The $15 Minimum Wage

Some idiots in the US are talking about a 15 minimum wage. As a small business owner, I can tell you that this will definitely kill the small businesses and the discount market. It will kill McDonalds, Costco, Target, all of the fastfood chains, WalMart, and small businesses. Since the government has no money, the government is trying to put health care and the welfare system on the small businesses and the discount market. If the government wants to do this, they shouldn't be collecting any taxes from us businessmen either in local or federal or Medicare or Social Security.

As a self-employed businessman, I have seen the small businesses dying around me. Every time a WalMart comes in, small businesses die. Someone formally making 100,000 a year as a small businessman gets a job at WalMart for 50,000 a year. A man who used to be a franchisee of a gas station is now working at Home Depot. I'm sure there are many other cases that we don't hear about in the news. Now, if I was making tons of money, I wouldn't care, but the truth is, my wife and I are barely making ends meet at around 80,000 a year.

The sheer hypocrisy of the government in proposing such a minimum wage is that Apple and GE basically pay no taxes while small businesses and the discount market have to pay taxes. If the government is betting that America is going to corner the premium market, they are sadly mistaken. If they are penalyzing the discount market and the small businesses, they are penalyzing the working and the middle class... and prices will dramatically go up on products at walmart, costco, small businesses, etc. Not only that, China will even have greater power than it has now and it will start buying up natural resources once again so that it can have control over the prices of naturals resources to other nations.

Culturally, creating a premium culture associated with premium products... Limited distribution, highre standard of living, etc may sound nice but Europe is in a worse state that we are in... And American premium products are dependent on cheap labor unlike Europe. This, of course, has its pluses and minuses. But I deeply believe that such an economic move would be highly dangerous and unhealthy in the current economic situation and would eventually destroy the macroeconomic structure of the US.