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the argument against raising the minimum wage is that employers will try to get by with fewer workers. Or they will outsource to less expensive workers.
As far as employees are concerned it will effect mostly low end retail and first time job workers, usually teens in fast food establishments, unless hired by McDonald's where they are often hired-in past retirement age. A few companies will not be able to afford to pay the overhead and employees therefore resulting in eventual failed businesses. Usually these are already very poorly managed businesses in the first place. Anyway most people that are working underpaid would do better to get better paying jobs, especially larger families with one parent incomes. So in that respect it's motivation to start looking, if a persons unsure of the consequence. The only excuse I find for running a sweat shop is that if you are the business owner, self-employed, and with no staff except yourself. In other words, by far the majority of Americans wages should increase as the cost of living escalates. If I recall the stats correctly over the past nine years, twenty-one States went ahead and raised the minimum wage in their respected States, instead of waiting on the Federal level to do something.
1) If the raise is small, chances are nothing will happen. There will be no significant benefit to low-wage workers, who STILL won't be able to afford the basics, and it won't affect those with higher wages at all.
2) If the raise is significant, it will result in employers hiring fewer employees and trying to get by on fewer workers. Or else, they will fire their legal employees and replace them with illegal, lower-wage workers. The result will be an increase in unemployment, a decrease in retail sales, a decrease in manufacture and wholesale trade, layoffs of more employees, a general recession, increased poverty, and lower average incomes overall.
Simply put, unless wages are driven by market forces, an increase in wages through artificial means always causes economic problems. And in a time when low-inome, sub-prime borrowers are having trouble making their house payments, the last thing we need is to compund the problem by causing those same low-income people to lose their jobs because employers can't afford to pay their salaries.
Last stats I read was from the mid-nineties to late nineties where the avg Jewish family (U.S.) was in the lower to mid 5 figure range. Maybe Elliot can find something more updated. I'll warn you to be cautious with any Jewish stats. We have a rather large Jewish community of holocaust survivors living in the Los Angeles area, about 10,000 people, many hovering around the poverty standard. The number average goes up significantly only because of the top end wealthier within the minority.
I don't think this site has any information about the salaries of American Jews in particular, but it does have a lot of good information about salary by industry, occupation, and location, if you're interested in any of that. It's not directly related to the question, but it might help
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