This popped up online earlier today and I meant to post it, but forgot

My brother, who is generally socially liberalish, had a full-body freak-out on me last year about raising the minimum wage, and it causing unemployment. I wish I'd had something like this handy.

We cut it short because none of us had enough info

It was the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the people of this country.

We told them when the rich got the money, it wouldn't go anywhere else.

We were right and they were wrong and everybody's afraid to get rid of it.

I couldn't believe it either, but last year I found a conservative trade-union website that was full-bore for trickle-down--there hain't be no jobs unless we make the boss rich! I swear it is a form of self-loathing.

And will kill jobs. That's because it eats into their greedy profits. It has been a long standing fact that raising the minimum wage actually creates jobs, because people have more money to spend. When we put more money into the economy we create more of a demand for goods, especially among those on the lower end of the economic spectrum. When there is more of a demand for goods, the economy grows. Therefore, plainly, raising the economy raises the local economy.

This is not economic theory that "they" are talking about, it is economic bovine fecal matter!

and that none of them ever calls for a rollback (well, unless he's a libertarian and running for office, and then it's abolition, not t rollback)?

The truth is that all wage increases multiply as they go through the economy, something completely counterintuitive to the businessman who only sees dollars getting away from him in the beginning. Once the demand side gets a little stimulus, all business starts to improve, from the shoe store to the widget factory, beyond the money paid to the employees in a wage increase.

That's why places that raise the minimum wage have expanding businesses and low unemployment. Rising wages mean an improving economy.

The last few decades seem to have reversed the received wisdom on this fact.

of female employees- that they would just close up, go out of business and die. Their outrage was fake and only aimed to protect their profits and themselves. Obviously the owners survived progressive legislation against abuse of workers.


American humorist Will Rogers called it 'Trickle Up' during the Depression and Pres. Hoover's last years in office, 1932, just before FDR was elected. Will knew what the deal was, that putting more money in the hands of the wealthy would do nothing about the terrible economy. Giving it to the regular people for a while, before they had to hand most of it over to pay living expenses would have been better he said. So somehow after that in the early 1980s the stupid, tricky con was pulled out and used successfully during Reagan. I only learned this a few years ago and was very surprised by it.

Big business is playing the USA like a fiddle while it's wage policies are burning it to the ground