if you cannot live on minimum wage, go to school!
Minimum wage is a class of employment for those with few skills or just beginning their career. It is called entry level for a reason. If the minimum wage is hiked, then all goods and services become more expensive due to the cost of doing business.
I do not believe that I should pay $20 for a hamburger because the waiting staff are earning in the high teens per hour.

I went to school as an adult learner so don't cry about how difficult it is. I paid my own way all the way. Yes, it was a struggle with raising a young family and keeping a reasonable life style. It can be done and in Canada it is needed to be done.

If anything, they should lower or eliminate the standard for minimum wage to discourage people from spending their entire working career there. It is pretty sad to see people still working the McDonald's counter ten or twenty years after high school finished.

On top of that, the government should be sponsoring every single born Canadian through to a degree. Only second generation and above, only if they keep reasonable grades, and only one shot at it.

"On top of that, the government should be sponsoring every single born Canadian through to a degree. Only second generation and above, only if they keep reasonable grades, and only one shot at it"

Damn fine idea Loki.

"On top of that, the government should be sponsoring every single born Canadian through to a degree."

I disagree. All that would achieve is credential inflation. We have too much of that now. There are already too many jobs "requiring" a degree that really don't need one.

I'm all for education, but not so hot on pieces of paper.

I'm in favour of a better education, not a longer one. Completely overhauling the current 1900s education factory model would be a good start.

I highly recommend following some of John Media's Brain Rules (especially #12 in this case):

http://www.brainrules.net/dvd-view/normal/index.html

Furthermore, a number of different models of education are discussed in various TED talks:

http://www.ted.com

That Ontario decision will have an effect on BC. Ontario's economy is going in the dumpster and raising the wage means lots of entry level kids have no job. BC should benefit from having young people moving to BC for a job, any job at any wage. They would not likly move back to Ontario after starting there career in BC.

minimum wage is just fine the way it is. If the employer wants to keep his employees, he has to pay more. If the worker wants to get ahead in life, he has to get more tools in there tool boxes.

Nope not everyone will get secondary education, nor should they. We still need the grunt workers. Not everyone is going to be a Engineer or doctor. We still need the labourers that are willing lean into that shovel, and do the menial chores.

Should the employers take advantage of the working class. Absolutely not, if he wants good employees, pay them what there worth.

Why doesn't the whole organized labour movement push for lower prices for ALL of us, instead of always higher incomes for SOME of us?

Surely they should know by now that all 'costs' simply flow through into 'prices', and that if the minimum wage is raised, the rise in prices to follow will make it more difficult for more people to make ends meet rather than less.

In these days of massive government funded stimulus packages being proposed to help bail out big Banks and car companies ~ stimulus that will load us all up with more debt than we'll ever be able to service, let alone ever repay, a move by the government to 'compensate' retail prices would be a far better way to go.

No new 'costs' flow through into 'prices' if we were to simply use new credit to help cancel past, currently unrepayable, debt charges. This could be done by allowing consumers to be rebated a portion of what they normally pay for goods and services after each purchase.

As economic stimulus, it would be far more effective than putting us back into an 'inflationary' spiral that will leave ANY minimum wage earner, as well as all the rest of us, far worse off than before, no matter how high our minimum or other wages are raised.

For the record, Loki et al, not everyone is suited to post secondary education. Secondly, setting up a class society as far as education (2nd generation and above) is just plain evil. We already have 2 classes but to say that you have to have been born here to get education paid for does not exactly follow our long tradition of pursuing equality for all Canadians. Nonsense!
Giving everyone a higher level of education will not create new jobs for them to fill. It will just mean there are more jobs available on the lower end or that higher end jobs will have a lot more competition. Or worse yet, you will get employers asking for sky high qualifications for minimum wage work. For example,back in the stone age, when i got my BSc, a local (in victoria) greenhouse was advertising for employees. They required a BSc to be a greenhouse worker. They were paying 4 dollars an hour, minimum wage at the time.

re: global post secondary access, see the Swedish model. They do this now and have for a long time yet are not without laborers. The difference is each citizen can make an actual choice to be a plumber or a doctor whereas in north America the choice comes down to economics.

re: reducing prices instead of raising incomes. Preaching to the choir on that one. All commodities should have a set stable price regardless of season and all employment wages should only be adjusted based on time at that employer and performance. Then we would not need unions to dictate excessive wages and benefits that are pricing our commodities out of the world market and handing ALL manufacturing to china.

It's great to have a good income, but not at the expense of our entire economy because no one else in the world is willing to pay for our unions.
Don' get me wrong about unions. They were once very needed because employers did abuse their workers. They are still needed to ensure safety and reasonable compensation. The trouble is they have priced themselves out of the global economy. Look at the CAW and Chrysler now. Chrysler is going down the tubes and the union is fighting wage a legacy benefit reductions. They will win this battle, but Chrysler will fold in Canada and cost ALL their assembly plant union jobs. Enjoy your wages.

I don't think Loki is suggesting that everyone has to attend post secondary, he is merely suggesting that if they choose to, it should be funded. I don't have a problem with that, nor do I have a problem with people choosing not to attend. It is a personal choice.

We've publically funded K-12 forever and one can only assume that we did that because we saw a benefit to having a well educated society. I don't think there is much debate about the fact that countries with high average education levels are generally world leaders in pretty much everything. If we want to continue to be in that group, we have to up the ante or someone else will.

To be perfectly honest, I can't imagine any negative consequence that would come from increasing the education level of the average Canadian.

Someone will have to sell a lot of donuts or lay off staff if they're gonna pay $10.25 per hour.