Work effort and productivity are not the same. An entry level worker can place a great deal of effort learning how to do a job, effort used to learn a job which is not directly applied to producing goods or services. A trained worker is worth more to an employer than an untrained due to wages not spent on training. Raising MW erodes the pay of trained workers because their pay rarely goes up the same percentage, yet the cost of goods and services to increase.
You seem to be contradicting yourself here. First you acknowledge that a trained worker is worth more than an untrained one, and then you make the connection that somehow needing to train an untrained worker will cause the more valuable and productive worker to lose wages in order to make up for the less valuable and productive worker? Well, wouldn't that company or firm risk losing the more trained and valuable worker then? And if that risk is plausible, then the company or firm would be risking suppressing their overall productivity and therefor profit margins. Also, keep in mind that most 'firms' or companies already offer higher the MW wages, so they're irrelevant to this discussion. What we need to keep in mind is the Walmart's, Target's, McDonald's, and other anti-MW companies that exploit a cheap labour class in order to pad their already outrageous profits. The people at these kinds of places are the ones that need the raise, as they're the places that are seeing more and more adult workers joining their ranks, and who need to be able to support themselves better off the wages given. These places aren't the places of teenage employment any longer. Look around in them and you'll see people trying to raise families, pay mortgages, or supplement pensions. They're the ones who need the wages to go up.
Not all effort has the same value, we might not like it but that does not make it any less true. At this point in time the effort of a professional basketball player is worth more than a roofer’s effort. I cannot change spending priorities of every person on the planet, yet I can tailor my skill set to make my effort worth more money.
A person knocks on your door looking to make some extra cash doing odd jobs. Do you hire her and how much do you pay? Do you ask if she is married and how many kids she has? Would you pay her the same to rake leaves as you would to install an HVAC system? You might want to pay her $30 an hour to rake leaves but would you? If the price of leaf raking is too high you will likely do it yourself or just let them sit there. When we increase the cost of a product or service less people will choose to purchase it.
I don’t presume low wage earners to be lazy and I do not presume rich people to be evil. What I do believe is we all make decisions and decisions have consequences.
This isn't really a debate about effort though, it's a debate about income fairness. Taking an athlete and using them as the crux of your argument is a bit disingenuous because the salaries are wholely skewed. Although, i'm glad you brought them up, because EVEN in professional sports there's a Minimum Wage. It's called the League Minimum, and it goes up in sports. Imagine that?! Even in sports with salary caps like hockey, basketball, etc.. the minimum salary goes up through league-wide contract negotiations between owners and player associations. Where's the worker's association for those workers at Walmart or McDonald's?? Oh right, they don't have one, unless they're in a union....which is why union wages are better than non-union wages for the most part, and ultimately, it's the union wage that is more able to deal with the cost of living increases that almost every minimum wage worker isn't able to keep up with.
I could go on, but I digress. This, in my humble opinion, is an issue of fairness. If the cost of living and inflation continues to change, just as it always has, even without a corresponding MW increase and all time record profits in many MW using industries, then it's only fair and reasonable that the MW wage keep up to the cost of living and inflation, and also go up.
The Economist, November 2012: "Evidence is mounting that moderate minimum wages can do more good than harm...Britain’s small, regular changes [in the minimum wage] may be easier for firms to absorb than America’s infrequent but hefty minimum-wage increases.”
Source:
http://www.economist.com/news/finan...-moderate-minimum-wages-can-do-more-good-harm
Bloomberg News, April 2012: "[A] wave of new economic research is disproving those arguments about job losses and youth employment. Previous studies tended not to control for regional economic trends that were already affecting employment levels, such as a manufacturing-dependent state that was shedding jobs. The new research looks at micro-level employment patterns for a more accurate employment picture. The studies find minimum-wage increases even provide an economic boost, albeit a small one, as strapped workers immediately spend their raises. Let us hope that states lead the way on the minimum wage, and that they tie increases to the cost of living, making endless rounds of legislation unnecessary. Then let us hope that fresh research and improved lives built on hard work compel Congress to follow.”
Source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-16/u-s-minimum-wage-lower-than-in-lbj-era-needs-a-raise.html
Crain's New York Business, February 2012: "“Critics of [the minimum wage] proposal are making the same arguments as the last time the Legislature increased the minimum wage, in 2004. The hike to $7.15 an hour from the federal minimum of $5.15 was phased in over three years. If the change had a cataclysmic effect on businesses that depend heavily on minimum-wage workers, we certainly missed it. Raising New York's minimum would not put it at a competitive disadvantage with New Jersey, where the wage floor is also $7.25. Businesses employing many minimum-wage workers tend to be in the service sector and must set up shop near their customers. Indexing the minimum wage to inflation is logical and would erase the pressure on lawmakers to keep returning to the issue. Objections . . . while meriting consideration, are essentially objections to the very existence of a minimum wage, which has been a fixture in the U.S. since 1938 and has never stopped our economy from flourishing.”
Source:
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20120205/SUB/302059999#ixzz2H2tFGMTT
Over 650 economists, including 5 Nobel prize winners and 6 past presidents of the American Economic Association, believe that increasing federal and state minimum wages, with annual cost-of-living adjustments for inflation, “can significantly improve the lives of low-income workers and their families, without the adverse effects that critics have claimed.”
See the list of signatories and read the statement here :
http://www.epi.org/page/-/pdf/epi_minimum_wage_2006.pdf
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So what should we raise minimum wage to?
You mean what's fair, or what's legislatively passable? lol
Fair = Keeping up with inflation at a minimum and in the last 40 years that would come out to about $10.67, which is much better than the current $7.25