Raise the minimum wage.

Anyway, here is Pro's last post, with some quotes of my previous arguments removed due to the character limit, and with my points in bold. My point was the farmer, if we are talking about a single farmer here, would probably have only McDonald's as its employer, because that particular restaurant would need a lot of food to feed all of its customers. OK, this is a fiar point, but in a free market system prices from other competitors are linked so other farmers would raise prices as well so that, as you pointed out below, the corporations (or anyone who buys farm food) don't fire the farmer they employ and turn to them because they have lower prices. They don't want peole to see their prices, then ask them for a large amount of farm food where they cannot make a profit. So just because the farmer who supplies McDonalds doesn't supply other places. Doesn't mean the other farmers won't raise their prices as well. Also, Pro has not responded to my point that the $1.5 million surplus wont help. It's rather optimistic to say those farmers have any say in their salaries. Large corporations force farmers into bankruptcy, causing said farmer to depend entirely on the corporation. If a farmer threatened to quit unless his pay was raised, he would be immediately laid off and replaced with someone less standoffish. This is a good point, but it is a harsh generalization. It is rather pessimistic and requires the assumption that all corporations are greedy and power-hungry, plowing through everyone in their path without a care in the world. If this wasn't assumed, one could easily say that McDonalds is not a "greedy and power-hungry. .. " company. And the assumption that every company is like that is entirely unfounded and false. Believe what you wish, but you neglected to take into account the millions of jobs that pay just above minimum wage. While only one and a half million people might have minimum wage jobs (and that's not exactly a small number) one in four private sector jobs pay less than $10.00 (1). If the minimum wage were to be raised to $10.00, all employers paying their workers less than $10.00 would have to increase the salaries. Yes, but still, if those people were calculated in, it would still not come even near as close to the number you originally gave. That should prove that minimum wage does not significantly affect poverty, so this point by Pro is irrelevant. A more credible source (2) says it was calculated in a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which should be sufficient ethos for you. And while you might not "see" the impact, if you go to any impoverished neighborhood in any city you'd definitely see it, and moreover the people who are residents there live it. You'll often find those who have little money are systematically ignored since we live in a society which equates money to power, so with no money comes no power. The impact is there--you'll be reminded that 45 million people live in abject poverty in the US. OK, sure Center for Economic and Policy Research sounds like an official or at least professional organization, but it's not. While run out of D. C. it's a non-profit left-leaning (as described in this article: . http://nbcnews.to...) group. Since the left wants increased minimum wage it would make since they would report things that would favor it. And yes, if I go to an impoverished neighborhood I would see poor people, butwe do not see the impact of the magnitude the assertion of a $21 wage as fair would mean. In 2012,75.3 million people (age 16+) worked by the hour (. http://1.usa.gov...). As stated ealier: if the minimum wage increases, so does every other hourly wage. The proof to back it up is simple economics. Also, many companies have pay systems tied to the minimum wage. So to assert that we need a $14/hr increase in the minimum wage, is saying that every single one of these 75 million people deserve a $14/hr raise, which would mean that all of these people that deserve that raise are living in poverty right now. After all, if you need $14/hr more ($560 a week for full-timers) in order to make a "living wage" you are obviously poor. But these 75 million are not. Only 45 million people, barely above half of the number of hourly workers, are in poverty as you said. So the minimum wage should not be raised, definitely not to $21 because the logic behind that is flawed and the report you gave should be taken with a grain of salt. There is lots of proof of this. People have written whole books on this (such as Richard G. Wilkinson's "Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality" and it's sequel, "The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier") and you can find several articles on it (. https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk...... and . http://politicalviolenceataglance.org...... and many more). It's an observable and provable phenomena. Please research before making such assumptions. OK, fair point. But, as stated above, minimum wage does not have much of an influence in this wealth "inequality", as you put it. The minimum wage was paid to only 1.5 million poeple and even if you say the people that make $10 (who you stated earlier are still poor) was 5 million, that would not even equal a fourth of the poor population that you yourself gave the statistic for. Again minimum wage does not equal poverty thus all Pro's points on poverty in general are irrelevant. It's not logical to say that people who make the minimum wage and are in poverty are only in such an economic position because of poor choices. Some people don't have the choice to have a well-paying job because there simply aren't opportunities--you can take a look at unemployment rates to check that fact. Some people can't afford to go to college, but this shouldn't even be important because we shouldn't live in a society where you have to have received higher education to be able to feed yourself. The intent of the minimum wage might not be to provide for the whole family, but that's what's happening now, and we need to accommodate for that. You are right. Some poeple cannot get a well paying job. Imagine this: you are an individual who wants to start a family but the only job you can find is for minimum wage. Once you realize that you should take the job, and use the money to save up. Once you can combine that with the money you were hopefully saving early on and have enough money to start a family, go ahead and do it. You need to count the cost. And you most certainly should not start a family before yo even have a job. The only people I can think of who are the losers here are people who did have well-paying jobs but were fired or laid off. But that represent a small percentage of minimum-wagers. And to say we need to accommodate for something just because it's there is bad reasoning. We need some things to be firm unchanging. "Why do women make minimum wage? Because they choose to. .. . .. because she wants to spend time with her kids. "If this is true, why is the labor force comprised of 47% women (3)? And of the employed women, then why do 73% worked full-time jobs? Though men are still perceived as the main breadwinners of the family, and that holds a certain degree of truth, it is becoming more and more necessary for a woman to take a job in order to support her husband and children since there is simply not enough money to go around. And if a working woman took a minimum wage job because she wanted to spend more time with her kids, I would imagine taking a low-paying job with an eight-hour workday would not be the brightest idea. You act as if minimum wage work is effortless or easy. Not all minimum wage jobs are 8 hours work days. So, no, taking on a minimum wage job would not always be a bad idea. ". .. Many people of welfare don't even work. "Oh? Do you have a source for that? Better yet, are you remembering that pesky 6% unemployment rate (4)? "And as stated above the poor people on minimum wage are in that mess because of their own bad decisions. So these billions of dollars are mostly going to lazy people, or people who thought they could take on several expenses while still on minimum wage. "I usually don't use ad hominem, but that is such a pretentious thing to suggest! Picture this: A hypothetical family comes as immigrants to this country. As a result, they can't get well-paying jobs, so their children can't get an education. Those children go on to have low-paying jobs of their own since they don't have college degrees, and their kids suffer the same fate as they did, and so on and so on. People don't start as clean slates. Every time a child is born, they carry the baggage of the choices of their predecessors, and often a lack of economic mobility is included in this. These billions of dollars are going to people who need it. OK, the immigrant family is a good point but here is the thing. The system we have now where we pay taxes and the government uses that to help the poor was not the original intent of the founding fathers. Time for a history lesson. America started with the Articles of Confederation. The AOC set up a system where everyone shared everying and no one owned property. The women had to wash everyone's clothes and the men had to do similar jobs for everyone. This system utterly failed. People were refusing to work and the system was crumbling. This sounds a lot like welfare. People giving up their "property" to help other people. But, like welfare, this system was failing. So the founding fathers wrote the Constitution, which set up the idea of personal property. Within a year they had so much money and food they threw a big party called Thanksgiving. The Constitution allowed for taxes to run the government, but that was it. It wasn't until the 1800s for the government to start giving out money. We need to stick to the original principles instead of chasing the wind and accomadating for everything.