Literally, if we took away the minimum wage - if conceivably it was gone - we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We obviously would like to get unemployment as low as we possibly can.
A minimum wage leads to higher levels of unemployment.
The minimum wage is something that F.D.R. put in place a long time ago during the Great Depression. I don't think it worked then. It didn't solve any problems then and it hasn't solved any problems in 50 years.
The value of the minimum wage shouldn't be eroded, and it has been.
In the general economy, you get government involved in making market decisions - first of all, they're going to get it wrong. For a minimum wage, you will actually reduce the number of jobs available.
Raising the minimum wage seems to all economists to, at the very least, fail to 'raise' employment, and we'd all like to see better inclusion of low-skilled workers into good-paying jobs.
High mandated minimum wages will throw people out of work and onto the welfare rolls in cases where unemployment benefits exist. When it comes to welfare payments, they obey the laws of economics, too. Indeed, if something - like unemployment - is subsidized, more of it will be produced.
In addition to joblessness, of course, by the working of supply and demand, when you have a larger number of people unemployed, wages do not rise at the normal level, so that we had last year a drop in real wages.
Certainly other things we can do, we gotta promote after-school employment, give kids an opportunity, raising the minimum wage was part of that, we can't expect that young people are going to feel they can make a living out there for such low wages.
We took the position we wanted our people to be better than minimum wage, so we're going to pay better than minimum wage, and we still do that.