should the government raise minimum wage

The question here is whether the government should raise the minimum wage. CON seems to be talking about the United States, so I'll assume that we're talking about the United States. To win, CON has to prove that the government should NOT raise the minimum wage. On the other hand, I have to show that the government should raise the minimum wage. Current minimum wage in the US is 7.25 USD/hr. Nothing in the resolution says that I have to show how much the minimum wage should be raised. I just have to argue that it should be raised to win. First, I'm going to say why the minimum wage should be raised. Second, I'm going to rebut CON's case. Minimum wage should be raised: 1. Minimum wage should be raised because it does not pay a livable wage which creates an unfair burden on taxpayers and charities. The minimum wage should be raised because keeping the minimum wage where it is creates an unfair burden on taxpayers What basically happens is that because the federal minimum wage only pays $15,080.00/yr government benefits and private charities have to pick up the difference between "what minimum wage-paying employers pay their employees" and "what it costs employees to survive". Chris Lu, former deputy secretary of labor under the Obama administration writes in Time that: "the federal minimum wage amounts to just $15,080 a year for full-time work. That translates into declining living standards, reduced economic mobility and a shrinking middle class. It mires workers and our economy in an impoverishing cycle created by inadequate pay. Far too many workers earning minimum wage turn to government assistance and food pantries to make ends meet. " (Source: . http://time.com...) When workers earning the minimum wage have to turn to government assistance and private charities like food pantries to make ends meet, that means that corporations are passing off the external cost of employee labor to society and to taxpayers. This is basically a corporate handout that comes out of the pockets of hard working taxpayers, which is an unfair burden to place on society. The minimum wage should therefore be raised to alleviate this unfair burden on taxpayers. 2. Raising the minimum wage will stimulate economic growth. Economic growth in the service sector has not grown as fast as should have because the amount of disposable income for the majority of working Americans has not kept up with inflation. To illustrate, the minimum wage of 1968 would be $10.90 today. Except the problem is that inflation has exceeded minimum wage increases by a third. (Source: . https://www.pbs.org...) PBS reports that the unemployment rate was 3.6 percent in 1968 with a higher real minimum wage. (same source) So, that means that the unemployment rate is higher today " at 5 percent " than it was in 1968, while the real minimum wage is lower today than it was in 1968. Part of the reason for that is because consumers had more disposable income then, than they do now. By increasing the minimum wage, working consumers will have more money to spend locally, which they will (see source from Time above) and that will result in economic growth. One implication of that growth will be increased jobs. CON doesn't really have individual arguments, so I'll just rebut the ideas he talks about: CON claims that "A higher minimum wage, would be too heavy a burden on employers, especially small business owners. " This is false. Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains that a higher minimum wage minimum "won"t result in major job losses because it would put money in the pockets of millions of low-wage workers who will spend it " thereby giving working families and the overall economy a boost, and creating jobs. (When I was Labor Secretary in 1996 and we raised the minimum wage, business predicted millions of job losses; in fact, we had more job gains over the next four years than in any comparable period in American history. )" (Source: . http://robertreich.org...) The only way that a higher minimum wage would harm business owners is if revenues didn't keep up with the increased cost of labor. The problem with that assumption is that it ignores the second-order implication of a higher minimum wage: more domestic economic spending, which would result in increased revenues, as the sum of the available literature suggests would be the case. CON claims: "And those employers, in turn, would be unable to hire as many people an undesirable result when unemployment continues to hover at about 8 percent. " Again, this is wrong for the same reason as stated above. Increases in disposable income are going to translate into increased local spending, which will increase revenues and likely increase profits overall. In order to make the argument that companies wouldn't be able to hire more people, you have to assume that the only part of the business's account sheet which would change is how much they have to pay their employees. Except, the evidence above shows that this is false because of predictable increases in economic activity. (The Time and Robert Reich article) CON Claims: "Young workers willing to accept $5 per hour for low-level work or to gain valuable experience should be allowed to do so" This has absolutely nothing to do with the minimum wage. If young workers want to gain experience and are willing to work for substandard wages, they can still take unpaid internships. The minimum wage has nothing to do with that issue. (. https://www.forbes.com..., discussing unpaid internships). More importantly, as Reich explains, "Most low-wage workers aren"t young teenagers; they"re major breadwinners for their families, and many are women. " So, talk of teenagers is a red herring more or less for this issue. CON further claims "increasing the minimum wage has not proven to be effective at lowering the poverty rate, according to the business-backed nonprofit Employment Policies Institute. " CON doesn't cite to this source so it automatically should be struck; he just makes a vague reference to it. But the question isn't whether increasing the minimum wage is "proven" to lower the poverty rate, because we're not talking about a specific amount to raise the minimum wage in this debate. To illustrate, if we raised the minimum wage by 0.01 USD, then that obviously would have very little if any impact on ameliorating poverty of any kind. The question is whether or not raising the minimum wage is a good idea or not. The evidence I've provided shows that it is, because raising the minimum wage will increase the standard of living, which (implicitly) means reducing poverty.