There is a lot of talk about raising the minimum wage. The primary goal for doing so is to boost the economy and bridge the income gap.Minimum wage is currently $8 an hour in California and is supposed to be raised to $10 within the next few years. However, some companies are already taking action. Gap Inc. recently told their U.S. employees they can expect $9 an hour as a minimum hourly wage.

President Obama applauded Gap for their actions. “In my State of the Union address, I asked more businesses to do what they can to raise their employees’ wages. Today I applaud Gap Inc. for announcing that they intend to raise wages for their employees.”

The nation’s largest private sector employer Wal-Mart is also considering raising the minimum wage for their employees. Politician Jack Lew is also definitely going forward for this cause. “We are going to keep working on it,” he said. “It’s obviously not in our power to force Congress to act, but we can make the case for it.”

Wal-Mart’s company spokesman David Tovar said, “That’s something we are looking at. Whenever there’s debates, it’s not like we look once and make a decision. We look a few times from other angles.”

So what does all this mean? When you raise wages assuming from $8 to $10 an hour, this will cause the company’s profit to drop a bit.

To balance that, prices would have to go up on merchandise and consumer items, thus causing inflation. This can cause the cost of living to go up, theoretically.

You have young adults, who are and will be the ones in line for these minimum wage jobs, that are excited to now be making a lot more.

Raising the minimum wage isn’t a bad idea, but right now our economy is not at a level to do so. We have a high unemployment rate and many Democrats believe this is the jumpstart that we need to get our unemployment numbers down.

Not surprisingly, this will make competition for jobs increase. Assuming you are a company and you now have to pay your employees one or two dollars more, you might reconsider the amount of employees you really need to have.

America is typically known as the land of opportunity.

I am all for opportunities, but setting a higher minimum wage is not the answer to solve the problems of unemployment and income equality.

I believe if we do this we will bring down the number of college graduates. Students out of high school will be gullible enough to think they are making good money, when in reality it isn’t enough to balance the cost of living expenses.

Like Tovar said, all angles must be viewed.

It seems like a good thing, but it can also cause young people to get stuck thinking they are making a lot of money. In the long run you can’t raise a family if you only make $8 or $10 an hour. The truth of the matter is to lower poverty rates we need to promote college degrees.

However, politicians like Jack Lew are so eager to try and fix the economy’s problem that they forget to look at the long term effects of these proposals.