I did read it.
And my point is not 'debunked' anywhere in your article.
Here's an idea....YOU tell me why the prices of lower/middle consumer goods go up when the minimum wage goes up.
I'll wait.
Julie's link DID address your objection, which is a common one, but not well-founded in economic reasoning. Here is the relevant portion of the article:
With direct replacement via outsourcing or automation unlikely, employers responding to a higher minimum wage would be faced with the choice of either increasing the wages of their lowest paid workers by perhaps a couple of dollars per hour, or eliminating their jobs. There would likely be some job loss,[vii] but given the simultaneous rise in labor costs among all competitors and the localized market for these services, the logical business response would be to raise prices by a few percent to help cover increased costs while also trimming current profit margins. Perhaps consumers would pay 3 percent more for Wal-Mart goods or an extra dime for a McDonald’s hamburger, but most of the jobs would still exist and the price changes would be small compared to typical fluctuations due to commodity and energy prices, international exchange rates, or Chinese production costs.
The resulting one-time inflationary spike would slightly raise living expenses for everyone in our society, but the immediate 20% or 30% boost in the take-home pay of many millions of America’s lowest income workers would make it easy for them to absorb these small costs, while the impact upon the middle or upper classes would be totally negligible. An increase in the hourly minimum wage from the current federal level of $7.25 to (say) $12.00 might also have secondary, smaller ripple effects, boosting wages currently above that level as well.
A minimum wage in this range is hardly absurd or extreme. In 2012 dollars, the American minimum wage was over $10 in 1968 during our peak of postwar prosperity and full employment.[viii] The average minimum wage in Canadian provinces is currently well over $10 per hour, the national figure for France is more than $12, and Australia has the remarkable combination of a minimum wage of nearly $16.50 together with 5 percent unemployment.[ix]
Graphic by New America Foundation
LeRoy: From the graph, you will note that the REAL value of America's minimum wage peaked in 1966, at more than $10 per hour in TODAY'S dollars, at a time when inflation was very low. Inflation in America peaked in the late 1970s, when the real value of the minimum wage was falling rapidly. This contradicts your simplistic assertion that high minimum wages and high inflation should be positively correlated. An assertion which, by the way, you provided no evidentiary support for, but simply stated, and seemed to expect that we should accept it as gospel.
