Legally Raising The Minimum Wage In The US Is Pointless

I don't feel that I have much left to add to the debate. The fundamental issue is that the American economy is weighed down by regulation and restrictions that it cannot impose upon the entire world. Without a balancing mechanism that effectively preserves the viability of real industry, our economy will continue to suffer. You cannot fix the underlying issue with a minimum wage increase. The most secure and viable markets in the US are ones that include serving consumers for a reason. We are a consumer country. We regulate, by extension of policy and regulation, what markets can compete against foreign competition and what markets can't. As of right now, we heavily suppress industry that produces actual material goods. Yes, exceptions exist, but we currently take far more than we give. We import more food and resources than we export. We do not import resources and export the fruits of our labor. The world, primary, trades for our bank notes. They also trade for the rights to use our patents and copyrights, which we enforce through global political agreements that greenlight direct enforcement by agencies or military. We also trade military aid for political compliance, and this supports our immaterial economy. If tomorrow, the world no longer accepted our bank notes or recognized our patent and copyright law.. we would be left with our material trade and our they would be out of compliance with our military-aid agreements. Our actual exports could never support the consumerism of America. That's the underlying reason against increasing minimum wage. You can't simply take more from the corporations. Every dollar spent out of the US economy is only capable of buying greater oppression of foreign laborers. We buy coffee beans, iPhones, clothes, televisions, raw resources, oil, and obviously much more from these impoverished countries. There are so many things that we cannot make here in America, because our government won't allow us to take the lower standard of living that comes with deregulation. Meanwhile, we do allow ourselves to benefit from the willingness of other governments to do so. The result is fundamentally slave profiteering, but it's far enough away and done so ambiguously that it doesn't bother the common persons' sensibilities. When we suddenly find our quality of life decreasing, what we're actually seeing is a quiet improvement of living standards abroad. Increasing minimum wage is just a reassertion of our "right" to do nothing, but we need to be able to back it up if we want it to work. We need to take more and give less, and they need to give more and take less. That's the end result. So if they refuse to give more and take less, like they've been quietly doing, the minimum wage increase will only result in higher commodity prices. Foxcon in China will increase their costs for iPhones, Apple will increase the price, and our dollars will be devalued. The dollar devaluation will impact every unspent dollar; social security, savings, investments.. etc. The whole thing is a mess, and we are very much threatened by time. Over time, it's inevitable for abrupt changes to occur in this type of economy. China could erupt into civil war, and we could lose a large portion of the goods that create our zero-material-production jobs. We need to move away from earning off the backs of people who work much harder to receive much less than we do. We need to do it in a way that doesn't devastate our country. Giant corporations like Wal-Mart that employ many, many people will not be viable. We need to phase them out without leaving our people stranded. We need to be able to sustain ourselves without taking more than we give.