Originally Posted by Sly

When discussing minimum wage everyone seems to forget that there are many people earning an amount between the current minimum wage and the requested minimum wage. Guess what happens with all of those people? They get a raise, too, and it's going to be even bigger than the minimum wage hike because they are worth the extra few dollars.

Then of course none of this counts increased payroll taxes into the equation. The new healthcare law taxes. Increased city and state taxes that go along with increased payroll. So on and so forth.

Right now it may not make financial sense for a given company to automate various tasks within the workplace. We'll say flipping burgers since that is the hot topic. Guess what starts to make financial sense when the overall cost of said employee triples due to the minimum wage jack, the other employee wage jack, the payroll tax increase, the health care tax, so on and so forth? Yeah, full on burger flipping automation starts looking really, really nice.

In the long run this will benefit the smart businesses because it will force them to run tighter operations that are fully automated, cutting expenses and putting out better products. It will absolutely kill the lower skilled workers because they will no longer have jobs available to them. This is already happening. Think about this the next time you stand in line at work demanding your McDonald's bosses pay you $15 an hour. Soon you won't have a burger to flip.