I think its disappointing that nobody wants to take responsibility for themselves and control their own fate. When I was a kid, I worked at Burger King as a teenager. I decided in high school that I didn't want to work min wage my entire life serving slop for the next 60 years. So I decided to buy some computer programming books, and I spent my lunch break in the library reading and studying them rather than eating lunch with my friends. I taught myself how to program and got a job doing it immediately out of high school.
Something that most kids in my generation haven't achieved. Not because they were unable to do so, but because they won't take responsibility for their lives.
As far as min wage is concerned. I don't care. I haven't received min wage since I was 16 years old working at Burger King. Every job since has been at least double min wage was. It's not difficult. I'm not special. I don't have some secret sauce in me that allows me to succeed while others fails. People fail because they choose to fail. That's what disappointing to me.
I used to think that too. I haven't made minimum wage since I was 16 either.
Today however I've watched as friends who were making 60-80 thousand a year were lowered to 12 bucks an hour. Companies have no problem lowering wages to almost the bare minimum since there simply aren't enough high paying jobs out there for people to switch to. My friends had to suck it up since nobody else would hire them. Luckily in time they got raises but they're still making a fraction of their old salary. As a business owner I understand that lowering overhead in tough economic times means slashing wages but companies today are still making healthy profits. We have gotten so ridiculous that if a company posts a $4b profit we get disappointed and hammer their stock.
Let's look at the number of Americans making minimum wage. I simply have no faith in companies to not pay their employees the least amount possible. They'll say that $2/hr is what is needed to stay competitive with China.
You can't expect everyone out there to be a high skilled worker like you and me but I can vote for higher minimum wages with no problem since CEOs today have no problem making 300-500 times the average worker salary.