1. There's one argument that hardly anyone opposing a minimum wage makes, but I think it is perhaps the strongest one. Everyone focuses on what the minimum wage does to the employer, but what about the potential employee? A minimum wage tells Americans that if you want to work for less than $10/hour (or whatever the amount is), the government says that you cannot. Talk about being anti-choice. So, a teenager or someone else with few marketable skills who wants to work, but whose skill base isn't worth $10/hour, is essentially priced out of the job market through government fiat. The people who are harmed by a high minimum wage are those who are most vulnerable in our society -- say, the developmentally disabled, or the uneducated, or the unskilled. The government is taking away the option to work from them. This is fundamentally wrong. And this is one way that the liberty movement needs to frame this debate.
2. If the GOP weren't the stupid party, this is what they would do -- propose and vote for a bill that raises the minimum wage to $20 or $25/hour. When the left says, "Whoa, wait a second, you're going too fast," or "That's not what we had in mind," the GOP can turn the tables on the left and call them the heartless bastards. Then the Dems would be stuck in the awkward position of explaining why such a high minimum wage is harmful to the economy.
Two things:
ReplyDelete1. There's one argument that hardly anyone opposing a minimum wage makes, but I think it is perhaps the strongest one. Everyone focuses on what the minimum wage does to the employer, but what about the potential employee? A minimum wage tells Americans that if you want to work for less than $10/hour (or whatever the amount is), the government says that you cannot. Talk about being anti-choice. So, a teenager or someone else with few marketable skills who wants to work, but whose skill base isn't worth $10/hour, is essentially priced out of the job market through government fiat. The people who are harmed by a high minimum wage are those who are most vulnerable in our society -- say, the developmentally disabled, or the uneducated, or the unskilled. The government is taking away the option to work from them. This is fundamentally wrong. And this is one way that the liberty movement needs to frame this debate.
2. If the GOP weren't the stupid party, this is what they would do -- propose and vote for a bill that raises the minimum wage to $20 or $25/hour. When the left says, "Whoa, wait a second, you're going too fast," or "That's not what we had in mind," the GOP can turn the tables on the left and call them the heartless bastards. Then the Dems would be stuck in the awkward position of explaining why such a high minimum wage is harmful to the economy.