Why is it so hard to raise the minimum wage?

read with interest the excellent article from the Columbia Tribune about the minimum wage in Missouri and nationally. It gives an historical perspective and compares what the minimum wage would be today if it had kept up with the peak rate which was in 1968. Hard to believe, but $1.60/hour in 1968 was pretty good income. When I worked at Woolworth's as a teenager in the 1950's, I was paid 75 cents an hour. The same argument that employers use now was used then. "If the minimum wage goes up, we'll have to lay off people or close up shop." Well, Woolworth's finally did go the way of the dinosaur, but it wasn't because they paid their employees too much. I was disturbed to read in this article that the head of some economic policy dept at Mizzou is also the chief economist for the Show-Me-Institute which is the core of Rex Sinquefeld's privatization scheme. SMI's goal is to dismantle everything "public" and shift control of our lives from elected representatives to King Rex and his business buddies. They've made pretty good inroads into buying our "elected representatives" and it seems they are also infecting our public universities. The last sentence of the article sums up the entire ideological discussion in America today. What kind of standard of living "should" people have? "Should" is the key word here, so I looked up the definition. It is the past tense of "shall." It implies duty or obligation. I remember a discussion I had with a co-worker back in the 1970's who was claiming that her father, a factory worker, deserved enough income to afford a decent standard of living. I wasn't sure about that. After all, if her father wanted to make more money, why didn't he go to college and get into some kind of work that paid better? Her point was that her family had the the same needs as that of any other family, regardless of income or status. I was looking at the discussion top down and she was looking at it bottom up. To me, that has come to signify the essence of the difference between what we call conservatives and liberals now. No matter how powerful the top down argument is, the "need" point of view is the way we "should" be looking at the minimum wage debate. There is a strong economic argument to be made for paying workers a little more. As Lara Granich of Jobs with Justice says in the article, people earning at that level are not putting their money into Swiss bank accounts. They spend it locally which helps even more people pay their bills. But the "should" argument need not be cast aside just because the temper of the times is all caught up in "what's in it for me?" There is a moral imperative at work here. Human beings deserve the basics to survive just by the very fact that they are human. We hear a lot about "freedom" these days, and I'm reminded of the wry, satirical comment by Anatole France that "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." What good is freedom if you are starving? I asked a Tea Party cheerleader from my neck of the woods what a person is supposed to do who doesn't make enough to feed a family, much less pay rent and utilities. He said we should turn to our families and churches. How quaint a notion. And how totally out of touch with reality. If someone's family is also starving, they are not much help, now are they? And the churches and food pantries are overrun with applicants, many of whom are just now using up what little savings they had and have maxed out their credit cards. I hope everyone who can understand how humiliating it is for people who are working full time to ask for help will join in support of Give Missourians a Raise this fall. Susan C Here's the article again in case you missed it. http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2012/jun/23/finding-fair-price/