State. 

"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy."  -Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman (1874-1965)