Raise Minimum Wage

Thanks for the debate Pro!ObservationsMy opponent has attempted to change his initial arguments. This is unethical because it forces me to change some of my arguments and means that Pro concedes all the points I made against a $16.97 wage, including much of the life necessities contention. By switching goalposts, he is backtracking his opening statement and argument. Not only was I not notified about this change, Pro decided to make it in the very last round. Judges, please note that this is unfair and poor conduct on Pro's part.As challenger of the status quo, my opponent must show is significantly beneficial to raise the minimum wage. If our arguments are equal, then my side wins as it is already the status quo.PovertyThe life necessities and poverty arguments go hand in hand, since the poverty rate decreasing is proof that impoverished workers are actually getting what they need and making their circumstances better off. This is the most important argument as it is the base of Pro's initial contentions.The minimum wage increase would have little to no effect on the poverty rate because few minimum wage workers come from poor households, meaning there are hardly any of these workers that the change would actually affect. It cannot bring hardly anyone out of poverty, because hardly anyone is impoverished! An increase would only affect the small amount of MW workers, of which a tiny amount have financial struggles. We must also acknowledge that poor people in America are quite richer than many other countries.Those second and third claims from the poverty rate study I brought up do support the claim that raising the minimum wage wouldn't reduce poverty, because (1) not enough poor workers exist that the raise could have an actual effect on, and (2) raising the wage does not help for the majority of poor workers who don't even work for any wage, so it makes no difference to them. Also, "having little impact" does not mean that the effect is positive, it means that the poverty rate may or may have not have changed due to the raise, which we cannot assume helped it since the poverty rate is affected by several different factors.Since few MW workers are poor and most of them are pretty young, then we can logically assume that affording education should not be a big problem for them, especially since it doesn't take much education to get a job that pays higher than the minimum wage. Many MW workers only get a high school diploma, so keep the limit at bay will be a good push for them to go to college, even if it's community college, to learn, earn, and climb the income ladder.We must note that Pro has not provided any evidence of his own to show that a raise would reduce the poverty rate, so his case just isn't strong enoughEmploymentPro contradicts himself twice, first by making arguments for a $10.10 wage yet citing economists who advocate a much higher wage: $15 an hour by Nick Hanauer; and second by stating that the CBO indicates a 500k to 1 million loss of jobs due to the raise of the minimum wage while the CEBR states the opposite with less jobs in states with lower minimum wages. He accounts for the job loss prediction of the CBO by saying that it doesn't account for a longer job growth span. Obviously job growth will even out again over time since the US dollar is constantly losing value to due inflation, making it so that a minimum wage increase would have a more significant effect at first but would become more accustomed to the economy later. However, the job loss would be greater overall. When the US minimum wage was raised in three increments from 2007 to 2009 ($5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour) , the effect was not job growth but instead a devastating economic recession that killed millions of jobs. True, we have gained jobs since then, but no one can admit that we would have been better off with a recession. The short-term effects are what matter most as they tend to be more of a shocker than long-term effects.My opponent commits two logical fallacies to try to overturn my evidence. The first is the Genetic Fallacy [http://www.nizkor.org...] where Pro accuses my source of being "right winged". He is attempting to dismiss my source because the economists are of a different ideology than him, instead of actually looking at the data and numbers I provided. He also commits the Appeal to Authority Fallacy [http://en.wikipedia.org...] by stating that his source is probably right because his economists have more PhDs than mine do. This is not a rebuttal because he is relying on irrelevant factors to try to discredit my sources without even attempting to show why it is wrong. The data from the American Action Forum actually comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so I can't see how it's biased anyways.Pro's reliance on predictions and economist guesses aren't strong enough to make an endurable argument. He attempts to make the case that states who raised the minimum wage have more job growth, but cherry picks the data. According to the graph in his CEPR source, the two states who had the highest job growth did not raise the minimum wage, while the state with the lowest job growth raised it. The scattered data of the states in between don't show any strong correlation between employment and a higher MW. This evidence only shows data from growth over 10 months and from 2013 MW hikes, but ignores state wage increases from 2012 and 2014 that could also influence the data.The data I provided in Round 1 (which Pro ignored) shows a clear increase in unemployment and job reduction in states with minimum wages above $7.25 versus states at or below the federal wage. In fact, raising the MW by just one dollar still has a significant effect on the unemployment rate. "Raising the minimum wage to an amount that is closer towards a livable wage(one that does not force the earner to rely on public generosity and or government assistance; independence) would not cause the earners to lose their drive to climb the financial ladder" - ProIt actually would because workers who are more satisfied with their incomes would not have as much of a desire to get themselves out of financial problems. Pro's logic for this doesn't really make sense, because dissatisfaction fuels incentive. If I'm getting a D in a class at school, I am more inclined to work harder than if I am earning a B.ConclusionPro's main argument is that raising the minimum wage will help workers earn what they need. However, I have proved that few MW workers are actually poor and that raising the wage really does not have an effect on the poverty rate, so this idea just does not hold. Unemployment would increase as a result of raising the wage, along with less incentive to work. The cons simply outweigh the pros. My opponent's opposing arguments are full of speculation, fallacies, cherry picking, and guesses, and do not provide solid evidence like mine does. Thus, he has not been successful in holding his end of the BoP. Judges, vote to negate.