Raising the Minimum Wage: New Evidence

In the article Raising the Minimum Wage: New Evidence by Laura D'Andrea Tyson on December 13th, 2013.  As of right now the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour which is 23% lower than it was in 1968, if it had kept up with inflation and with the growth of labor activity, minimum wage for be up to $25 an hour.  Congressional Democrats have put in an input of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and index it to inflation.  The people against increasing minimum wage seem to think that an increase will lead to higher unemployment among low skilled low wage workers.  From 1996 to 2000 the United States had an unexpected boom in employment and prosperity.  According to estimates, an increase of 10% in minimum wage would have a statically negligible effect on the unemployment in industries and occupations employing minimum wage workers.  An increase in minimum wage would increase the cost of the business that employ a large number of minimum wage workers.  This would be an offset portion of these costs and the businesses would have to possible increase the prices for their consumers.  But they say that it should not effect the business costs significantly, they would increase less than 3%.  According to an estimate McDonald's could cover about half of its higher labor costs by raising the price of a Big Mac by about 1.25 percent, or only 5 cents.  A transitory increase in the inflation rate from a minimum wage hike would lower the real interest rate, increasing demand and growth.  30 million workers would benefit from the increase, 88% of those workers would be at least 20 with an average age of 35; 55% of them would be working full time; 56% of them would be female, and more than 28% of them would be parents.  For a full time minimum wage worker, the whole year they would make about $15,080, 19% below the poverty line for a family of three.  More than half of the families working at fast food places are assisted by at least one public assistance program, $7 billion a year.  Raising the minimum wage would by great to start fixing the poverty line, with a 10% increase cutting the poverty line by 2%.  Studies show that increasing the minimum wage into the $10 range would lift spending, GDP, and job creation.  A recent poll shows that large majorities of Democrat, independent, and Republican voters support an increase in the minimum wage.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/raising-the-minimum-wage-old-shibboleths-new-evidence/?_r=0

The Wedding Markup

"The Wedding Markup" written by Catherine Rampell on December 4th, 2013.  Many people of the wedding industry get the feeling that they are being ripped off.  When people call to hire people to work for their wedding. and they here it is a wedding and not something like a birthday party, they jack up their prices tremendously.   They explain it as being driven by higher costs.  Brides are very high maintenance when it comes to their wedding and they seem to be less flexible when it comes to the prices of their wedding.  They say "You can't substitute beans with broccoli if the price of beans go up."  If the bride wants beans then you have to have beans."  When it comes to dresses, they have noticed that the dresses are tremendously less expensive in other colors than in white.  Along with other dresses that look exactly a like but are a lot more than the other.  They say that they can get away with these kinds of things spouses-to-be probably have stronger preferences for their “special day” than consumers shopping for other kinds of events do. That means they’re less price-sensitive.  Charging a higher prices for a certain category of events than others is called third-degree price discrimination.  
  http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/the-wedding-markup/?ref=economics&_r=0