I don't think the issue is whether or not the minimum wage shifts five or ten percent in one direction or the other. The minimum wage, regardless of what we do with it, won't make or break our economy. I probably would have agreed 100% with Mr Varanese's comments 15 or 20 years ago. But things have changed. In the last 15 years we shipped 25% of our manufacturing base overseas with the full participation of our two corrupt political parties. Our manufacturing "sector" is actually chugging along just fine since we retained all the white collar, finance, admin, and R&D functions here.
But the guys and gals on the factory floor, we yanked the rug out from under a quarter of them and the rest have had to settle for paltry wage increases since then. We have competitors with less corrupt politicians who have had much better success keeping at least some of those factory jobs at home. Now we're stuck with a too big service sector... and not to belittle anyone who works in service, but manufacturing jobs are always more important to one's economy. Manufacturing jobs simply have a higher multiplication factor and support X number of service jobs.
If we look at the minimum wage amongst our competitors, some do it, some don't. Good examples are, say Switzerland and Norway with very high minimum wages. A small, ten inch thin crust pizza with an ounce or two of toppings cost you $38 in Zurich. Same thing costs $8 in Germany. Likewise in Norway a damned beer at the pub cost you $15. Same thing in the Netherlands costs you $5. Germany has no minimum wage. There's people here who work for $5 an hour in restaurants. NL has a sliding scale minimum wage and those under 18 also can work for as little as $5 an hour. All of these countries have pretty good economies.... even though they are complete opposites when it comes to minimum wage.
We simply need less of a service sector and we need to claw back at least ten percent of our lost manufacturing base. If we raise the minimum wage, it's really just a short term band-aid with no lasting effects. No one wants to see a small business owner fail. But honestly, we've got enough restaurants... probably too many. Long term it would be better if entrepreneurs ditched the pizza biz for example and put their talents to work in small business manufacturing. That's just what we need more of The only way to achieve any of this is probably to ditch our two parties or reform them. I know "throw the rascals out" is so trite. But at the rate they're going they'll turn us into Mexico very, very, soon.
