minimum wage

Over half the minimum wage earners are under the age of 25. What these young workers need to prosper is nothing more than a little age and experience. In fact, virtually no workers earn the minimum wage for more than one year – because experience and training increase their productivity. Furthermore, over 90 percent of working teenagers earn more than the minimum wage. Either teenagers are exceptionally savvy in the bargaining they do with the capitalistic fat-cats that are trying to keep the little-man down, or wages are a function of productivity. You decide which is more plausible.
To think that employers would not respond on other margins to mandated increases in their costs is the same as asking drivers to drive more when gas prices rise.
Mandated wage laws lead to an increasingly paternalistic economy that stifles creativity and business creation. 
Sanctimonious strutting by people supporting excessive government controls over the economy and of people’s private lives does nothing to address the important question of what causes prosperity. Forcing entrepreneurs to increase their costs will not do this. Only by advocating policies that increase the ability of the poor to produce more goods and services can their lot be improved.