Ms. Danetta, I hear you loud and clear. When they raised the min. wage in my state, the price of everything else was raised too. In other countries people spend most of their income on food. Food is,(supposedly,) inexpensive in the U.S. I still see people going hungry though.(Yeah, in the land of plenty.)

  No matter how much they raise the min. wage, inevitably, the cost of everything will rise. Our government doesn't care about the people, just their money. While our government makes us pay for their dinners, cars , and vacations; they never stop to see the way the other 3/4 of the U.S. is suffering.(It must be great to have no conscience.)

The only problem with $19.40 in 2011is, it will hurt the small business owners. Some can't even afford to pay themselves $2.00/hour. I find it funny, you think,"telling Obama," will do any good. If you hadn't noticed, he doesn't care. Instead of tending to the urgency's facing Americans at this time, he is trying to reform health care. (WTF?) Maybe, if he brought our soldiers home, or spent tax payer money, on the U.S. not ,"U.S. Government's special interest," our tax dollars would go to programs that benefit the poverty stricken in our country. (Yeah, maybe, but I doubt it.)

SOMEONE has to pay it.  Either we finally institute a livable minimum wage. Or we finally institute a REALISTIC assessment of poverty along with REALISTIC guidelines for our "assistance programs" and then ADEQUATELY fund said programs so that they can help all those who need help - and in a way that doesn't punish anyone for being poor OR for trying to get out of poverty.

The other choice is unspeakable and unacceptable.  It's what we've done so far - choose as a society to allow millions to languish and suffer in poverty.  And YES, it IS a choice that is made at least as much by SOCIETY at large as by the average individual in poverty.  That we've done this and more importantly continue to do this as a nation that not only calls itself "civilized" but a nation that upholds and values human rights as spelled out in the UN Declaration of Human Rights is appalling.

Danetta you're realizing the other correct solution... Raising minimum wage won't work.

Think about an egg... someone is payed to take care of the chickens, someone is payed to sort the eggs, someone is paid to inspect the eggs, someone is paid to package the egg, someone is paid to drive that egg on a truck to a distribution facility, someone is paid to pull that egg off and put it on another truck, someone is paid to stock that onto the shelf... That's a lot of pay raises you'd be looking at just to get the most basic of food supplies to your home... and I guarantee half those people I listed live a comfortable life right now.  Sure, they'd love some extra money, but who wouldn't. 

It's more important to find the people who are in true need, who can't put a roof over their head, clean clothes on their back, and food on their plates and give them what they need.  We don't need to support the teenager who is living on minimum wage and just want extra cash so they can get an Iphone instead of the phone mommy bought them.

I grew up in farm towns.  It might be factory farming now-a-days where one person does one part, another person does another part, and so on down the line, but a lot of it's automated too.  About the only people in the whole bit that MIGHT be making above minimum are the truck drivers and the people at the grocery story (and that presumes the grocery store is union).  I processed beef in an entry level management position for a whole $2/hour above minimum - the rest of the plant started at minimum or not far above and this WAS a union plant.  What people make for processing food is a sick and twisted joke.  No wonder so many food processors have to turn to hiring illegal immigrants - they're the only ones who think it's a decent wage for the work or at least don't know they're getting totally shafted for that sort of wage and how dangerous the work is.  My experience has been that most people - by far - working for minimum wage or anything near it have families to support and would "love some extra money".

Now if minimum wage REALLY went primarily to "teenagers living on minimum wage" and who "just want extra cash so they can get an Iphone (sic) instead of the phone mommy bought them" then perhaps I could see what some states have had or proposed called a "training wage" as long as it was used ONLY for those under 18 but NEVER EVER as in NOT ONCE for anyone over 18 and this crapola like sub-minimum wages for people like waitresses on the basis of "presumed tips" was done away with.

The whole consumer driven economy is unplanned obsolescence. Permaculture type social change is all that will ever change life for the poor. Quit giving your $$ to negative corporations and spend it where it does the most good, your own future.

Right, because every last one of them will want a fancy car instead of putting aside $$ towards higher education, where tuitions are rising at 5% per year.

But definitely don't raise the minimum wage to keep up w/these growing costs - good plan!  I imagine you're on the front lines of policy advocacy for free and excellent and accessible public education, aren't you?

Even when wages aren't raised the cost of housing, food, gas etc goes up. It doesn't matter whether minimum wage or not. Daniel whatstate do you live in? In Az fast food is run by 30-40 yr old of hispanic descent. Teenagers must have experiece to get into fast food. I believe most people want to make a fair wage so that they can support themselves and their family.

All high school kids?  Really?  Tell that to the many who work their butts off at or near minimum trying to obtain a college education. Or I just dare you to tell it to a group like the many in my apartment complex who are far from their teens and in many cases supporting families while working for minimum.  Or even the community where I worked in NM where high school kids pretty much couldn't get jobs - because ADULTS had all of them and just about every job in town was part time and minimum wage.  I'd really love to know where you got your info that the "majority" working minimum wage are high school kids.  Even when I did work fast food, at least half my coworkers were far from their teens.

Thing is, we've never tried it.  We don't know.  For one hundred or more years this is what business owners and capitalists have screamed from the rooftops in opposition to every suggested idea about minimum wages, maximum working hours, mandatory benefits, etc. - it'll raise costs on everything, it'll put people out of business, it'll cause massive layoffs and so on.  Every time, they squeal like pigs in a poke yet the law gets passed and little if anything happens and certain not the massive and horrificly dire calamity they predicted.  So why not try it?  At least try raising it by more than the tiny pittances done so far.

As to housing you're right on that.  If we can regulate financial institutions as far as stuff like mortgages, surely we can find a way to regulate rental housing.  Heck, large cities have done it - landlords didn't like it, but the cities DID it.  So why hasn't it been done? Only reason I can think of is lack of political will.

Odd that you mention Public Housing and Section 8 - and Reagan.  The real tragedy though didn't start until Cisneros (under Clinton) added in Hope IV which began replacing the old public housing communities with the new (and much smaller) mixed income neighborhoods.  There are articles all over the news today talking about Atlanta and that history and how many people just kind of disappeared from HUD's rolls in the last 10-15 years and no one seems to know if they found housing or not...  Like this one: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct2=us%2F0_0_s_0_0_t&usg=AFQjCNFbS19kn9tc85iZWp96rl7We9kLMQ&sig2=jJg6HGV7J8wMqIohgi6V1g&cid=1399602166&ei=Sl1uStmFOozElQTyxdr3Aw&rt=SEARCH&vm=STANDARD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fhostednews%2Fap%2Farticle%2FALeqM5jlwdklpqEbVJvjLUFn9v7Go18cWwD99N0LB05

Actually real wages have been declining for decades, even as the cost of living, especially the costs of housing, food and energy, have risen.  I don't think an increase in the minimum wage has any correlation to this.

At a minimum (heh), the MW needs to be indexed again to inflation, so it's at least keeping up with that!

Wow, where'd they find the respondents over there?

Capitalism at its very roots, even ask any economist, is set up to do whatever it can to minimize expenses and maximize profits. THIS is why businesses squeal like stuck pigs about changes in minimum wages - they increase costs - changes in minimum safety - they increase costs - changes in things like maximum hours or mandatory benefits - more increases in costs and none of these do anything to notably increase production (i.e. profits).  Thus, businesses resist. 

What business owners forget, is that if you don't pay your workers enough to buy your products you won't have much of a market - not unless you seriously adulterate your products to cut corners some other way.  So they find other ways to cut corners.  They raise minimums and work on not nearly a skeleton crew or they hire illegal immigrants or fraudulently use visa programs like the H1-B (ignoring the crowds of unemployed workers in the field of their industry clamoring for jobs in the blocks leading up to their building).  Or they might eventually get caught up in one or another type of fraud - accounting, price fixing, something with their stock, etc.

Which is ultimately why unfettered Capitalism is good only for the Capitalists.  It's also a good part of why our nation has continued to have such a rate of poverty and might figure into why we're so willing to turn a blind eye to Article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights which is the part that most directly tackles poverty by speaking about a person's or family's right to things like food, shelter, medical care, etc. without regard to whether they can pay or if they can't why not.

I'm not sure I'd go as far as open socialism, but seems to me, that if human rights and business rights conflict it's not the business rights that should be automatically winning...  Which tells me - at least IMHO - that we, at the very least, need a lot stricter business and labor regulations and we need to start actually actively enforcing all those regulations rather than giving them selective lip service.

But as far as that page goes, welfare isn't a "choice".  Not for the vast majority.  It's what happens when the system takes you past where you can go or when you realize that your wages just don't cut it.  Then again, wages and welfare typically don't either.  And despite the assertions to the contrary, welfare by itself in any form, definitely doesn't and most certainly isn't "easy money".

Marissa - Thank you for that link!

That should say above 20 years old not about... that's as far as I'm proof-reading a comment for a blog on the internet though :P

Oh, so because that's what YOU saw, or at least THINK you saw then it not only must be true but must apply everywhere to everyone?  Am I getting you now?  New Mexico isn't exactly flush with cash once you get outside of Santa Fe.  Actually, where I lived was one of those nasty places where 95% of the money was in the hands of about 5% of the county's population - it's not hard to figure what the area's standard of living was like.  It bit. Where I grew up in California wasn't much better, 90% of the money was in the hands of about 10% of the locals.  I was in about 5th or 6th grade before my parents openly were disqualified from things like the free/reduced lunch program - and that was mostly because my Mom was finally working full time at her job with the other local public school (and this was with my Dad as a teacher). Wasn't much different in rural AZ or even metropolitan Southern CA though I haven't the slightest of things like income disparity.

I've worked in restaurants, I've managed them too.  I've worked other minimum wage jobs.  I think in all those jobs over all my years in all the many places I've lived, I've seen maybe TWO (max of 3) people who had the attitude you describe and both were much older than you're talking and had substance abuse issues of one sort or another.

Please take your stereotypes elsewhere.  They're untrue.

Ms. Danetta, I agree with the point that you are trying really hard to convey. You've done you homework,(As far as I can tell,) and come to the harsh realization that many other Americans have.

   Ms. Graham, I don't think subsidizing small business is the answer. We need to eliminate our dependence on foreign textiles, food, and labor; bring these jobs back to the U.S.

  Ms. Danetta, you pointed out you grew up in a farm town. So, you are probably aware of the unfairness, for small farmers, imposed by NAFTA. NAFTA was designed to keep food cheap. (It's not working, so you might have noticed.) Mexico is violating NAFTA right now. They are charging U.S. trucks entering Mexico a tariff,(tax.) By doing away with NAFTA, less illegal drugs would enter our country, and U.S. farmers could afford to employ more Americans.

  Our Government is over paid, spoiled, and much too large. I don't want a rich politician determining the poverty level for our country, (as for they have no concept of poverty.) They have always been rich, and will remain rich, until we stop letting them use us like plow horses. We need to stop waiting for them to bring us up to their standard of living, and demand they come down to ours. They don't need private jets, or million dollar homes. Especially when the average American can't pay for the fuel in their vehicles, or the rent/mortgages.

   First step: Do away NAFTA. Second:Bring our soldiers home. Third: Lower the pay of our elected officials,(this is a job, not an unlimited expense account.) These 3 things could save the U.S. billions of dollars, and generate billions of dollars at the same time.

Daniel,  Your assumptions about who's earning what and what people's priorities are strike me as narrow and uninformed.  Particularly this:

"And if immigrants are willing to do the job for the pay, and can live on the pay, why can't an american?  It's not like an immigrant doesn't still have to put a roof over their head or food on their plates."

Have you heard of doubling up, overcrowding, living in substandard housing?  How do you know what kind of housing, food and clothing these anonymous immigrants are affording?  Are they living on that pay? 

I'm also curious what you do for a living that you know so many wayward teens.

 I agree with you, in part. But, before we can reform the criminal mentality, that runs rapid through our society;we need to give these inmates the prospect, of a future when they are released. We can start by bringing our jobs back. Even low paying jobs build a work ethic, and give the low income a platform, to begin building a future on. Many inmates grew up in poverty. It's a vicious cycle, that is hard to break.

  As for Daniel up there, what is wrong with you.?(I'm shaking my head right now, after reading your post.)

  The immigrants that are able to live on the minimum wage are the, "guest workers." These are the ones that don't want to live in our country,(I don't blame them.) They are usually seasonal, and they take their money with them, when they return to their countries. There is a fundamental flaw in our immigration system.(That's a whole different issue, that I would not care to get into, at this time.)