Well if you were making $5.85 an hour, that was almost a 12% raise. I would say that is pretty significant. Where I live, there are people who actually live off of this pay rate (somehow).

For instance, if you want your kid to have piano lessons, and there are 4 possibilities:
*Lessons from the best teacher in town for $50 per hour
*Lessons from a competent, experienced teacher for $40 per hour
*Lessons from an ok teacher for $30 per hour
*Lessons on piano from an untried teacher for $20 per hour

In this scenario, in a free market, you might give the rookie teacher a try for $20 per hour.
But raise the minimum salary for piano teachers to, say, $40 per hour. Are you really “helping” the untried teacher? Or are you guaranteeing full employment for the most skilled and experienced teachers at the expense of the others? (Look up the origins of the Davis Bacon employment acts when you get a chance. These were our first minimum wage laws, and were designed to guarantee full employment for whites at the expense of blacks. They’ve worked well.)

Congratulations to the Democrat party for sawing the bottom rungs off of the employment ladder.

If people are working those jobs it’s obviously worth it to them and they are satisfied. If it wasn’t they would go get themselves more. Right? That’s the logical way of things isn’t it? There are of course exceptions (old, physically/mentally unable).

Given that the Pentagon pays both the military servicemen and the military contractors, I don’t think this is the best example of “market efficiency” in action.

“Pork barrel politics” and “crony capitalism” perhaps, but not free market economics.

Anyone wanna buy a hammer? On sale for $500!

On topic:

While not necessarily a big fan of minimum wage regulation, I do believe that if it’s going to be done, it should be done right. The fact that for years (and to this day, as the article points out) the minimum wage hasn’t kept up with the cost of inflation just reeks of congress doing just enough to get by (“We’ll throw them a bone and they’ll vote us back in again.”) rather than any true effort to assist those in need.

~B

I disagree – no one can tell me that these CEO’s of failed companies are worth millions while police, firefighters and teachers make nothing in comparison, especially teachers. We reward people who run companies into the ground, yet teachers who educate our kids are forced to buy their own supplies for their classroom on $25K a year.