I can't believe people like Katarsas really live and breath with this mentality. We're not talking $15 happy meals the added cost spread over the billions if meals sold would be very small. Also after I retired I worked at a local retailer for about 5 years, many of the people I worked with were heads of families but the wife had to work also, plus many also work a second job meaning they work a total of at least three jobs just to get by. These jobs don't pay low wages because they have to they pay these slave wages because they can due to the high number of immigrants that will work for that. Back in the late 60's I made $1.90/hr and could buy more with that than the people working for minimum wages can now.

I am not opposed to people making a decent wage mind you, but the people who have these minimum wage jobs are typically not the primary bread winners.

The businesses that typically pay minimum wage jobs are the fast food restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations. Places that get a lot of general traffic. In order to increase those wages the cost of the goods must go up to cover. How is that $15 Happy Meal going to sell then? There will be fewer jobs to go around when less people buy the overpriced goods.

So tell us, Marcos, if "Obama wants to raise that [minimum] wage to just over $9 per hour," how much does "just over" actually amount to? Everything I've read so far puts it at $9/hr even. I'm pretty sure if Obama had used your ambiguous words, the Internet would be abuzz trying to figure that out by now. Don't you? So as soon as you figure that out, please let us know in the interest of accurate reporting, instead of "just over" it. :)

It will have the same effect that the fuel prices do on the economy. Stifling recovery and increasing prices across the board.

I'm a little confused Marcos. When you talked to me you seemed to understand that raising the minimum wage will be bad given that it raises costs, and increases unemployment. However in the story you say that it will be good. Economic studies show that raising the minimum wage will hurt the poor the most as it will eliminate their jobs.