FindLaw reports in "Senate Defeats Minimum Wage Increase" that the Senate has resisted efforts to increase the minimum wage. I see this as good news. My logic for this is fairly simple. If I am paying Adam minimum wage, and Bob ten cents more than that, and minimum wage is raised ten cents, I will increase Adam's pay, but not Bob's. This means I now have more people making minimum wage. Additionally, I really cannot (or in some cases simply will not) allow my profit margin to decrease; if I have enough people making minimum wage, that ten cent increase might even have erased most of my profit. So I am now going to raise prices. And this will have an effect on companies that purchase my product, they will raise prices also. It will also have an impact on consumers. They will be able to afford less of my product, and less of the products of the companies who depend on me. So everyone pays for the raised minimum wage with less buying power. Not only that, but now we have more people making minimum wage. The minimum wage then is a balancing act. Trying to keep it high enough to prevent abuse of employees, but raising it infrequently enough so as to prevent it from being a significant source of inflation. Ideally of course we would not have a minimum wage, or at least not a meaningful one. Given sufficient ability to unionize, and sufficient Independence to be able to go to another job, employees can demand a just wage. But even this is less than ideal, ideally employers are also acting on sound moral principles, and will be offering just compensation to begin with. I am, however, more than aware that this is not an ideal world, and so I accept the existence of a minimum wage, I just hesitate to see it raised significantly or frequently (it has currently been 9 years since the last raise).
Update: 20050308-1444 David Limbaugh feels somewhat more stongly on this issue than I do in his blog post, "Minimum Wage Insanity."