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

In ROUND 2 my opponent states that projections by the congressional budget office (CBO) for raising the minimum wage to $10.10 indicate that 500,000 jobs will be lost by 2016, when the final increase of the federal minimum wage is to be implemented under one of the President's plans. This is in fact what the CBO is projecting, though the CBO is also projecting an immediate increase of $2 billion to the nation's GDP (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) [1].These would be the immediate effects as of 2016, if the President's plan were to be approved by congress and turned into law. The CBO projects an additional $2 billion will be added to the nation's economy, because of such a plan, and that 900,000 will be lifted out of poverty; it also projects that roughly 500,000 jobs will immediately be lost [1]. However, the picture for long-term employment because of this proposed minimum wage hike looks far more positive, as do the financial gains to the economy once the minimum wage hike has been enacted. 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 [2]; this is identical to the position of numerous economic research organizations and the White House [9]. Furthermore, to discount my opponent's contention that raising the minimum wage will hurt employment and the economy, 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 raises in the federal minimum wage have in fact positively impacted the economy and have no measurable negative effect on employment [3][4][5][6]; the opposite effect on employment has frequently been true [7][8].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 [8]!My opponent also claims that a proposed raise in the federal minimum wage will hurt working teenagers, but a two-decade wide study of previous federal minimum wage increases by U.C.-Berkeley have found that this fear is completely unfounded [11].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. I will cover the numbers and go over various studies in ROUND 4. 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 [11]. 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 [11].As Costco CEO Craig Jelinek has stated: "We pay a starting hourly wage of $11.50 in all states where we do business, and we are still able to keep our overhead costs low. An important reason for the success of [our business model is that] we know it's a lot more profitable in the long term to minimize employee turnover and maximize employee productivity....We support efforts to increase the federal minimum wage" [12].85% of small businesses are on the same page with Craig Jelinek as they already pay wages higher than the minimum [13].So why do some business executives, managers and political partisans push to keep the federal minimum wage low? Because some individuals don't care about providing for workers and effectively, honestly managing a business--they care exclusively about personal income, no matter who gets hurts and stuck with the bill they should be paying. And America does pay for this kind of negligence...as we shall see.Inadequate Increases in the Federal Minimum Wage have Increased PovertyIn the U.S. poverty is measured by whether a household fails to make enough income (or show enough savings) per year to surpass the "poverty threshold" assigned by the U.S government for the number of individuals living in the household [14][15]. Because of inadequate increases in the federal minimum wage with respect to inflation and because employee paychecks have become smaller in real terms for the same reason, poverty in the U.S. has increased over the last three decades [16]. The chart below illustrates the "povery guidelines" used by the Department of Health and Human Services for assigning poverty to a household based on annual income and number of people. Households making less than the income enumerated for the corresponding number of people in them are classified as "living in poverty". The "poverty guidelines" are in actuality simplified versions of the "poverty thresholds" used by the U.S. Census Bureau [15]. Now, from first appearances via this chart a full-time minimum wage earner might appear to not be in poverty, but if his/her family consist of another person not employed and not receiving any type of income (a child perhaps), that would assign this person as "living in poverty", simply because his/her income falls below the poverty guideline for the household number [18].In 2012 the U.S. Census Bureau announced that more than 16% of the U.S. population lived in poverty, including about 20% of all U.S. children, up from 13.2%--39.8 million people--in 2008 [14]. Since the 1980s, relative poverty in the U.S. has consistently exceeded that of other wealthy nations [14]. In 2011, child poverty reached historically high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households; in 2013 a UNICEF report ranked the U.S. as having the second highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world [14].The congressional budget office (CBO)--a source my opponent happily cites--projects that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will not only add billions of dollars to the economy and provide additional income to low-wage earners, but that it will lift a full 900,000 people out of poverty [1]!American Tax-payers Subsidize Low-wage BusinessesFurthermore, American tax-payers subsidize low-wage businesses. Many low-wage earners have to rely on public assistance such as food stamps or the earned income tax credit (EITC), because their wages are simply too low. Programs like the EITC are useful protections against poverty, but we shouldn’t let them act as subsidies to low-wage employers, who currently pay lower wages because the American taxpayer will make up the difference [18].Raising the minimum wage would shrink the federal deficit, since fewer workers would qualify for the EITC [9]. Finally, a recent study by U.C.-Berkeley concluded that raising the minimum wage would allow 3 million people to quit the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) formerly known as food stamps [9].[1] Source 1, Round 2[2] http://www.epi.org...;[3] http://www.dol.gov...;[4] http://www.cepr.net...;[5] https://escholarship.org...[6] http://www.igmchicago.org...;[7] http://blogs.wsj.com...;[8] http://fiscalpolicy.org...;[9] Source 5, Round 2[10] http://escholarship.org...;[11] http://hbr.org...;[12] http://www.businessforafairminimumwage.org...[13] http://www.epi.org...;(Source 4, Round 2)[14] http://en.wikipedia.org...[15] http://aspe.hhs.gov...;[16] http://www.worldhunger.org...;[17] http://poverty.ucdavis.edu...;[18] http://www.epi.org...http://www.epi.org...;(Source 3, Round 2)http://www.bls.gov...;(Source 6, Round 2)