The bottom line is that minimum wage increases will raise the wages of some low income workers reducing dependence on government support and giving them a little larger share of the nations wealth.
Higher wages or costs mean higher prices. The folks who work at WalMart shop at Walmart so no net benefit is possible. A liberal will be too stupid to understand so walk into the same swinging door a million times in his life.
Walmart announced recently that over 500,000 employees about 1/3 of their US workforce will be paid a minimum of $10/hr. Within 3 years they hope to have essential all US employees making at lease $10/hr. If all costs are passed on to the customer, prices will rise 1.4%.
Only a grain truth in your statement. Yes, if all wages go up and it effects all business the same, prices will track wage increases.
However, all wages don't go up when minimum wage rises. Only a small percent of the workforce is directly effected. Although there is an indirect effects, the ripple effect, estimates vary widely from 10% to 25% depending on the size of the increase..
There is also a large variation of the impact an increase in minimum wage has on businesses. In labor intensive businesses where 99% of the workers are working at minimum, there is a significantly increases in operating costs. For businesses that aren't labor intensive or pay high wages, it's insignificant.
All business do not react to increases in labor cost by raising prices or firing workers because they can't. Raising prices or firing workers may often impacts revenues sufficiently that employers look for other means of reducing cost or increasing revenue.
Workers that get's a 10% raise due to an increase in minimum wage aren't going to see a 10% increase in their cost of living or anything close to it because the effect on prices are diluted by many other factors.
And I would agree with that. But as I reported earlier, the number of employees per Walmart store, was 336 in 2006, and was 281 by 2010, after the minimum wage went up.
Yes, the employees that keep their jobs, will not see inflation of 10%, for a 10% increase in their wages.
What about the 60 employees per store that no don't have a job? Prices will go up on them.... but now they have zero income.
Is that a net gain, or a net loss for the economy? I think it's a loss.