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

My opponent likes to throw around the claim that the congressional budget office (CBO) is projecting a definite 1,000,000 job losses if the federal minimum wage is hiked to $10.10. But this is partisan hyperbole on his part. The CBO is in fact projecting (with high confidence) that job losses will range from VERY SLIGHT to--WORSE CASE SCENARIO--an increase in unemployment of 1,000,000 [1]. In fact the CBO is projecting "there is about a two-thirds chance that the effect" would be in this range [1]. The CBO's central estimate (which I have circled in the chart below) is that 500,000 workers would lose their job as a result of implementing the minimum wage hike [1]. The office's own numbers indicate that raising the minimum would mostly benefit the US economy and workers, by providing additional billions of dollars and pulling 900,000 people out of poverty [1]! This doesn't include other benefits, like decreasing the number of low wage earners that depend on public assistance such as food stamps and the EITC to get by [2]. As I stated in ROUND 3, a recent study by the University of California-Berkeley concluded that raising the minimum wage would allow 3 million people to quit the government assistance program known as SNAP (previously known as food stamps) [2]. Not raising the minimum wage to eliminate the hurtful effects of inflation on the low wage earner would only deepen the economic crisis presently facing them and would increase the number of people in poverty. As a result, even more people would be forced to rely on public assistance programs as the income gap continues to expand and as inflation gradually increases. Therefore not doing anything for America's low wage earners isn't an option! Allowing the minimum wage to lose even more of its purchasing power over time and ignoring the plight of low wage earners will further erode the quality of life that was once commonplace to America's working class [3].Inflation has many causes, which is why the Federal Minimum Wage should be Indexed to InflationMy opponent argues that raising the federal minimum wage would be pointless, as inflation would eventually eat the gains caused by increasing the minimum wage. And on this point he is moderately right; however, inflation has many causes, as economists point out, and it's a healthy economic trend in any growing economy--as long as it stays within limits [4]. Inflation is caused when demand for a product or service outstrips supply, which causes prices to go up; it can also be caused when new popular technology is introduced--some brand names demand higher prices; but it can also be caused by the depletion of natural resources, by natural disasters, by an increase in production costs, by the deregulation of banks, by government regulation and taxation, by business monopolies, by the expansion of the money supply, and various other reasons [4]. Inflation is natural and unavoidable in any economy. But too much of it can present problems, which is why the federal government tries to regulate it wherever it can [4]. Increasing wages can also create inflation if a business passes on the wage increase to consumers, but this doesn't always happen [5]. Recently, inflation has caused even pay raises among middle class workers to be fruitless, as the modest pay increases simply aren't enough to deal with the deleterious effects of inflation, especially as the income gap grows between well-to-do employers, who are increasingly keeping more of their profits, and all other wage earners [6][7]. As I demonstrated in ROUND 2, the nation's wealthiest Americans are generating income comfortably exceeding the rate of inflation; the middle class has seen either stagnant wage growth or negative wage growth when accounting for the effect; the lower classes have seen the worse decline in income over this last decade [7]. Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 would eliminate the accumulated deleterious effects of inflation over the years for low wage earners; linking (or "indexing") it to inflation would ensure the effects are prevented in the future. Four states--Florida, Oregon, Washington, Vermont--have already indexed their state minimum wage to inflation, and Minnesota is currently proposing to do so [8]. After raising the state minimum wage and indexing, the state of Washington saw no negative impact on employment some initially feared would be there [10]. The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10, and then having it adjusted every year to keep pace with the rising cost of living [11]. It is a congressional bill President Obama endorses and continues to endorse [12], particularly in light of the recent executive order he enacted which hiked the federal minimum wage for federal contractors from $7.25 to $10.10 [13]. Pro’s closing remarksMy opponent wants to paint a picture about market forces and national economies that suggest they are capable of remedying themselves, with little to no human meddling--that economies, driven by the human impulses for profit and purchasing, are both natural and effective and require practically no government interference/regulation to do their job well. It is the view that the market forces of supply and demand will correct every temporary economic problem in the end, and that the government has nothing to fear by taking the path of inaction; but this is a wildly naïve view [14]. Nature is notoriously inefficient at what she does. Despite the miraculous breakthroughs achieved over long periods of time, nature is sloppy, destructive, deadly, viral, frequently very, very patient, and consistently correcting previous errors or enacting new ones--this is how nature achieves stability and breakthroughs in the world [15]. For all the success we observe in nature, there exist even more examples of biological dead-ends, mistakes, lousy genetic mutations, and genuine pain that we completely overlook in Earth's history [16]. Take the human body. When provided with adequate fuel (food, water) and exercise it can survive quite well. But there are some conditions where it clearly requires outside (or emergency) aid. When a human gets sick or when he gets injured, he often requires medical assistance to improve; in many cases failure to provide that medical assistance will lead to the humans rapid decline and death. Nature just hasn't equipped humans to do everything on their own. Specialized medical treatment is required to improve the human's life (or to keep him away from death) in many situations. A type-2 diabetes patient, for example, may require medication to control blood sugar levels; otherwise his health can rapidly deteriorate [16].And so it is with a nation's economy. The US Federal Reserve constantly observes (and if necessary, adjust) the nation's money supply and interest rates to promote sustainable growth, high levels of employment, and stability of prices to preserve the purchasing strength of the US dollar; frequently this requires it to regulate the nation's banks too [17]. In the same spirit it's time for the US government to increase the minimum wage, to restore the purchasing power lost to US workers. A full-time minimum wage earner today takes home wages that are even less than what an equivalent worker took home in the 1960s, because of inflation. The purchasing power of the minimum wage is so low today that American fast food workers receive more than $7 billion in public assistance [18]; in many states, Walmart employees, which are paid the minimum wage starting out, are the largest group of medicaid recipients of any business; they are also the single biggest group of food stamp recipients in the nation, recieving on average $1,000 in public assistance [18].The smartest solution is to raise the minimum wage. 1 Round 2, Source 12 Round 2, Source 53 Round 2, Source 44 ( http://useconomy.about.com... )5 ( http://www.wisegeek.com... )6 ( http://www.washingtonpost.com... )7 Round 2, Source 38 ( http://www.ehow.com... )10 ( http://seattletimes.com... )11 ( http://www.raisetheminimumwage.com... )12 ( http://www.nytimes.com... )13 Round 2, Source 1114 ( http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org... )15 ( https://www.cfa.harvard.edu...;)16 ( http://www.mayoclinic.org...;)17 ( http://www.cnbc.com...;)18 ( http://www.bloomberg.com...;)