re: The best argument against a mandatory $20 an hour minimum wage.

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It will be predictable to watch. There is no one more loathed by the masses here than the working poor

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I have a serious question for you. Do you think one reason why this company is so successful is that because of its wages it's able to attract and keep better quality people? Which obviously by definition has an implication for those they are not hiring?

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Businesses that are struggling are usually the cheap bastards that don't want to pay anyone

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nonsense

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I don't support raising the federal minimum wage to 20 an hour because it doesn't make sense in lower cost of living areas.

I wouldn't have a problem with it being indexed to inflation. If these old fossils get COLA adjustments for not working then why shouldn't we apply the same logic to those working and contributing to social security?

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Your grasp of basic economics is somewhat wanting.

First, those “old fossils” worked and paid into Social Security in dollars that were more valuable than a dollar today, and their benefits are tied to their earnings history - earnings that reflected the marginal revenue product, and thus the economic value, of their labor at the time. COLA adjustments are simply a way to preserve the current value of those earned benefits.

So, you see, Social Security COLAs and minimum wages accomplish fundamentally different things. A COLA adjusts a government benefit to preserve its purchasing power. A minimum wage legally prohibits employer-employee transactions below a specified price. Indexing one to inflation doesn't establish an economic rationale for indexing the other.

Next, to point out that a federal minimum wage does not make sense across all living situations is to concede an important point: the market value of labor is not the same everywhere. Wages vary with productivity, labor supply and demand, scarcity of particular skills, industry, and local economic conditions. Markets continuously incorporate those differences into wages; a uniform federal price floor does not.

It is therefore still necessary to explain why a mandate imposed from outside the market would do a better job. No desirable social objective by itself establishes that government price-setting is the appropriate way to achieve it. The strongest economic case for a minimum wage must be more than simply that workers deserve more. It must explain why wages emerging from competitive labor supply and demand fail to reflect relevant market conditions and why a government-imposed floor would produce better results than the market process already does.

Price floors and ceilings do not simply repeal the underlying economic conditions.