No, chief. I just told YOU what it would do. The managers at those stores don't get $12/hour. That would murder each and every fast food restaurant and other minimum wage employer. It would result in a complete inability to gain employment for anyone with less than a bachelor's degree in the particular field. It would aggravate the already difficult to navigate catch-22 of needing experience in order to get a job, and needing a job to get experience.

You need to understand: A minimum wage is a price floor on labor. Price floors always (when they do anything at all) result in demand for the controlled commodity being far outstripped by supply. Minimum wages hurt workers. They do not help them.

So... you take an extreme example (and their income is not Wal-mart's, you're likely grossly overstating their actual income), and extrapolate that down to the McDonald's on the corner. Go in there, and ask to speak with the manager. Ask him what a $12 minimum wage would do to that store. Do the same at the convenience store on the way home. Internalize the fear you see in their eyes when you say "$12 minimum wage."

Stop. Right there. That's the flaw. You assume that job creators are actually hoarding their profits. That's a bad assumption.
Most employers are actually running very slim margins. An extremely high minimum wage would result in mass layoffs, unprecedented unemployment, and essentially strangle the economy. It would drive some employers completely out of business.

Minimum wage is a minor part of inflation. And it's only seen in some sectors of the economy. Most notably food service, as I showed.

A minimum wage hike would likely do nothing to, say, telecom costs. But inflation still effects those.

If you're careful, and lucky, your back yard can grow enough wheat to feed you. A couple of window gardens with herbs, and maybe an indoor grow room for tomatoes, and you'll be doing OK. Not a very varied diet, but mostly nutritionally complete, if you can get some fish.

At which point, everyone not already getting at least $10/hour gets fired, and everyone else gets to pick up the slack, on shorter hours. Hmm. Doesn't sound fun.

Not to mention what that will do to McDonalds. Good bye dollar menu. Your Big Mac? Yeah, that's gonna cost like, $10. Double cheeseburger? At least $5. And the wait times are gonna suuuuuuck. During peak times, you'll be lucky if there's three people back there making your food.

Sodas will probably still be $1. Maybe not the larges, those were mostly loss-leaders anyway. But the smalls, definitely.

Corn, wheat, oats or rice, in the end it's all grass.

Yes, and they are all old arguments that I have heard a bazillion other times from liberals like yourself.

Don't work for your dad?

Then they should ask for a raise. If they make enough extra money for the job creator that he can afford to give them a raise, they'll get it. Otherwise, they will not.

Really, watch the video. It's only 7 minutes, and it explains all of this with very nice pictures and lovely narration.

Do job creators not deserve their freedom and property protected?

Have you watched the video? I'm perfectly capable of explaining the concepts therein, but the video has pretty animation and is narrated by a British chick.

No, I think like a Libertarian.

Let me teach you a little economics. In order for an employee to be worth hiring, he needs to offer more value to the employer than he commands in wages. A minimum wage limits the number of workers that can provide that value to the employer, by raising the amount that they have to be able to provide in order to be profitable to employ.

Since you like Youtube videos so much, here's a short one for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFbYM2EDz40

So you think there should be more unemployment, huh?

Actually, I'm saying that if they weren't taxed so hard, they wouldn't need welfare, and what little help they did need could be taken care of by private charity. Minor difference, but it's important.

Then I should point out that:
Federal income taxes average about 17%.
State and local income taxes average about 10%.
Sales tax averages about 9.7%
Social Security and Medicaid is 7.65% (technically 15.3%, since the employer pays half of that, and without that, they could afford to pay the employee an additional 7.65%.)
So the total the "below average" citizen, one that doesn't own any property, and doesn't drive, is paying is about 44%. If you include the other 7.65% that they're missing out on, that brings it up to about 52%.

Still haven't clicked the site and looked at the breakdown, have you?

The usual refrain is "Think of the chiiiiildren!!!"

A well-planned Linux install can be over and done with in a day, but that planning takes some time. Or, you can put everything you need on a bootable CD or USB stick, and just run off that, and never have to worry about installing again. Most of the USB versions of this plan even allow for storage of files and whatnot. But for security, you can't beat a Live CD.

Interestingly enough, one of the first programs I ever wrote, in some form or another of BASIC, was a one-line "virus" that erased everything on the hard drive. I never intended to run it. My dad, however, didn't know what it would do....

Boy, was he pissed. I honestly thought I was going to die that day.

lol... trying to run Linux commands on Windows. You're a funny guy.

try del c:\*.*