Why you ask? Because our politicians are still attaching unrelated spending to the Iraq bill. Still. This time around they’re (Democrats) attaching money to raise minimum wage, which will later be used for political cheerleading. You mark my words . . . “We increased minimum wage,” and “What a great day for the middle class,” are phrases you will hear a lot in the coming months. (I guess if they pay people more, they’ll get more to pay for this ridiculously costly war in the form of taxes).
“. . . minimum wage goes up to $5.85 two months after Bush signs the bill, then to $6.55 one year later and to $7.25 the next year.” via Time Magazine.
Why this is a bad idea
Let’s just get something on the table for all those who are going to make the incredibly lame argument that I probably make more than minimum wage, so I don’t know “what it’s like.” Yep, I make more than minimum wage. I also have a college degree, a high school diploma, did three internships, worked at two PR agencies and two newspapers, volunteered probably more than 2,000 hours while I was in college and spend hours a week reading about things related to my field. I also blog and write columns for Connect Magazine to keep my writing skills sharp (both for free). I’m the only child in my family to graduate from college (six kids), and no, my dad didn’t pay for any of it.
So, yes, I make more than minimum wage at what I do, and I think minimum wage makes about as much sense as a maximum wage. It doesn’t make sense (or cents).
Here’s my issue with it. “Currently, a person working 40 hours per week at the current minimum wage of $5.15 makes about $10,700 a year. An increase to $7.25 would boost that to just over $15,000 a year.”
This is true, but it doesn’t do anything to increase or perpetuate a person’s ability to increase or boost their individual ability to earn more. It rewards them for doing the same. Salary caps reward people for doing the same (which might be not much at all). It takes production out of the equation. It takes performance out of the equation. It removes that element that nudges a person to say, “I don’t want to make $5.15 an hour,” when the truth of the matter is every day they do the same thing for the same wage they outwardly suggest that they are completely fine with $5.15 an hour. (I went off on this in another post at another time: Socialism is one of the Democrat congress’ top priorities).
Remember the definition of socialism?
Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage an egalitarian socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control. This control may be exercised either directly through popular collectives such as workers’ councils or indirectly on behalf of the people by the state.” Property and distribution of wealth are subject to control by the state. Somebody tell me how making a business “distribute wealth” in the form of federal-mandated minimum wage isn’t socialism?
The bill has $4.48 billion added for business owners to offset the costs, which basically means the government will take more of that $7.25 an hour in order to give some back to the business owner who has to pay it. Make sense? Didn’t think so.
So What’s the Solution?
Don’t reward ($2 more an hour) more value creation through a minimum wage increase when there is no actual increase in value creation (improved skills/production/effectiveness). Perpetuate people and their development and growth. Perpetuate their ideas and ambitions and their inner ability to say “I want to make more, so I’m going to make more of me.”
9 comments ↓
On a related note, this site has some interesting minimum-wage-related data.
Wow, that’s incredibly off and cold-hearted. You make it sound like it’s rewarding lazy asses. Those lazy asses struggle just as hard on $15k a year. You aren’t commenting on the fact that cost-of-living has continued to skyrocket every year while minimum wage hasn’t budged! That’s the whole point here. There needs to always be the same size gap between minimum wage and cost-of-living. Some people get dealt a shitty hand in life…be it a disability or what not, and you want to tell them “Sorry, you didn’t work as hard as I did so let me know if it hurts when your face hits the gravel.”
By the way, have you seen how hard fast-food people work to serve you? They’re 100mph taking orders on their microphone and counting your change at the same time. They’ve worked hard for this.
Another thing, you act like $7.25 is some ungodly amount of money. It’s not!
Dennis -
You completely missed the point of the post. Minimum isn’t a reward for anything. Lazy or not. I don’t comment on cost of living because cost of living goes up with natural market forces while minimum wage is a government mandated and set number. Capitalism gets tossed out the window when it comes to minimum wage, so I’d be comparing apples and oranges.
And no, there doesn’t always need to be the same size gap between minimum wage and cost of living. Every time that ideology has been forced upon the market, that economy eventually crumbles and the poor are even worse off. It’s the beginning of a socialistic system that almost always degenerates into communism. Why? Because you are suggesting that we force the market or the pay to comply with costs of other things.
My point was that if the government is going to mandate something, they should mandate education, business loans, etc… This may sound stupid and cliche, but raising the minimum wage only gives someone more fish instead of helping them to learn how to fish.
And last, don’t give me the fast-food talk. I worked fast food for two years. I know exactly what it’s like. I actually enjoyed the work because I like to cook, but the pay and the hours sucked, so I did other things to make sure I wouldn’t have to work fast food for the rest of my life.
$7.25 isn’t ungodly. You miss the point. This whole discussion isn’t about money. It’s about the principle of giving. Did you ever stop to think that just giving something to anybody could actually be doing them more harm than good?
Go back and read the post again and forget about the dollar signs because that wasn’t the point of the post.
[...] Somebody thinks I was cold hearted in my minimum wage post . . . I think he completely misunderstood my point and needs to read it again while forgetting about dollar signs. He seems to think money is the answer to problems . . . How many times have you thought that “money doesn’t solve” problems, but in reality, you act and think like it does? [...]
Hmmm…I disagree with most of your ideas on this topic. What are your ideas for helping people in poverty raise their level on the economic ladder? I see a link to Grameen - I think microfinance is one of the greatest innovations of the last 20 years and the exact type of program the world needs more of right now. I agree with your idea that giveaways don’t always help people, but neither does barely making enough to get over the hump of making your bills to put you in a position to get an education and make more of your life.
You can say that we should inspire people all day long, but if I can’t make rent, can I pay my landlord with inspiration?
Looking forward to our lunch tomorrow.
Darren Johnson
I knew someone would say something about the inspiration part, but more is coming. See you tomorrow.
It’s funny how people not making min wage get so heated in discussing it.
The problem with minimum wage isn’t that it rewards lazy asses… In fact, it doesn’t at all. What it does is artificially raise the equilibrium price of wages… which creates a surplus of workers and a shortage of people willing to pay that much to employ the workers. This creates unemployment. So they may be giving us a warm fuzzy saying they are helping out the middle class.. but really all that they are doing is trading low wages for no wages. Tragic. If you think that being against a minimum wage is cold or heartless, maybe you better crack open a book on basic economics so your good intentions aren’t wasted on whats really cold: forcing people to be jobless because it is illegal for them to work for less than $7 an hour. Whatever happened to the freedom to choose? If there were no minimum wage, and people were working for $2 an hour, they are making that choice, which they are free to make, so I don’t see the justification for government intervention. There are no information asymmetries, the firms know what the worker will do, and the worker knows what the firm will pay him. Whats the problem?
I disagree strongly minimum wage needs to be raised quite a bit in my opinion for one reason people with mental and physical disabilaties Need to generate income also. Some of my friends have mental disabilties and they work for minimum wage and i know they do not get enough hours they need to support themselves and there familes employeres think of there disabilites as a weakness to the company and offer them the bad jobs and the least hours so they can avoid paying to much minimum wage needs to be increased to help these people help there already difficult lives. A person who goes to college and does well does deserve a higher pay i agree but that dosnt mean that people who havn’t deserve way less beacuse they wern’t gifted with the strenghths to succed in these area’s they probbably have a million and one things you cant do and they can so how would u like it if they got payed for those things and a great deal more than you did beacuse they succeded in learning how to achive this skill and you didnt?
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