By Dan Voorhis
The Wichita Eagle, September 5, 2015
... The move for a minimum wage increase from the current $7.25 an hour is gaining momentum nationally. ... Some of the movement is also coming from big business. Six years into the economic recovery, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and others – facing high employee turnover and complaints of poor customer service – announced pay increases to hire and retain better employees. Wal-Mart raised its lowest wage to $9 an hour this year and will move that to $10 an hour in February.
Battle of philosophies
There is still plenty of debate over the issue, particularly in lower-cost, lower-wage areas such as the Midwest and South.
Conservatives argue that raising the minimum wage would hurt thousands of businesses and shrink the number of jobs, while liberals say that the current minimum wage doesn’t provide a living wage and raising it would boost the economy by creating more spending. ...
But don’t tell Mike Draper that raising the minimum wage hurts businesses. Draper owns Raygun, clothing shops in Des Moines and Kansas City, Mo. He starts his part-timers at $9.50 and his full-timers at $15 or $16, but raising all of his workers to $15 per hour wouldn’t be difficult, he said. His part-timers earn about 7 percent of his budget. Increase that by 30 percent and it comes to an overall cost increase of about 2 percent. It’s not that big a deal, he said, and there would be more people who can afford to buy his merchandise.
“They will shave expenses elsewhere ’cause that’s what you do in business,” he said. “We are able to do what we do because we keep other expenses low. We keep the cost of displays low, we keep my salary low, we keep travel costs low.
“There are so many ways to cut expenses on your balance sheet. Don’t believe anyone who says they can’t.” ...
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