The only good that comes from this is coming closer to parity between the poor and the rich. If this just results in the rich becoming richer again then it is pointless.

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I never got "trickle down" economics. It doesn't matter how wealthy you are, at some point, you just have enough of a particular thing. A billionaire might have an absolutely top of the line smartphone, but he still really only needs one smartphone.

OTOH, if you do the opposite of trickle down (which I guess would be "rising tide", but the voodoo guys stole that one already), i.e. pay the poor more, then they will buy more stuff, which in turn will make the rich richer. So continuing the analogy, instead of giving $20000 to the rich, give 20 poor people $1000. Then they might buy 10 smartphones, which is obviously better for the economy.

Note to pedants: I am aware that poor people probably won't buy an expensive smartphone... it's an analogy. Don't take it literally.

A program with the desired effect but fewer unintended harmful consequences would be to:
Firstly, eliminate payroll/sales tax and replace it with increase in upper income tax brackets.
Secondly, create a bigger refundable tax credit for everyone.
Thirdly, provide high quality free education for anyone, especially the unemployed and homeless.

A minimum wage is a price control, and price controls are with few exceptions very harmful. A minimum wage makes it harder to find work, and thus harder to gain experience to justify a higher wage, and riskier to move around for a better wage. High unemployment makes the even the employed into serfs with little mobility.

Why only $9/hr Sounds like chump change. Why not $15, $20 $30/hr.

How does one come to a justifiable #?
Only through market pressures does the the correct $/hr wage is found.

I am a firm believer in "trickle up " economics. People at this level of income will virtually put every single penny they earn back into the local economy. That's even better then all of them buying a "smartphone" which has more to do with profiting a huge corporation and creating more jobs in other countries.

No need to get all slippery slope....I think it makes sense if we have a minimum wage that it should at least stay adjusted for inflation.

Increasing it to match inflation isn't giving them a raise or increasing their purchasing power....but leaving it alone is actually decreasing their purchasing power over time...in effect lowering the minimum wage.

Because inflation is used to drive money towards the very very few. It's essentially one part of economic cycle hijacked: if you don't raise wages with inflation, someone is going to pocket that money. Those who do, are not the ones paying wages. System controls inflation by creating more money out of thin air. Money that's being pumped out is then laundered to assets that aren't affected by inflation.

If you want to gather a nest egg, savings for the rainy day, invest in valuable metals.... It's basically the only thing a middle class can afford and trust. Don't invest to anything that exist only in paper.

Next: derivatives are cashed out..They are astronomical in scale of value, all exist only in paper. By collapsing that, then catching just a small portion of the perceived value and changing that to other type of assets is still billions. Which is the next part of systematic market meltdown, where trillions are used to pocket billions to very small number of bags.

hah.no health care. $9 p/h lol rofl america

If corporations acted with honor as Glenn Beck likes to argue, we wouldn't need to raise the minimum wage. But we keep attempting this time and time again, we give corporations all this influence and power hoping they use it wisely and fairly. But they don't. They never have. They use it to make themselves more wealthy than they need to be, masking their selfishness under the banner of "rugged individualism"

I guarantee you that no one *wants* to artificially raise the minimum wage, but it's a necessary step to lessen the income gap and offset inflation.

The right wing talking point is always "a poor person never offered me a job" Well my response is "I never met a rich person who didn't get their money from poor people buying their stuff"

where do you think any business who makes a product gets their money from? Do they just will it into existence because of the power of their ego? They get it from a poor person buying their stuff. But yeah, the corporate apologists don't like to talk about that particular reality.

There is always going to be poor people and always be rich people, but we can be a nation that decides as a whole that we're not going to piss on our poor people so that even the poor can led happy healthy lives.

The right wing talking point is that the poor have rich people envy. The poor don't envy the rich, they don't want McMansions and Hummers and all the stupid bling rich dolts buy. they just want to have their needs met. They just want to not go broke if there is a major illness

If corporations acted with "honor" then the free market idea *might* work, but as long as greed rules the day, there will always be the need to put measures in place like raising the minimum wage and other regulations.

political crap