May I challenge the idea that 14-19 year olds don't need $17 per hour. It's not about what they need, it's all about making our economy better. Burger flippers create a product category that is the foundation of Billion Dollar Corporations. Smart people should want the employee who is creating the product to keep some optimum percentage of its value, to spend in the economy. Wages are tiny compared to what they could be, and that is holding back our economy. Our kids and grandkids would have the ability to purchase homes of better quality than our parents and grandparents- if wages were pushed up to the optimum level. The criterion should be:
increase minimum wage laws as long as profits increase or stay the same. Plus, the only way to make the big dogs (top 1%) pay for the wage increases is to make the minimum wage increases large and sudden, not small and phased in, as they were in the past. Small, phased in minimum wage increases only hurt the lone wolves (retail and small businesses).