Wouldn't a minimum wage hike reduce the deficit significantly? Less people would qualify for food stamps and medicaid and they'd receive smaller tax refunds.
That assumes that a wage hike would not impact jobs, which it certainly would, tho the extent and timing of that impact is of considerable debate. Despite what opebo and possibly memphis think, it certainly is possible to raise the minimum wage too high, of which the most recent prominent example is what happened to the tuna canning industry in American Samoa when the Democrats insisted on implementing the Federal minimum wage there over the objections of the people there. Tho to be fair, the increase in the minimum wage that was inflicted on American Samoa would be more like raising the current US minimum wage to $20/hr than to $10/hr.
Come on ernest, that's not a very good example - America itself has no export dependent or import-substitution industries, only service jobs.
