Minimum wage should stay minimum

Since 2009 when Barack Obama increased the federal minimum wage to $7.25/hour, there has been a rush across the board to raise minimum wages. States, such as California, have signed laws that will increase the minimum wage statewide to $15/hour.
Meanwhile, the minimum wage in Nebraska was raised to $8/hour in 2015 and again to $9/hour in 2016. In fact, Nebraska has a minimum wage that is higher than any of its neighboring states.
While this seems like a positive, which it is for the people receiving the higher wage, it is hard on small businesses, and subsequently, the economy.
In order to cover the higher cost of paying employees, small town grocers have had to raise prices. This has driven people to shop in bigger cities where corporate employers can afford to keep their prices the same.
There has been a push to raise the minimum wage again to $10/hour in Nebraska, but this would only cause further damages to the local businesses that serve rural areas and smaller communities.
Angela Barry, the owner of Lincoln’s A Street Market, has been in business for more than 25 years. In an interview with the Lincoln Journal Star, she said that she would like to reward long-time employees with a higher wage, but instead that money is going to part-time high school and college students, and people who rely on their paychecks as their only source of income.
Not only that, but stores are opting to hire less high school students to work in small businesses because of the increases in minimum wage.
Raising minimum wage has historically affected the prices of everyday products, and when minimum wage goes up, so does the cost of items such as groceries and household goods. From the time that minimum wage was set into place, the cost of goods has gone up as minimum wage has, giving no merit to raising it.
There has been talk about trying to raise the minimum wage to $10/hour in 2017 in Nebraska. However, this legislation has not yet passed. Raising the minimum wage would be much more effective if it were done on an index over an extended period of time rather than raising it from $7.25/hour to $10/hour in a matter of three years.
Raising the wage so quickly does not give businesses enough time to adjust to the new burden, and takes away their freedom to reward good employees with a raise.
That being said, although a higher minimum wage would likely benefit each of us as college students, we need to use foresight to see how this will negatively affect the economy in Nebraska for years to come.