So what this says is that neither their wages nor their prices are high enough. No surprise. This is where I have a huge problem with the anti-government assistance people. Everyone is on government assistance, whether they like to admit it or not. Money is fungible. That seems to be lost on most of the austere set. I'm of the mindset that we don't need a higher minimum wage, per se. What we need are astronomically higher marginal tax rates, mainly at the highest income scales (not people making $250,000; people making $1,000,000+). Companies should be disincentivized from paying their top employees that much. There is no reason to pay an exec $10M, if $9M is going straight to the government. So what does the company do with all the rest of the money? Reinvest. Pay as dividend. Raise wages. Lots of really good things for the economy. So many of our current economic problems stem from cash hoarding. It's not that difficult of a problem to solve.