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This is an issue I see all the time; people complaining that you can't live off of minimum wage and we should raise it to where people can realistically live off of. As I write this, the minimum wage in my home state is being raised to $9.00 an hour and the cost of living estimate is around $13 an hour or so. Now many people say this is a problem we should focus on and get minimum wage higher so people can actually live, well the problem though is it's not that simple. Now keep in mind, I went to school with a lot of business classes and I was forced to learn how economics and business work. The big issue is actually not minimum wage not being high enough, it's that companies are very lightly regulated. Raising minimum wage just makes companies see that people have more money and thus charge more, which then brings the value of a dollar down. Raising minimum wage actually just gives people the illusion they are making more money to keep them quiet. And in turn, the more it happens, the lower the value of a dollar becomes, and thus actually brings America closer and closer to becoming a third world country. Within time, the US dollar will be one of the most worthless pieces of currency on the planet, considering it has already lost so much value as it is, this really shouldn't be an issue to anyone. What needs to happen is something we all don't want to think about: the end of the free market as we know it. Now that is not to say we need to establish socialism or even completely abolish the free market, but we do need to put more regulations on it. We need to make it so that businesses can not just all agree to charge X amount to force the value of products up so consumers have no choice but to pay that much. We need to end illegal business arrangements like this, because they are actually legal forms of trusts, loopholes in the system if you will. Most of us probably see this kind of thing with our internet service provider. I am sure many of you have had this happen: You call up to get an ISP. You search the area, but you can only find one that services your area, despite seeing another is relatively close by. You ask yourself, why won't Verizon service my side of the street, but they will service the other? Why must I get Comcast instead? The answer is simple: the two business have an agreement to not step on each other's toes, and thus they can both get away with charging whatever they live because there really is no actual competition. The issue is further hurt by people who work minimum wage jobs demanding more pay. While in its base idea it makes sense, the problem is their demands become too high. They make people lose interest in even taking the issue seriously because they are making outrageous demands (such as fast food workers demanding $18 an hour back in my home state). The truth is we need to give these people enough to live on, yes but we can't be charging more than skilled labor. People who go to college need to get paid enough to actually make going to college worth the investment. We have a lot of people who will not try to get into skilled labor positions because the cost of getting into them is far too high with low chance of payout. The issue stems from the fact that many of us are blind to what the real problem is, which is not that minimum wage is too low, but that companies are charging more and more for products that do not cost them that much to produce.

That's what I am suggesting, laws regulating businesses raising prices right after wage raises. Laws making it so businesses can only legally make a maximum percentage of profit off of a sale. For example, when they sell you say a soda, if they are making a 500% profit on it, then that is unfair to the consumer. We should cap profits that can legally be made off of certain products. Technology is where it gets exceptionally bad though. Apple can make an iPhone for $200 and then turn around and charge $650+. As far as families though, that is why we should switch to COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) where people are paid based upon their needs. However if we ARE to implement that though, we need to be able to revoke COLA if we find out people are NOT spending their money on their families. If I am a business owner and I need to pay you $16 an hour because you have 2 kids, and I find out you are not paying child support, then I am not going to want to give you the extra money just to throw it in your pocket. The other issue is we need a max cap. People on their taxes these days are claiming WAAAAAY more dependents than they should be to get more money. I'm sorry, but if you have 10 dependents someone needs to step in and say you're on your own because you keep taking people in or having children. As much as we need to regulate businesses, we need to regulate average Joe too. Let's be honest: average Joe is far from innocent in gaming in the system. On top of this, more extreme regulations on government services need to happen. In my home state they FINALLY passed a law that you need to pass a drug test to apply for welfare and if you fail it, then you go to jail for trying to fraud the government. I think that isn't extreme enough though. We need to determine first if a person needs to be permanently supported by the government (such as permanent disability) or they just need assistance. Then if they have been deemed temporary we need to take some measures to ensure it's temporary: 1. They must be required to apply for jobs that they are ACTUALLY qualified for. This is a big one, many people end up staying on unemployment and welfare by purposely applying to jobs they know they will not get. Right now so long as you turn in one application within a certain time frame, you can keep collecting. We need to get to a point where it's like "Okay, after you've spent X amount of time looking for a job with no luck, we have a person that will find jobs and send them to you for you to fill out applications." A person who researches the person's background, skills, etc. to ensure they are applying for jobs only that they have a chance of getting. 2. Random drug tests. It's not enough to give them a drug test before applying. Many people know that if you stop doing drugs around a week or two before a urine test, you will pass it. Not to mention many of them can fool urine tests. It's not really that hard to sneak in a bag of urine. I remember being drug tested for jobs, and they don't exactly pat you down, they just tell you to empty your pockets. It's not exactly hard to say hide it in your underwear, or even for some people (who I still will not understand) stick it up their anus. A random drug test makes it harder and harder to fool. Not everyone is going to have fresh urine ready to utilize for fooling a test. They show up at your house and they follow you in, and you don't have time to go to the bedroom to find your stash. I know it sounds extreme, but we have a LOT of drug addicts who have no interest in finding a job living off of our tax money. 3. Stricter punishments for frauding the system. Jail time. Serious jail time. 4. Never ever ever let them use cash or obtain cash. All the money for any government service should be on a card, and furthermore that card should require a valid ID with it, and all stores by law should not be allowed to accept it without said ID. I can't tell you how many times people use food stamp cards at a store I worked at who not only didn't have an ID or match the person on the card, but that I KNEW were frauding the system, but we weren't allowed to say anything about it. I am proposing something even MORE extreme though: a database for said cards where any expense on them can be looked up, and more extreme still, by the public. I know some may think that is insane, but my logic is that these people are using the tax payers money. The tax payers should not only see where their money is going, but you will save a LOT of money in hiring people to check for fraud if you let the people who are actually paying check for you. Some may see it as an invasion of privacy, but really you're not spending your own money. You're spending someone else's money. You have no privacy with that money. Not having said privacy will discourage people from wanting to live off of benefits. We need to make it harder to fraud the system, much much harder. People are getting more and more clever on how to cheat the system, and we need to be ready to take the extremes necessary to combat that. While I can not comment on the lazy factor, I can say that companies that are being "hurt" by the internet and new technology are trying to find ways to nickel and dime the consumer instead of adapting. That's the big issue, so many companies are refusing to adapt to the new world and because of it, they are trying to bleed everyone dry.