Minimum Wage Reform

This could easily be about the main cause of inflation, but I will take a direct look at minimum wage reform and how it should be fixed. There is a bigger separation in income classes than ever before and increasing minimum wage is making it worse. It is squeezing businesses to increase their prices to maintain a steady profit margin. These companies include the fast food companies like McDonald's but the biggest offender is Wal-Mart.

There are career McDonald's employees, but many of the workers at McDonald's are below the age of 25 and are in either high school or college. Of course there are some that are starting families, but most wait until they have a better job or are in management positions with benefits. With increasing minimum wage, the cost of food increases because the cost of labor in more ways that just at that store.

The cost of everything that it takes to make a cheeseburger increase even when there are factory workers

who get paid more than minimum wage because the difference of what they make over minimum wage shrinks. Therefore their wages must be increased as well. Therefore the materials that are produced at the factories cost more to account for increase labor and that cost to passed to the next consumer, the store.

Which the increased cost of materials and the increase of labor inside the store, the store must raise it's prices if it wants to be a viable business. And these are just the basics as the business must still change products, display and technology to continue a successful business.

A successful business can be achieved by increasing labor selectively without increasing the cost of goods which in turn create inflation. Selective minimum wage increases would mean that there would be different minimum wages depending on different factors. The factors include high school students, age and family conditions.

Those over the age of 25 should have the highest minimum wage requirement. If someone has graduated high school and is between 18 and 25, they should get paid a little less like a $1.50/hour. Everyone between age 15 and 25 without a high school diploma or GED should get paid half of the age 25 minimum wage. Businesses could be more productive as they could hire twice as many young adults and provide better service and keep their prices from increasing.

Prices increase some at Wal-Mart, but not quite the same as fast food prices over the years. Wal-Mart has
employed technology with self checkout lines with someone supervising them. This might have increased the rate of theft, but probably not as much as the cost of employing that many more cashiers. The problem with Wal-Mart is they don't employ that many that are in high school and most of the employees have families and are suffering with minimum wage.

Wal-Mart could afford to pay their employees more. Unfortunately, most jobs at Wal-Mart don't take that much skill to get done. They could take advantage of hiring high school students at reduced wages also and make more customers happy with more cashiers available during peak times in the evening.

Increasing the number of younger workers along with decreasing the pay of some, but forcing a pay increase for those who need it would help reduce the impact of increasing minimum wage causing the price of everything to increase. Therefore those making minimum wage don't have to worry about eating more than their increase in wage.