https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/pdf/home.pdf Minimum wage isn't as big of an issue as many think. There are over 150 million people in the U.S. workforce. Only 434K of these workers are non-tipped workers making federal minimum wage. About half of those workers are under the age of 25. So only 1 out of every 600 adult workers over the age of 25 are making federal minimum wage. I've always thought of minimum wage jobs as temporary employment. They aren't supposed to be career positions that pay a good living wage. Minimum wage should be lower to provide incentive for people to further themselves.
And when automation comes to the fast food places like McDonalds, they will be complaining of the job losses and blame it on President Donald Trump. On the plus side, someone has to keep the automated robots or machines running to make those burgers and maintain them and another one to program those machines and make sure they continue to function. Those jobs who be in technology and pay good wages. For the food serving crew, there may be one or two left to handle putting the food in the cubby slots and clean up a bit. The rest would be laid off. So much for the $15 minimum wage for entry level jobs with little to no skill. There are going to be very few of those employees left.
If you are making 10 cents over minimum wage, you are exceeding minimum wage. So you are not counted in the statistic. Don't kid yourself...The USA has a TON of waged workers barely getting by, on their 9 bux-per-hour wages.
Of course they are barely getting by, minimum wage is exactly that MINIMUM. Entry level positions for someone with little or no experience or skills in the position. It isn't meant to define your salary arc for a lifetime.
I'm just fed up with American tipping culture and their welcome embrace of subsidizing the salaries of a whole industry. We should demand actual salaries for waiters and go back to the actual meaning of "gratuity".
Coal country is dying naturally and trump is trying to resurrect it unnaturally. Here you are proposing putting millions of people out of work with no solution for retooling their skills. If you want to improve standard of living for the working poor - improve education and training to allow such workers to either enhance their skills or be more productive. The German apprenticeship system is a great model. Companies pay for it but they get more productive workers. Raising the minimum wage is just an inflationary cost with no benefit.