[lambda_lover]

Lexington, Kentucky is the 60th-largest city in the United States. That is not the "small town Kentucky" that the grandparent is talking about. (S)he is talking about small businesses (or business franchises, like Dollar General) that are barely scraping by in small towns -- a gas station, a diner, a dollar store -- typically with a only 1-3 employees working at a time. A place like that would take a substantial hit from a doubling of the minimum wage.

Don't get me wrong -- workers are grossly underpaid in most of the US, and wage gains are good. But those wage gains do have to be relative. In NYC/SF, a $15 minimum wage is just enough to scrape by with a couple of 20-30 hour a week jobs. In a poorer part of the US, a $10 min wage is plenty... but anything more might be enough to kill what few businesses currently survive there.

[SEJeff]

Fair enough, but Dollar General is doing just fine: https://qz.com/1120552/the-retail-apocalypse-isnt-just-amazo...

The small mom and pop stores have been closing at record paces due to things like Walmart and Amazon. A higher minimum wage might speed that up, but it just moves things faster in the direction they've been moving for decades already.

The thing that blows my mind is what the federal government (by the definition of the IRS) considers the poverty level is based on the cost of food plus inflation, while entirely negating the cost of living. Minimum wage is made based on the poverty level, but the poverty level is wildly inaccurate due to not taking into account housing.

[lambda_lover]

Couldn't agree more. It's also silly that there's a federal poverty level at all -- I see a poverty level as only useful on a scale as granular as county/parish, even state level is probably too large to give any useful data (for reference, I grew up in Northern New York State and now live in NYC, and any New York State poverty level is meaningless in both of those places because they're so disparate). It's a shame that the GOP, which is supposedly anti-federal power consolidation, no longer embraces that ideal. We would likely be better served here in the US by something more akin to a confederacy.

On the subject of Dollar General: I imagine the corporation as a whole is profitable, but I'm curious about their franchisees. If it's something like the McDonald's setup, then I imagine that their franchisees could be seriously hurting while the name Dollar General remains lucrative. Unfortunately I don't know much about their structure -- maybe they don't have franchises?

[SEJeff]

A federal minimum wage as a "line that you have to meet or beat" seems sensible enough to me for states that want to screw people. That said, it should definitely be per state and even per-city, as you've mentioned. I was just pointing out the severe problem with the current system and how it is really doing a disservice to those underprivileged citizens.