Soap Box!

What I would do if I were voted President or any other high ranking government official for that matter...

STOP RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE!
Unfortunately most of those in politics have probably NEVER worked a minimum wage job, AND have probably never worked a job that pays a bracket or 2 above that, so they can not see that by raising the minimum wage, that they are actually HURTING more families than helping them.
A perfect example would be Pizza. Yes, I said Pizza! So you have the small family run local pizza shop. You have the owner, the manager and the worker. The worker of course earns minimum wage, $5.00 per hour, the manager $10.00 an hour and the owner $15.00 per hour. Ok so here's how it hurts... before the government raises the wage the large cheese pizza costs $9.00 to purchase, everyone is earning a living that is based on experience and education and average cost of living for the area. So now the wage is raised to $6.50 an hour. Do you think that the owner is going to eat that rise? Do you think the owner is going to keep the distance between worker and manager pay the same? Do you think that the suppliers that the owner buys from is going to eat the increase in their wages or increased expences? And what about the increase in the employment taxes etc. that come from this rise? Do you really think the owner's are going to eat those costs too? NO THEY AREN'T!
SO what happens, FALL OUT! First the supplier raises their rates so that the owner has to raise his prices, then he has to raise his prices again to cover the loss from the wages and the taxes, next thing you know the $9.00 pizza is now a $12.oo pizza! But did he increase the managers salary too? No. So now the pizza that was $9.00 meant that the $5.00 a hour employee had to work 1 hour and 30 minutes to buy it, the manager had to work roughly 45 minutes to buy it and of course the owner basically ate for free. Now with the wage increase and the price increase, the employee has to work almost 2 hours to pay for the $12.oo pizza, the Manager now has to work 1 hour 15 minutes to pay for the pizza and the owner still gets to sort of eat for free.
The person that gets hurt the most with this is the middle management guys. They are now being forced out of the lower middle class work group into the poverty income brackets. Less of their extra spendable income is available because now a higher percentage of their earnings go to cover the same expences that they have always had. OR they can choose to stop spending their money on pizza, which of course then means that the restaurant looses money, which then has to lay people off, which then means that either the employee or the manager may not even have an income to even pay their living expences, much less money to buy a pizza.
Make sense? It does to me!
So again I say...DON'T RAISE MINIMUM WAGES!!!!