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The Center for American Progress reports:
Think a higher minimum wage is a job killer? Think again: The states that raised their minimum wages on January 1 have seen higher employment growth since then than the states that kept theirs at the same rate.
The minimum wage went up in 13 states Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington either thanks to automatic increases in line with inflation or new legislation, as Ben Wolcott reports in his analysis at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The average change in employment for those states over the first five months of the year as compared with the last five of 2013 is 0.99 percent, while the average for all remaining states is 0.68 percent.
Digging deeper, all but one of those states are experiencing increases in employment, and nine of them have seen growth above the median rate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Vanderhoth on Friday July 04 2014, @04:40PM
The reason this wouldn't work is because if there are fewer people hired, because they've been replaced with machines, then there are fewer people with money to buy things from those machines. This is most likely the reason it hasn't been done. A large part of the "Walmart/McDonalds" industry is catering to people that only make minimum wage by selling cheap products. If there are fewer people making minimum wage, there are fewer people to sell your products to.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04 2014, @05:47PM
> because they've been replaced with machines, then there are fewer people with money to buy things from those machines. This is most likely the reason it hasn't been done.
What? You honestly think that businesses which rely on minimum-wage customers aren't trying to cut costs by automation in order to preserve their customer base's financial health? Maybe you don't live in the USA and haven't noticed all the stores replacing cashiers with automated checkouts? Ralphs (or maybe it was Vons they are indstinguishable) has only robot checkouts after 10pm in california. Walmart runs their robo-checkers 24-7. Home depot has been physically reducing the number of human operated checkout-lanes and filling the floor space with more product displays.
Of course businesses are automating as much as they can, they don't give a damn about where their customers get their money from, that's waaaay too disconnected from them to worry about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04 2014, @06:59PM
but of course, those bloody people with living wages would not buy from Walmart. They only buy items handcrafted by monks living on isolated Pacific islands that are transported inside floating coconuts. Actually we should cut even the minimum wage requirements (in the socialist paradises where they're still law), this way people will have less money, so they'll buy more cheap products. And capitalism will win forever.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Saturday July 05 2014, @12:24AM
Define living wage. In Canada it's not much more than minimum wage, actually social assistance is even comparable. I digress, there's a much larger population of people making minimum wage than making a "living" wage. You can only sell so much crap to people with money, but there's practically an unlimited supply of people making next to nothing. Which is why so much cheap crap is made in China and sold in the states.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday July 05 2014, @06:21AM
A decent living wage (working full time and not being in abject poverty) for a family in Canada is much higher then minimum wage and way higher then disability social assistance, little well basic social assistance. Here it is basically $17.02 an hour compared to the minimum wage of $10.25 and increased 4% over last year. Of course if you want to save for retirement, your childs education, take a holiday, pay of your loans, buy a home or look after your elderly parent it is much higher.
http://vibrantabbotsford.ca/projects/living-wage/ [vibrantabbotsford.ca]