(02-08-2019 11:02 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  I used an extreme case to show that raising the MW has effects, far more wide-reaching that a bigger take home pay.

It seems to be a tenet of liberal thought that the wealthy, in this case business owners and operators, can and will absorb all sorts of extra costs without reacting.

I worked a MW job in the 60's, for $1.25/hour. I would guess that people working that job today would make $10-12/hr, but their standard of living would be about the same as those who worked it 50 years ago.

But it isn't that easy. If it was true that all minimum wage increases kill jobs, then why do we have a net increase of jobs with a minimum wage in the first place? Why then, did we not have a mass exodus of jobs when the federal minimum wage was increased multiple times?

I would probably disagree with your last statement. If you standardize that to costs of living (food, housing, transportation, etc.) those have all outpaced the minimum wage significantly. $12 per hour gets you $24,000 per year before taxes, and $1.25 gets you $2,500.

The median home price in 1965 was around $21,000 and in 2018 around $320,000. That's 8.4 years of salary in 1965 and 13.3 years in 2018. But the thing is, the federal minimum wage in 2018 was $7.25 per hour, or $14,500 per year. So you would need 22.1 years of salary to buy that house - almost three times more than that MW job in 1965. So maybe you're a bit off on that last statement.