Minimum Wage Increase Is Good for Business

From AlterNet:

For many business owners, paying their workers well is common sense. "Trying to save money by shortchanging my employees would be like skimping on ingredients," said Kirsten Poole, a petition signer and co-owner of Kirsten's Cafe and Dish Caterers in Silver Spring, Md. "I'd lose more than I saved because of declining quality, service, reputation and customer base. You can't build a healthy business or a healthy economy on a miserly minimum wage."

A growing body of evidence shows that successful businesses that are "built to last" don't skimp on wages. "It is a sound business decision to increase the minimum wage," said venture capitalist Adnan Durrani, president of Condor Ventures in Stamford, Conn. "I have found that without exception in the successful ventures we've backed, providing sustainable living wages yielded direct increases in productivity, job satisfaction and brand loyalty from customers, all contributing to higher returns for investors and employers."

Research by the Economic Policy Institute validates the theory that raising the minimum wage will have a positive effect for low-wage workers without a negative effect on the economy.

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Yeah, it's definitely time to dispel the minimum wage myths that have crippled debate on the subject for years. While it sounds reasonable that requiring businesses to pay more than the "labor market" value for workers cuts into the bottom line and retards economic growth overall, the reality stands in stark contrast to what appears to be common sense. For starters, workers aren't capital; they're people. Treating them as money or raw materials or heavy equipment is nutty from the get-go. People have souls, minds, desires, etc. Consequently, there is much more to labor than the value economists assign it. And I'm not talking about some sort of touchy-feely, new age, abstract value: I'm talking about dollars and cents. That is, when you treat your workers like human beings, they're better workers, producing more, and have a much higher value than when they are treated simply as capital. Furthermore, when you pay all workers more money - the minimum wage tends to have an upward effect on all wages - that money invariably comes back to the companies paying workers in the first place. In other words, higher wages means more consumer spending, which stimulates economic growth. That's why the states that have already raised the minimum wage on their own have seen more, not less, economic activity than states that haven't followed suit.

Raising the minimum wage is the real common sense. We've got to stop listening to these naysayers. They're full of shit.

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