"But Angry White Male," you say "the minimum wage hasn't been raised in almost 10 years. People can't support a family on minimum wage." I would respond to that by saying that if you are trying to support your family on minimum wage, you have made some poor decisions in life and don't have any business trying to support a family. It isn't your employer's job to step in and help you raise your kids. The minimum wage is not designed for people who have families to support. The minimum wage is a wage for employers to pay people who have no developed set of skills to bring to their job. It is an entry level wage to pay people to flip burgers, clean toilets and sweep floors. If you have developed a skill set that is applicable to your job, you employer will pay you what you are worth. Yes, there are some people out there who are worth more than minimum wage. But by the same token, there are probably 10 times as many who aren't worth paying 5 dollars an hour. I can drive you down to the local Taco Bell right now and show you 10, because they get my fucking order RIGHT about 30 percent of the time.

Another reason the minimum wage shouldn't be raised, it forces employers to dedicate more of their money to payroll. Let's pretend that all the money a company is involved in is a pie. We're going to chart the way that money is divided. A "pie chart," if you will. All the money the company makes goes into the pie. One slice of that pie is the operating costs the company must pay to keep itself running (maintenance, advertising, etc.) The next slice of the pie is the amount of money the company spends on its employees in the form of wages, incentives, etc. The final slice is the amount of money the company keeps for itself as profit. Contrary to popular belief the primary function of any company is NOT to provide its employees with a "living wage" or affordable healthcare. (I know many of you socialist bedwetters out there don't like this) The PRIMARY function of any company is to make that last slice of the pie, the money it keeps, as big as possible. It must do so by keeping the other two slices as SMALL as possible. When you force a company to pay more to its employees through rasing the minimum wage, it's going to do what it can to reduce that portion of the pie by getting rid of employees. Ever wonder why Wal-Mart has 40 checkout lanes and only 5 are open, this is why.

Raising the minimum wage by a dollar an hour may not sound like much, but let's look at a hypothetical situation. Let's say you have a giant big-box store like Wal-Mart or Target. This store is open 24 hours a day, and it's employees work 3 eight-hour shifts. Let's say that the day shift employs around 50 people, and the late shift and early morning shift each employs around 20 people. We're looking at 90 employees. Now, let's say that half these employees, 45, earn the minimum wage and the minimum wage is raised by .50 cents an hour. That's $22.50 an hour more that the store has to pay in wages, or an extra $540 a day. The store is open 7 days a week, so that's an extra $3,780 a week. There's 52 weeks in a year, so the store is paying an extra $196,560 A YEAR! Now, this is a big chain store about half the size of Wal-Mart, with around 700 stores a year. Let's say our hypothetical store is representative of the average size of this company's store. Simply raising the minimum wage by .50 cents an hour forces this company to pay $137,592,000 in wages. One hundred thirty seven MILLION! So, this company is going to do one of two things. Reduce the amount it has to pay to it's employees by laying people off, or increasing the amount of money going into the pie by raising prices. People start having to pay more for it's services, so it's a wash. You minimum wage bums out there are making more per hour, but the cost of milk, pantyhose, shaving cream, tires, cars, toilet paper, etc. goes up. Of course, you're average minimum wage earner either isn't bright enough, or doesn't care enough to realize this, so when they hear Senator Joe Schmoe saying "I'm going to fight for a raise in the minimum wage," they get excited.

On a side note, I hear the idiots that run the city of Chicago have just passed a law that says stores with at least 90,000 square feet and make at least $1 billion in profits a year (wonder what chain this is aimed at?) must now pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour. Jesus H Tap-Dancin' Christ! Wal-Mart, which has no stores in the Chicago urban area, but is planning several, is likely to abandon those plans and concentrate on building stores in suburban Chicago where the law does not apply. Target, which does have stores in Chicago proper, is considering closing some of its stores. Chicago Alderman Joe Moore said, "Let's make sure that when these big stores open in our neighborhood, they help our people, not exploit them." Nice job, asshole. Instead of "helping" people, you're going to cost people jobs they already have, or potential jobs in the area. Of course, the morons running Chicago won't be blamed when Target lays off half it's Chicago workforce, Target will. Buy why stop at 90,000 square feet and $1 billion in company profits. Why not 45,000 square feet and 500 million in profits. After all, you want to "help" people right? Force this upon more stores, you can help more people, right?