A down-on-his-luck tycoon is not in the same position as a menial laborer. Business skills, contacts, personal reputation….the stuff he carried in his head was worth more than his debt. As it turns out, the stuff in his head was worth billions.

THATS why ‘unemployment’ is a bullshit qualifier.

(And yes, he was unemployed. In his own words during an interview.)

No one said minimum wages were the sole cause of inflation. It’s a hyperbolic strawman that adds nothing to the discussion.

Don’t worry though, you can try again if you have a point.

So what is your point again? I lost it in your display of cleverness.

So inflation is solely the fault of the minimum-wage ìentitlementî and not the myriad of collective wage increases I listed earlier? Fair enough.

Ever hear of a straw man argument?

And working for Tommy Hilfiger hardly puts you in any position to bemoan the plight of the middle class. Sweatshops? Warehouse people?

Come on man… If it weren’t for minimum wage, Tommy would have no one packing boxes onto trucks in your warehouses.

Don’t lecture anyone about pulling the ladder up and all that other fun stuff. The stone you’re throwing might shatter your glass house.

The minimum-wage worker should just work harder, longer, and do less with his life outside work. Anything else is unpatriotically European. Fair enough. The point of life is work, after all.

The poor, put-upon Small Business Owner has no obligation to streamline operations (a la Walmart) to account for the measly wage increase. He simply *must* pass it off to the consumer, and not reduce the profit margin that goes into his pocket or anything. The SBO abhors innovation. He is *entitled* to cheap labor. Fair enough.

The desire for success is still there. But so is the phenomena called “pulling up the ladder after you.” Why advocate for a class of virtual slaves to do all the shit-work for us, because they are “lazy” or “stupid” or they “made poor choices” earlier in life? And we wonder why there is so much violence and crime in the Land of the Opportunity.

Or, the employer will lay off however many employees necessary to meet the payroll with the added $2/hr. So, for those employees whose jobs are lost, the bottom line is now $0.00/hour. It doesn’t take a calculator to figure out that that’s a lot worse than $5.15/hour.

How many people getting paid minimum wage pay property tax?

And frankly, if you can’t afford your lifestyle, particularly in NYC, you have two options:

1. Alter your lifestyle.
2. Get another job.

I still don’t see what the debate here is. Why does minimum wage have to be raised? So that 16% of the people supporting a household on it can continue to do so?

What ever happened to initiative, motivation, and a desire for success? Somewhere along the line we’ve traded that for gimme gimme gimme. If I don’t succeed it’s because you won’t pay me enough. Not because my skills aren’t marketable. Not because I chose a stupid career / job move. Because my choice wasn’t reinforced by an earning minimum by the government.

It’s just silly.

PS- The average retail job (not counting counter jockies at McDonald’s and the like) pays almost $7.00 an hour already. The money is out there to be made. You don’t have a right to live in New York City, and $7.00 an hour goes a hell of a lot further in the outer boroughs than it does in, say, Manhattan.

Chelle nailed the matter directly on the head… many employers don’t have the wiggle room to add $2.00/hr x 10+ employees…and they will end up passing it on hence her point on inflation.

See how that works? If a job doesn’t pay enough, I don’t take said job.

If you don’t have the skills to get a $10 an hour job, sorry. Get two jobs.

Does the ‘right to what the job pays’ include being undercut by the largest illegal immigrant population in the United States?

And as I also said, the constant harping on people struggling to support families on $5.15 an hour is obviously overblown since almost no one is.