However II love UF

Well said!

There's nothing more tragic than a working-class Republican. They elect people with that kind of thinking, and scratch their heads at the state of the nation.

I'm not sure why I bother, since I have no doubt that the mindset here won't change, but I'm going to make one attempt to explain why the reasoning here is flawed. Many people who think as you do seem to view ALL of the businesses out there as big, evil Fortune 500 companies that make billions. In fact, the vast majority of American Business is Small Business. And these are the businesses who most likely have 2-20 employees and pay entry-level minimum wage. (BIG business usually pays far more than your entry-level wage demands to start with!) If you dictate to the average small business that they must pay their employees more, then you are guaranteeing one thing: They will have to lay off some of their employees or go out of business altogether. Unemployment goes up, bankruptcies go up, competition goes down, and consumer prices for everyone go up (hurting the poor the most). Free enterprise works because the market itself dictates what a living wage is. If a company doesn't pay enough, the employees will be attracted elsewhere. Further, only the tiniest percentage of families' prime wage-earners make minimum wage to start with: Those that do are already eligible for all kinds of government assistance, and pay NO income tax. Most minimum wage earners are part-time employees and first-time jobholders who move up within a year. When socialistic government steps in and decrees a flat wage that is too high for a small business to sustain, the people who suffer are the laid-off POOR wage-earners and the bankrupted middle class SMALL business owners. The "RICH", who you seem to want to punish, are UNTOUCHED. If you want to kill off mom-and-pop businesses and reward WAL-MART, then by all means, push for an artificially high minimum wage boost. You (and liberals in general) genuinely want to help the poor, I'm sure. The only problem is that you try to help in ways that don't think through the whole big picture first, and you end up hurting everyone in your misguided desire to help. - -

Servo, Hmmm. I admit I did do the cartoon out of a gut response to trickle down theory, and didn't consider your points (which do seem to make a lot of sense (for example I know McDonald's pays more than some small companies). If that's the case, then I was also inaccurately mixing metaphors (combining trickle down theory which does seem to focus on benefiting the rich) with minimum wage (which your arguments suggest ignore the rich and would result in hurting the middle income and lower income). Perhaps I should look into this more...

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others!" J B Priestly Animal Farm

Servos argument isnt wrong, but it isnt right either. There are countries with high minimum wages and a prospering economy with many small and medium sized firms. The problem with most economists today is, that they just focus on the supply side of the economy and behave like the workers would burn their money. The higher (minimum) wages are spent for products and services and so firms benefits with a more stable demand. A wage determinated by the market may even lay near zero, when your labour isnt needed at all. What the conservatives and libertarians arent gettinis that you have to make a living with your wage and when the market doesnt pay this wage, we have to take the free market ideology (nothing more it is in todays politics) in question. On the other side, profits arent ever reinvesed in human labour but may also serve the financial market for speculation or for reinvestment replacing human workers with machines (considering the future possibilities of androids, biocomputers and nanomachines, we have seen nothing of unemployment yet). Unemployment wouldnt be such a problem, when wed have another distribution of property, enabling everyone to work for his own benefit and not forcing us to be the wage-slaves for others benefit. The whole economic system of the world is leading towards a totalitarian market system, with governments as mere security agents for the transnational corporations and investors.