Can you ever be over-paid for over-working?

Spending 13 hours at work doesn't leave much time for blogging. Unless blogging is your job! Well, we all dig our own holes. Its Wednesday, so that's meeting day which makes it a rather long one. But yesterday was 12 hours. I'm not really complaining because my compensation package tells me that I'm valued and therefore I'm willing to put in the time to reciprocate. If convenience store clerks were paid $30/hour would they enthusiastically greet and help every visitor?

I'm no economist, my friend DoAnne is, and I don't have an MBA, my cousin Fin does, but wouldn't increased minimum wages impact the crime rates and quality of life in the USA in positive directions? Sure businesses would complain about the undue burden and how it would increase their costs, but aren't human costs the ones worth paying? And wouldn't those same cunning businesses find another formula for success if one of the givens was a living wage?

What about raising other operating costs like pollution mitigation or reduction to lower the impact on climate change? Perhaps a short-term downturn in the economy, but once the companies accepted the new modus-operandi, they'd find a way to succeed. Being an investor myself (in human lives as an educator instead of in financial sectors), I'm comfortable with the idea that somethings worth doing don't have a tangible return on investment. I try to buy some organic foods because I know that it supports a process of growing food that lowers impact on the land. I'm not a totally organic consumer, but I do what I can within my budget.

Okay, so I'm going on a tangent here. I hope I'm not being too political here, I hear it from the sooner if I am, just taking a position to invite comments. Maybe higher wages all across the board affecting the crime rate and quality of life is only germane to the situation in Japan. I sure know that if Americans lived in the space and proximity to neighbors that Japanese do, the crime rate would certainly go up with all the nerves-getting-on that people will do! Its the public manners, or the appearance of (if not actually expressing), in Japan that makes the peacefully close living possible. Maybe my view will change the longer I'm here, but that's my persective from now.