NEWS: Is it any small wonder that the richest people yowl high-pitched complaints at (also rich) politicians about not raising minimum wage? But try and see past the single example of McD's, and think more broadly on why this idea of raising minimum wage comes off as contentious in the first place.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/raising-the-minimum-wage-a-mcdonalds-killer-not-a-mcjobs-killer/283638/
This new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has economists saying the claims of job loss are over-inflated, which comes as no surprise when you think of who stands to lose out.
Here's a hint: it's just the top business people with the most money, who'd rather keep things as they are instead of adjusting to inflation and the current demands on the poorest of the poor in modern society.
However, the crazy, absolutely insane part is that these avaricious yet monetarily influential people concoct a false debate around increasing the minimum wage, funding and inflating findings of falsified studies, getting pundits to rail on about the negative repercussions that will hit small businesses (what is a small business? Answer: an undefined buzz word). Then the media riles up _people who think they are middle-class_ and *convince them to shame the poor, minimum wage workers* who are much closer to them then they are to wealthy CEOs.
Now with studies like this one out of Illinois, they should not be able to play the "jobs" card when refusing to increase worker wages. Hopefully this will reduce it more to the obvious--the pernicious greed and resistance of change (to adapt to inflation or progress with society) that is keeping wages so low for many full-time workers.
As if a global corporation like McDonald's couldn't find a way to make up for treating their employees to just a partial share of the massive profits the company makes.
This gentrification of ideas about the poor being lazy and not moving up because of lack of hard-work--primarily supported by anecdotal evidence--is the most backwards of arguments. Look at the United States GDP, CEO wages, and lowest paid worker wage comparisons and how wildly they differ from other countries. Yet, political rabble-rousing has people convinced that one of the richest countries on Earth will fall apart if they pay their lowest income workers--who often work a lot harder than the people that shame them--a decent living wage. Some of the states that 'go red' on debates like this have the lowest contributing incomes and the most widespread hunger problems. It's as if so many who perpetuate the debate don't realize they are being fed spoonfuls of bullshit, and still take it as an excuse to feel elevated above other people.
Sadly, even if those who echo whatever they hear from biased sources on job loss with the increase of minimum wage COULD BE converted to think more broadly about the social issues of the poor as seen from this economic viewpoint, IT STILL wouldn't make a difference when you consider how little an influence the ideas of the citizenry have on modern politics.
To do this, it would still take a massive dethroning of private business's money in politics, though at least a study like this narrows their available excuses for not endorsing doing the right thing, compensating their workers more significantly for their contribution.
I hope that through small bits of progress in states insisting an increase the in lowest paid wage, it will reign in big corporation to work more within their means on a level that values the workers that are churning out the profit for them, as well as diversify the market for up-and-coming other restaurants to play in the game.
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