Ah, but of course — despite the overwhelming evidence that minimum wage laws are a disservice both to those they’re specifically targeted to help as well as the larger economy in general, how could those wretched humanity-hating Republicans possibly oppose anything so simple and innocuous as President Obama’s proposed minimum wage hike?

Well, Boehner, Ryan, and Rubio, they have publicly rejected President Obama’s proposal, and they’re now spouting out the same old lies that we heard six years ago: That it’s gonna’ cost jobs and it’s gonna’ hurt small business. It’s just another example of Republicans denying the facts. So let’s get this whole straight, folks: Several academic studies have found that increasing minimum wage had no significant effect on employment levels in this country. Bottom line: It doesn’t kill jobs, and it won’t kill small businesses. … By raising the minimum wage, we directly address the growing levels of income inequality in this country by giving people a chance to lift themselves out of poverty and join the middle class, which is the mission — a rising tide lifts all boats. By opposing this, Republicans are just showing us once again just who exactly who they stand for.

Facts? Okay, I’ve got your academic studies right here:

The economic effects of minimum wage increases have been studied dozens and dozens of times in the past few decades. Different studies come to different conclusions, of course. But economists David Neumark and William Wascher, after conducting an exhaustive literature review, conclude that “among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries.”

They continue: “The studies that focus on the least-skilled groups that are likely most directly affected by minimum wage increases provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.”

And the 47 million low-income Americans that Schultz misleadingly cites — would a higher minimum wage do anything to help rise the tide that raises all boats?

Economists Joseph Sabia and Richard Burkhauser find that a small minority of workers who would benefit from a minimum wage increase – around ten percent – live in poor households. The White House itself states that workers who would benefit from a minimum wage increase bring home less than half of their household’s total wage and salary income.

In other words, the workers who will benefit from an increase are secondary and tertiary earners – think more of teenagers with summer jobs, of spouses earning some income on the side, or of elderly grandparents earning some retirement income, and less of primary breadwinners. In fact, Professors Sabia and Burkhauser find that around two-thirds of minimum wage workers live in households with incomes more than twice the poverty line.

President Obama and his useful lefty minions are, as ever, trying to perpetuate the old-and-tired depiction of Republicans protecting their nefarious corporate buddies’ miserly interests and ill-begotten profits that they then hoard in their unproductive fat-cat offshore bank accounts, but as President Obama has showcased time and again, he has no problem with big business. He loves big business. Many of the rules and regulations his administration have proposed are nothing short of a help to big business, as they are more equipped with the resources to deal with these compliance costs that squeeze the smaller businesses with which they compete. And increasing the cost of hiring, a.k.a. killing jobs, is somehow supposed to help out these small businesses as well as the people who work for minimum wage? Dream on.