There is certainly much disagreement about the benefits and pitfalls of raising the minimum wage among well known economists who spend their lives studying economic changes and trends. Your own theories swing through the pros and cons without a firm conclusion. You are in good company. Your question about the dems using the wage issue to buy votes is puzzling. Who are the sellers of these votes? We really don't know who the winners or losers are in the wage war. I am in favor of raising the minimum wage. I believe that when an individual works hard for 40 hours each week, he should be able to get by without resorting to public assistance, welfare, food stamps, etc. We live in America, the land of opportunity. I would be happy to pay ten cents more for a burger and twenty cents less for welfare.

lite;
Democrats did not win all of the votes(Although they should have.)
If you want to discuss stealing elections, or votes, look no further than your idol, g.w. bush, his brother, ol' jeb, brought out the hanging chads, ballots being found in garbage dumpsters, coat closets, and a lot of other places that they should not have been.
Guess what, every one of the ballots that were found, in all of those strange places were Democrat votes.
Kind of reminds me of s. walker in Wisconsin, seems like a regular thing with republicans.
Why should republicans show so much concern about voter ID's, republicans have proven themselves to be a bunch of lying, lazy as+h+++'+, but, have they gotten too lazy to carry the Democrat ballots to the closets, and dumpsters anymore, and decided to just block the Democrats votes?
Either way, people have lost their lives, been beaten, spit
on, and a lot of other shit they did not deserve, just for the right to vote.
republicans, or any other sick minded, sorry S.O.B. that does anything to take away, or even hinder a citizen from using that hard fought for, and undeniable right, should be shot for treason.

Each of your comments have been addressed in an earlier post that I re-post below. I prefer talking about how things are, not about how I'd like them to be. Now, if you can take issue with what I've written, please do so. Focusing on symptoms to a problem while ignoring the cause will inevitably create the unintended consequences that have consistently resulted in proressive social engineering. The higher the cost of employing a person, the more that employment will be decreased, and that impact is more pronounced on those jobs that require the least skill and have the greatet number of aspirants. While raising the miminum wage will reduce the welfare eligibility of those still employed (assuming the progressives don't redefine poverty again) but add those whose jobs disappear to the number of people totally dependent on the welfare state.

When you have conflicting experts, like economists, on subjects like minimum wage one either should concede that he is incapable of determining who is right and therefore hold no opinion. The other approach might be to apply common sense to commons sense things that you know. Let me try that on minimum wages - and let me know if any of the simple statements I made in applying common sense are wrong in your opinion.

If wages are increased, all else being equal, all those engaged in profit making business will do one of the following, or a combination of the following:
- if the job is "portable" move it to a location where the wage has not been increased and therefore became more competitive, and/or;
- look to somehow automate the work, and the more expensive the work, all else being equal, the more cost justifiable capital investment would be, and/or;
- increase the price of the product/service that the work produces, and as happens when a product or service becomes more expensive, all else being equal, the demand for it will decrease.

Each of those outcomes all lead to a decrease in the jobs.

Further, all else being equal the wages one earns in a market based economy is largely driven by the demand for the work and the supply of the workers seeking it. For those jobs at or near minimum wage, those with low skills and education are the ones most likely to be working on them.

If we increase the supply of low skilled people by importing them in large numbers, legally or not so much legal, we suppress the wage scale for them. Further, if we allow our schools to, for whatever reason, generate many more non-skilled and uneducated people entering the workforce, we further suppress the wage scale. If one doubts that we're doing that in our educations system, one needs but look at our urban schools, both the graduation rates and the achievement rates of those that graduate.

So, by making it more expensive to employ people - and there are many programs in addition to minimum wage that does that - Obamacare but one of the more recent - thereby decreasing the number of low skilled jobs - and by making sure the number of unskilled workers far exceeds the number of positions they can aspire to we make certain that the number of people who are not afforded the opportunity for economic independence.

I think it is clear that those who are most responsible for both ends of that spectrum are those who most expect to gain votes for themselves

AND THAT IS OK WITH YOU ??!! Illegals CAN'T VOTE !! But then how would the democrats get a phony like barackhussein in the White House, except by fraud ?! And all you people who profess both parties are the same---their actual precepts are very different. The Republican Party always stood for God, Family and Country. The democrat party stood for party, power and partisanship. True, there's been a watering-down of the Republican party's standards, but NO Rep. president would have gotten away with what barackhussein has.

loki;
Stupid is giving millionaires money, and then crying about it to everybody but the millionaires.
Stupid is giving rich people money, and trying to accuse everybody else for things being so Fu++++up.
Stupid is letting a couple of German Communist by up the country for a vote.
Stupid is not understanding that you don't get anything for nothing,
The fact that they are letting these communist bros. by elections for them, is going to take a very heavy toll on this whole country, and the people that live in this country.
Stupid is letting the complete voting standards, and the rights of all Americans be determined by a couple of Communist brothers.
Stupid is kissing a couple of Communist asses, that are the largest polluters in this country, for a few votes.
Stupid is letting people hide behind their checkbooks, while they totally fu++up the entire country, and the people in it. For a few votes.
Stupid is letting people that they don't know a damned thing about, do what ever they want in this country, with their approval, just for a few votes.
Stupid is not knowing that the people they are letting run this country, come from a family that ran concentration camps, they didn't just work there, they controlled, and ran the shit.
Stupid is not knowing, that the apple really does not fall from it's tree.
I hope somebody will stop the republicans before we all end up in concentration camps, including their sorry asses too.