There are a lot of things that we DO know about. Prescription drugs for the most part are not filtered out in sewage treatment plants.
Some like birth control pills are actually in high enough doses that they are starting to affect the wildlife. I agree that the sewage
treatment plants need to be upgraded and a closed loop via distilation or reverse osmosis would be expensive but might be the best
way to make sure 100% of the bad stuff doesn't make it out.

Possibly, but that's not the real reason. The real reason is that I spend several hours every day
using my browser. If I occasionally used my browser then ads would be no big deal but for something
that I use for thousands of hours per year then $40 is a cheap price to pay. I have no problem paying
for stuff that I spend a majority of my time using like my office chair, my bed, and yes, my browser.

The world has changed a lot since then. I would gladly pay $40 for a good browser before I will put up with ads. I use
my browser too much to put up with ads. Luckily, I don't have to as there are still several good free ones.

Ok, so even if they are stone tools, I thought it was impossible to calculate the age of stone artifacts.
Sure, you know how old the rock is but not when the rock was made into a tool.

Japan has the right idea. They have invested a ton in high skill jobs and let china
pick up alot of the low margin skills. The good news is that manufacturing jobs
are slowly coming back to the USA. The bad news is that it is mostly robotic
manufacturing that has a highly skilled skeleton crew keeping all the computers
and machines running.

Not really. A large percentage of small business owners go back to being employees
every year. The success rate of small business is rather low. A lot of people start
a business, find out it's harder than they think, lose a lot of money and go back to
being an employee of someone else.

I never said that I hated my employees but rather that I hated having employees.
It doesn't matter how good the employees are at the end of the day they are still
something else you have to deal with.

Not every business or business model works that way. Mcdonalds would go out of business
tomorrow if they hired people "smarter than them". As this article is about minimum wage
then most of the people we are talking about are NOT smarter than the business owner or
they wouldn't be on minimum wage. Most businesses require some form of "cheap" labor
and most if not all of that cheap labor is less smart than the business owner or it wouldn't
be cheap anymore.

Great. So all the small businesses go out of business and everyone works for a handful of big megacorporations. I know this is where we are heading but I'm not sure it's the best place to go
as then the individual loses all that remains of any negotiating power.

That's assuming you CAN reduce your net revenue. Most small business owners I know pay their
employees almost as much as they themself make and many actually make less than what they
could make working for someone else. They own a small business because they enjoy it but they
will close their doors if their payroll increases by 20k because the money just isn't there.

Yes, raising wages increases productivity but not for the reason that you think. When you hire a $15/hour housekeeper
you get someone better, more reliable, more stable, etc... but it's because you're not hiring the same person. If you
hire a housekeeper who is willing to work for $8/hour and then pay them $15/hour you won't see the same boost in
quality.

Or you buy that nail gun and hire 1/10 the number of people or you just do it yourself or you buy a robot and let the robot do the work.
Go to South America and you still have ditch diggers and very little heavy machinery because labor is still relatively cheap.
In the USA you still have ditch diggers but you have 1 guy with a heavy machine doing what it used to take 100 guys to do.
I'm actually surprised we haven't seen an employeeless fast food restaurant yet or at least one that only has a single cook.

Spoken like who has NEVER actually had an employee. Every small business owner I know hates having employees.
Employees add stress. The only reason a business hires people is because they either can't do it all on their own or
because employees make them more money than they cost. That spread doesn't have to be much. If you have 20
employees and each employee makes you $1/hour more than you pay them then assuming you are working yourself
you are doing pretty good. Now, if minimum wage jumps by $5 per hour then that $1 per hour profit is gone and you
either charge more or you fire that employee and figure out how to do it without. I've met many a small business
owners who have talked about getting rid of their employees and turning away work just because the amount of extra
money an employee brings in is barely worth the headache of having ermployees. A massive wage hike would
make that a lot easier. One such company that did just that was Churchill Trucklines from a town near me. The
workers went on strike and demanded more money and the owner said screw it I don't need this headache and
layed off all 2000 employees.

Disney has plenty of money but to give you a view from the other side:
We're a small business (less than 20 employees) and we've had this
discussion more than once. I have no desire to outsource but our IT
budget can barely afford to hire American programmers. Sure, we would
love to pay everyone six figures but the money just isn't there. To make
matters worse, our competitors have already outsourced their IT. We pay
our office staff above market wages at 30-40k per year but we just can't
afford to pay our IT the 80k plus required when everyone else is at 40k.
It's got to the point where it's hurting our growth as we just can't find
programmers willing to work for what we're able to pay (60k) and we are
considering what it would take to outsource our IT.

Most of those 92 million are not qualified. If you know of a GOOD programmer out of work
and is willing to work for double or even triple minimum wage then please contact me as I
will hire him on the spot. Many programmers with a 4 year degree are paid on par with
doctors who spend 8+ years in school.
I'm not saying that h1b1s aren't being abused to save money but good employees in IT can
still find jobs that are paying considerably above what most other professionals make as
well as at least 4-5 times what you make on minimum wage. A good programmer can
easily make double what many non-IT people with masters degrees make.