Just guessing that the real buying power of 95% of Americans would go down. Especially with such a huge jump in such a short time.
...
My point is that if real buying power goes down for most Americans, all that discretionary buying stops. Fast food restaurants might be okay because they're fairly cheap, but slightly nicer ones won't be. Pizza will be picked up, not delivered. Best Buy will see a decrease in sales. So will all the other places. Then they've laid people off already because of the increase of minimum wage, so they lay more off because of the decrease in sales.
Carol, I'm not going to take part in a discussion about what the future will be like, because that is something we can't know. Personally, admittedly, I don't believe that a doubling of the minimum wage would lead to a loss of income for 95% of Americans. But there is nothing I can do to prove or bolster my view, so I'm reduced to stating it. And the future may prove me wrong anyway.
Let me tell you about the first time I had a discussion (or maybe an argument
) with a person who eventually invoked the future to 'win' our debate. This guy was a red-hot communist, really, and he kept insisting that we needed to bring the communist revolution to all of the world, because communism on Earth would eventually lead to Paradise on Earth. I kept insisting that he was wrong, and I cited as many examples as I could from communist countries where so many people didn't seem to think that they were living in Paradise at all.
But suddenly our debate was all over, and my opponent had won, even though I couldn't understand how it had happened. This was his closing argument:
"You criticize the communist countries of today for being imperfect. Well, remember that it took capitalism 200 years to achieve a measure of perfection. Communism has only been around since 1917. You have to wait for a hundred years, and then the Soviet Union and other communist countries will be like Paradise!"
When he had said that to me, I was speechless. My opponent was in fact telling me that he knew the future, while I would never presume to say that I did. And I was absolutely unprepared to respond to him.
Did this guy in fact believe that he knew the future? I have no way of knowing if he did think so. But if he did, it must have been because he had studied Marxism so thoroughly that he absolutely believed that history
must unfold the way Marx had predicted that it would. It was a staggering thought. This guy believed in Marxism the way Evangelical Christians believe in the Bible. Or else, you know, he was just a fake who was looking for a way to win a debate.
Well, Carol, I think of my opponent from all those years ago as either a spineless fake or a scary, fanatical fundamentalist. You are definitely neither of those!
You didn't claim to
know what would happen if Obama gives the minimum wage a substantial hike. You told us that you were just guessing what the consequences would be. And guessing is all that any of us can do when it comes to the future, and that means we have only a limited opportunity to have a reasonable and rational debate. (I hope you understand I wasn't criticizing you here, only trying to explain why I generally shy away from debates about the future. It isn't as if I haven't stated my own beliefs about the future, though!)
Still, I want to quote the New York Times again. This is from a column by Paul Krugman:
The long-feared capitulation of American consumers has arrived. According to Thursday's G.D.P. report, real consumer spending fell at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the third quarter; real spending on durable goods (stuff like cars and TVs) fell at an annual rate of 14 percent.
So it appears that consumer spending is already down, even though the minimum wage hasn't been raised. Therefore, if Obama raises the minimum wage and consumer spending keeps on declining, maybe that will be because of the change of the minimum wage, but maybe the real reason will just be the general bear market and the recession.
Ann
