What was to be the minimum

The minimum wage has an enormous impact on the life of many of the poorest Americans and increases to it costs small business owners money and possibly the viability of their business.  With such large stakes and the current increase proposal, this seemed like a good time for me to make some jokes about it while I sit in my leather chair in the house I live in by myself that I pay for by working for a company where no one is paid the minimum wage.  Because you know, people like me know best.  To further endear me to the general public, I'll be using economic jargon and equation based models to enforce my points.  I have another blog where I post my fiction and short stories, so that might be a better destination for some readers. 

The question of whether to raise the minimum wage always brings up the argument that people will lose jobs, more small businesses will go under, and the costs of many products will increase diluting the gains the minimum wage earners achieved.  The response given to those arguments is that inflation has widely outpaced minimum wage increases since 1980, that changes to the minimum wage is one of the most studied topics in modern economics and there is a large body of evidence indicating that there is little change to job numbers in response to modest increases to the minimum wage. 

To me the first argument makes more intuitive sense, but when I look at the data I side more with the latter.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Motto: Objective, timely, accurate, relevant, or none of the above) There are about 74 million workers paid on an hourly basis, and of those only 1.7 million are paid the minimum wage. Interestingly, 2.2 million have hourly wages below the minimum wage, because as it turns out, there are exemptions to the minimum wage including: certain disabled workers; full-time students employed in retail or service stores, agriculture, or colleges and universities; and those under 20 years of age who qualify for the youth minimum wage.

So this change likely wouldn't affect most people who are paid below the minimum wage.  I'm not saying this is good, I'm saying this is one reason we have not historically seen a lot of impact from these changes, the way my weight does not change when I make new years resolutions to exercise everyday because I have the exemption that days where I eat ice cream exempt me from working out that day. 

All that said, minimum wage earners tend to be younger (about 83% are 24 or younger), and let me say this, I don't care for these young people.  The young men keep trying to date my little sister so I see no reason why they should be given more capital to pursue that endeavor, and the women won't date me so I see no reason to reward them financially for spurning my romantic advances.  So, I propose that the minimum wage be increased, but only for workers over 25.