Okay. What I was essentially wondering is this: would the current labor surplus act in such a way that, when labor was exogenously exposed to a competitive or pseudo-competitive market under 7.25, the price of labor would drop, and if so, to where. Also, would the mechanism be a sweeping hiring of illegal immigrants, or would it simply be an ultimatum: "take a pay cut or walk." (Most likely both.)

It also seems just possible to me that the longterm human capital PR benefits of not touching your company's wage level even when legally allowed to do so would result in very little functionally changing. That's probably extremely naive.

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And how would unions factor in? How many unionized workers are paid anything close to minimum wage? Would they be affected even though they aren't making 7.25? thenewgreen raises that question above:

The question, I think, is how much do those above minimum wage owe their wages to the existing floor beneath them? Without that floor does pay go down for all hourly wage earners as a result of it's demise?