Let's pay 16 year olds $31.2k to sweep floors!!!!

[Victor_c3]

168. That's the argument I get into with my father (a restraint owner)

It's a small restaraunt. He is the only cook and my mother is one if 3 waitresses. In the summer they have 2-3 teenage kids on from 4:00-10:00 and in the winter it's one from 4:00-8:00 or so. I grew up in that restaraunt and worked in it for years while growing up.

My parents only hire teenage high school kids to wash dishes and bus tables and the newest waitress working there has been there at least 10 years. The waitresses and busboys all get the full state minimum wage (not the food service wage) plus tips for the waitresses. He argues that the kids he hires just aren't worth $15 an hour - and I have to agree with him on that.

I don't think small business paying minimum wage is the problem. I think it goes more with larger corporations and their hordes of minimum wage workers.

A Walmart or anothe corporate store moves into town (dated example) and kills off all of those mom and pop shops that lined our mainstreets. Those shops were mostly owned and operated by the same people and they may have hired a couple of minimum wage people, but the store also provided a respectable middle class income for those owner operators. Instead Walmart comes in, drives the mom and pop shops out and replaces all of those solid income jobs with a horde of minimum wage jobs and maybe creates a small handful of middle class jobs in their place. 10 stores in a small mainstreet provided 10 families with middle class incomes and a handful of minimum wage jobs. Those stores are wiped out as are those middle class families.

Also, stock investors demand a high rate of growth on their investments so these companies have to keep expanding as fast as they can to keep their stock price from stagnating. However, a mom and pop store usually won't expand much in its lifetime. As long as it provides a solid income for the owner/operators they're content with the size of the business as is.

I believe there should be a graduated income based on the size of the business. Small mom and pops should pay a slightly lower minimum wage than a mid-sized business versus a huge corporation.