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How do your strong, though mostly unreferenced opinions, square with the impact of the federal government failure to stop the formation, inside U.S. borders, of a parallel work force of say....<a href="http://pewhispanic.org/">11 million trespassers</a> who <a href="http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/workerpanel042904.html">undercut</a> the wage and benefit "levels" that you seem to want to be determined solely by supply and demand?

How do your views square with an executive branch committed to pro-management objectives, at the expense of 70 years of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rulings that formerly protected the rights of workers to organize into unions and bargain collectively for wages and benefits?
How do your views square with a government that is now controlled by business interests?
How do the nearly unlimited resources and greedy, deceptive, nature of the wealthiest American families, exposed in an attempt to achieve legislation that solely benefits them, square with your POV? Consider that....even under current federal tax law, the wealthiest ten percent of Americans confine the rest of us to just 33 percent of the country's total wealth.....my earlier post on this page documents wealth distribution statistics that state that half of the U.S. population controls just 2-1/2 percent of the total wealth!

If you understand that politics is the business of control and distribution of power and wealth, your defense of the status quo, your failure to recognize that the wealthiest and most powerful few have marginalized the offset that a representative government in a constitutional republic is intended to afford the least wealthy, by the shear numbers of votes that they potentially exercise to influence control, to "balance" the power/wealth transfer, probably precludes chances for any meaningful discussion here.

The current uneven distribution of wealth and politcal power did not come to be where it is now, in a vacuum. Things are the way they are because too many were convinced by propaganda financed by the wealthy and powerful, to "go it alone", instead of in the way that post Hoover era Americans learned to behave politically, both at the polls and in their workplaces.

You seem to want government to suddenly take a "hands off" approach to legislating a more balanced wealth and power distribution. If your advocacy prevails, things will end badly for most of us, as they did in the 1930's, and the pendelum will swing the other way. Current federal policies yield results of half the population holding only 2-1/2 percent of the wealth, a 50 percent increase in U.S. treasury debt in less than 7 years, near total loss of the domestic manufacturing base, aggravating a trade imbalance nearing $70 billion per month, these twin deficits triggering a destruction of the purchasing power of the currency, delayed only by the printing of unprecedented new quantities of devalued fiat paper money that has fueled bubble level prices in real estate and in commodity prices.

The response to these trends by the federal executive and legislative branches was to empower energy and pharma inductry lobbyists to write "reform" legislation that benefitted only their industrys' interests and investors, as well as the politicians paid to cast yea votes for these bills, and sign them into law.
magictoy, minimum wage increase legislation cannot be isolated and then denigrated because this is a myopic and a disingenuous tactic. The contention that the "self made" entrepreneur must be protected from government "infringement" that is somehow "parasitic" is a sweet piece of propaganda. Wealth and power are distributed as a result of connections and influence, that could not occur unless the voting power of the masses are undermined.

It is nearly impossible to become wealthy and powerful without manipulating the system and exploiting other people. In a politcal system, a republic with democratically elected, representative bi-cameral government.....like we in the U.S. are taught to believe that we enjoy..... where elected officials actually represented the wishes of the majority, as they respect and uphold the constitutional safeguards intended to protect the interests of the minority, do you really believe that half the population would possess only 2-1/2 percent of the wealth, or that one percent of the population would control 33 percent of the wealth, and the power and influence that accompanies it? A "real" one man, one vote, political system would never arrive at the situation we find ourselve in now, and if it did, it would not maintain itself as it seems currently to do, for any signifigant length of time.

No magictoy....we live in a "fake" politcal environment of smoke and mirrors, produced by the richest and wealthiest, not unlike the scenario described in the last quote box. Why do you insist on protecting it, or to act so certain that it is the best we can do, and should not be used to shift some wealth and some power back to the bottom half.....to 150 million people?

Are the rich so fragile....that if they were to experience a populist legislated transfer away of say.....2-1/2 points of their 66-2/3 accumulated total points....leaving them with more than 64 percent of total U.S. wealth, that their business enterprises would crumble....triggering massive unemployment?
We observe the spectacle of 150 million people who on average are just 2-1/2 wealth percentage points, collectively....away from owning nothing.

Isn't the risk of their reaction, should they wake up one day and recognize that even that little bit of wealth is ebbing away from them.....via higher prices paid for fuel and rent, of equal concern to you, than the "backlash" and consequence of the transfer of wealth away from the wealthy, that an increase of several dollars per hour in the mimumum wage would cause?

You want them to continue to believe that if they work hard enough, do without long enough, study hard long and hard enough, that they too, will "make it". Shouldn't you be equally concerned that they may learn to do the math, while their low paying job buys them less and less, and realize that they have little left to lose? Don't think it can happen here? I predict that the dollar will grow weak enough to effect a sea change in the numbers of people who offer opinions like yours, magictoy, or more importantly....like Rush's, or like that clean cut republican congressman who represents their district and ran on promises of keeping the queers from getting married and on pro-life family values, but who voted for the bankruptcy "reform" law, and against an increase in the minimum wage.....