Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour will benefit the US economy

In her ROUND 3 rebuttal, my opponent, trying to defend her assertion that the U.S. government is involved in a conspiracy, of trying to project favorable economic numbers, posted links to several websites on "shadow banking". Though there is unregulated illegal activity going on inside of financial institutions, which several of the sites she posts insist are happening, I still fail to see how this directly effects our minimum wage debate. Even more, those sources primarily focus on unregulated activity within private banks [1]--not the federal reserve banks, which she asserted is involved in the conspiracy. Yes, it's true that unregulated activity within private banks does contribute to inaccurate numbers on the state of the U.S. economy; but she has not defended her view that the U.S. government is directly involved in a conspiracy--which is beside the point of our debate on a minimum wage increase anyway.The numbers that are collected by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and other U.S. departments about the state of the economy and on financial/banking dealings are thoroughly scrutinized by such agencies as the IRS, the Office of Financial Institutions, the Federal Reserve System, and others [2][3]. However, unregulated illegal conduct is bound to happen and effect the numbers collected by these institutions. Nevertheless, these numbers are considered reliable by these institutions unless there's sensible/evident reason to believe they are not. The Federal Reserve System supervises the behavior of private banks to determine the authenticity of their financial/banking data; if misconduct is discovered, it will take action against the private bank [3].Ultimately we're stuck accepting the data on the state of the economy provided to us by the U.S. government. Unless my opponent can provide ample, credible, widely-accepted evidence that the U.S. government is "crooking the books", like she says, to the degree that she asserts there's no reason to consider this argument credible or even relevant to our debate on a minimum wage increase.In ROUND 3 my opponent draws our attention to the U.S. Federal debt, but then tells us to ingore that number as unimportant, re-directing our attention to another number: the U.S. Federal deficit. Once again I fail to see how this is relevant to our debate on a minimum wage increase. (What connection is she trying to make? We shouldn't raise the federal minimum wage because our U.S. federal deficit is too high? Huh?) This seems to be more of a political attack on her part, of my political leanings; it has nothing to do with our debate on a federal minimum wage increase as far as I can tell. However, since she is looking at that number, she'll notice that that number--the U.S. Federal (budget) deficit--is in fact trending downward now [4]! That number is shrinking (something she failed to spot even though she posted it as a source) precisely because President Obama has supported decreasing the U.S. Federal deficit and making the overall national debt manageable [5]. Watch as the U.S. Federal deficit shrinks with each elapsing second: http://www.usdebtclock.org...But that's entirely beside the point. Our debate is about raising the federal minimum wage--not about the U.S. Federal deficit.My opponent finally focuses on our minimum wage debate in the later part of her ROUND 4 response. And she provides us with her analysis of the crisis currently facing low-wage workers.She says: "The problem is not that people are [being paid] too little, the problem is that costs are too high."She then uses a chart to show us the effect of inflation on the prices of goods over the last century, explaining:"Any measure of success to improve the economy and improve the quality of lives for people in the United states must be aimed first and foremost as reducing expenses. Decentralized renewable energy sources to drive down energy costs...Renewable powered vehicles and more sophiticated transports to reduce travel expenses...A complete redesign of our cities is required. Raising of the minimum wage is an incomplete answer to issue. Only if our solution is aimed at addressing the expenses of our population can we have success. This also includes massive financial sector reforms..."Well, I agree with her about reducing energy costs and about getting our nation's vehicles powered by renewable energy (even though fuel isn't used to calculate the current inflation rate by the U.S. Federal Reserve, as I explained in ROUND 3 [6]). However, she then indicates that we have to re-engineer our cities and impose major reforms on the financial sector to improve the lot of low-wage workers. Prices are too high she claims.Well, what's easier to do? Increase the federal minimum wage and index it to inflation? Or decrease the prices of numerous goods in the market, re-engineer cities, get all our vehicles dependent on renewable energy sources, and impose major reforms on the financial sector?The first solution is way easier to impose and will immediately solve the crisis facing low-wage earners; indexing the minimum wage hike will then eliminate any effects caused by inflation in the future [7].There's a simple way to solve the severely reduced purchasing power of the federal minimum wage and that's by increasing it to over $10.00 and then indexing it to inflation. Not doing anything to alleviate the pain experienced by low-wage earners will only make the problem worse; solving it by the methods my opponent endorses is too heavy and awkward, and there's no data to show it will even work!Pro's closing remarksAs I stated in ROUND 2, the congressional budget office projects that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will provide an additional $2 billion to the nation's GDP by 2016 (with an increase of $19 billion in pre-tax income among low wage earners); the CBO is also projecting that 900,000 people will be lifted above the poverty threshold (out of poverty) [8].Various economic research organizations project positive gains in employment, as a result of hiking the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. A study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that raising the federal minimum to $10.10 (in the precise steps offered by the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013) would generate $30 billion in new economic activity and lead to the creation of 140,000 new full-time jobs [9]; this is identical to the position of numerous economic research organizations and the White House [10]. Furthermore, numerous studies--including several by the U.S. government's Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the Universities of California-Berkeley, Massachussetts-Amherst, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and a survey by the University of Chicago--show that previous raises in the federal minimum wage have in fact positively impacted the economy and have no measurable negative effect on employment [11][12][13][14]; a positive effect to employment has frequently been observed [15][16].An often-cited 2006 study found that states with a minimum wage above the federal minimum wage had faster retail and small business job growth [16]!Now, there is a plethora of data by government agencies, universities, and economic research organizations that show increases to the federal minimum wage have mostly expanded the U.S. economy and GDP, while either not negatively impacting the employment numbers or driving them up because of increased sales and business growth. This is also well understood in the business community. A 2012 study by MIT professor Zeynop Ton documents how major businesses like Trader Joe's and Costco benefit from higher sales revenue and profits than their low-wage competitors by investing in their employees, which reduces turnover and boost productivity [17]. For example, the starting wage at Trader Joe’s ranges between $40,000 and $60,000 per year, more than twice what many of its competitors offer, and yet the sales revenue per square foot at Trader Joe’s are three times higher than the average U.S. supermarket [17].85% of small businesses are on the same page as Costco and Trader Joe's as they already pay wages higher than the minimum [18].Right now American low-wage workers are facing a crisis. The purchasing power of the minimum wage is so low today that American fast food workers receive more than $7 billion in public assistance [19]; Walmart employees, which are paid the minimum wage starting out, are the single biggest group of food stamp recipients in the nation, recieving on average $1,000 in public assistance [19].(Note: R# = Round number; S# = Source number)[1] (http://www.federalreserve.gov...)[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org...)[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org...)[4] (http://www.usdebtclock.org...)[5] (http://money.howstuffworks.com...)[6] S2, R3[7] S10, R3[8] S1, R2[9] (http://www.epi.org...)[10] S5, R2[11] S8, R2[12] (http://www.cepr.net...)[13] (https://escholarship.org...)[14] (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com...)[15] (http://blogs.wsj.com...)[16] (http://fiscalpolicy.org...)[17] (http://hbr.org...)[18] (http://www.businessforafairminimumwage.org...)[19] (http://www.bloomberg.com...)