By Eric Morath, Damian Paletta and Carol E. Lee
Wall Street Journal, Feb 20, 2014
... Some business owners say they favor a wage increase. David Bolotsky, chief executive at Uncommon Goods, a Brooklyn, N.Y., online retailer, said boosting the minimum wage would give consumers more money to spend. He backs a proposal advanced by Democrats in Congress that ties future increases to inflation. "That gives me certainty, and that's most important when running a business," he said.
The U.S. government has had a minimum wage since 1938, and it has been raised close to 30 times, but when adjusted for inflation, it peaked in 1968. It was last raised in 2009 as part of a three-phase increase. Close to 20 states require that employers pay a higher minimum wage than the federal level. The majority of people who earn the minimum wage work in jobs like food preparation and other service-related fields. ...