http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/10/opinion/la-oe-hassett-the-case-against-the-minimum-wage-
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The Minimum-Wage Debate  -  Los Angeles Times

Minimum wage has been ignited once again as a controversial topic in the United States. Let's remember one thing about minimum wage: It was formed to eliminate the exploitation of sweatshop laborers, not to provide workers with a middle class lifestyle. Minimum wage is also defined as the lowest rate that workers can sell their labor. With that in mind, those that do not currently work will have more incentive to go get jobs and therefore the demand for a set number of positions will increase, creating even more job scarcity by definition. Also, with the increase in minimum wage, a company will be forced to reduce the number of its positions or the number of its working hours because they simply won't have enough money to pay employees. With a reduction in jobs and hours, plus a higher demand for those available positions, job scarcity becomes even worse and unemployment rises, because remember unemployment is the state of being without a job but looking for work.

In addition to the aforementioned issue, the majority of people earning minimum wage do not come from poor households.Since majority of the minimum wage earning population does not come from a poor household, how would increasing the minimum wage even have a chance at "alleviating poverty" throughout the nation? Minimum wage is not intended to be a living wage. It is intended for retired people who may want a part time job for some vacation money, or for a kid living at home trying to save money to go to college. In fact, about 50% of workers earning minimum wage are under the age of 25. So for these kids to earn an extra $1.50 would surely help them pay for college or gasoline for their vehicles, but it would not bring their families out of poverty.

Minimum wage does not need to be raised because it would benefit those that are lucky enough to keep their jobs, but it would also cause those that are not so lucky to lose their jobs, adding to the number of people looking for work, and BY DEFINITION increasing the job scarcity in the United States. We all understand that when job scarcity increases, the economy suffers.

For those that would argue for the increase in minimum wage after reading this post and the respective article, please leave your comments below as to why you think that way.

- David Gerhart