I'm split on the minimum wage increase. [View All]

[westy1080]

At work, the boss and I were talking about the increase in the minimum wage. I think it is a great thing for people to get paid more, but on the other hand, in my situation it's very tough.

I work in the printing business. In fact, I've seen a handful of the posters we printed show up in pictures here, which makes me very happy. Thankfully, my boss lets me spend extra time in the shop printing out more anti-war posters. Oh wait. My boss is my wife :)

We hire only college students who take a few night classes a semester because they can't pay for a full set of classes each a semester. We want to do as much as possible to help as many people as possible get a good education, so we hire them and help them out. We pay for their books and provide health benefits. However, we pay them minimum wage. Right now, we have 10 students working with us, but because of the minimum wage increase, we sadly might have to let three or four go so we can pay for the cost to run the business. We barely bring in enough money now to break even. If we have to pay the students more, we're going to have to do something to stay in business. We don't want to raise the rates for printing, because we want everyone to be able to afford signs and banners at our anti-war protests, but we don't want to have to let some students go and we want to still be able to help the students out with college.

So what should we do? I appreciate your help.