In spite of the abysmal unemployment problem that continues to plague the United States, notwithstanding Barry’s claim to have created millions of jobs, Barry, along with any number of other Democrats, have, of late, once again began repeating their mantra regarding the need for raising the minimum wage. This despite the fact that raising the minimum wage makes very little sense on a number of levels, but especially economically. But having said that, we recently saw in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit groups of fast food workers, and joined by many that were actually union paid protestors, walk off the job and strike demanding higher wages. Specifically, in Detroit, the Michigan Workers Organizing Committee, a coalition of labor, religious and community organizers is calling for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour. The sin is, they know such a wage is just not practical.
The common denominator for just about everyone who claims to want to raise the minimum wage is the claim that the current government-mandated minimum wage of $7.25 for hourly workers is simply too low for them to make what’s commonly referred by liberals as being a "decent living." Then there are the recipients of low wages, those who claim their value, after years of faithful service to an employer, is much higher than the wages they receive. For them, raising the minimum wage is the only way they can potentially get what should be coming to them, a higher rate of pay. At the end of the day, proponents of raising the minimum wage assert that it is simply a matter of ‘fairness’ to give those at the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder a little more. Well, there are any number of problems with the above reasoning, all of which are simply ignored.
In the first place, if you’ve spent "years" working in a position that pays only the minimum wage, then you have much bigger problems that you need to come to grips with. Because contrary to all that you might have heard from most Democrats and nearly all of those in the state-controlled media, only 2% of wage earners in America actually work for minimum wage. While workers under 25 years of age account for just only 2% of hourly paid workers, they make up close to 50% of those earning the federal minimum wage, or less. In other words, very few workers are affected by the minimum wage and those that are, tend to be young, first time wage earners. You know, the teenager working at McDonald's after school. Naturally, older folks with familial responsibilities should find it hard to live making the current minimum wage, but then the system is really not set up for them.
Then there is also the economic problem caused by raising the minimum wage, namely unemployment. Now, I know that there have been studies on both sides of the issue, but it is nothing short of economic fallacy to actually believe that the minimum wage does not bring about additional unemployment as being one of those unintended consequences that we’ve all heard so much about. Basic supply and demand tells us that as the price for a good or service increases, demand decreases. Conversely, as price falls, demand increases. By its very definition, the minimum wage is a price fix for labor above the market rate. Thus, as the minimum wage level is greater than the equilibrium wage or wage level where demand equals supply, fewer workers will be demanded and a consequent surplus of workers will result.
Or to put it another way, unemployment caused by the minimum wage is the difference between the amount of workers demanded and the amount supplied at the minimum wage level. To decrease unemployment, or that which is defined as being a surplus of workers, wages have to drop, just like the price of a good, to reach the clearing equilibrium price. Naturally, this is impossible under federal and state laws, so unemployment persists until the minimum wage is overtaken by the market wage rate. Look, Democrats understand that what they are demanding is in no way economically feasible. But then their real rationale behind calling for raising the minimum wage has nothing to do with those at the bottom of economic ladder. They simply see it as a tool they can use to do further damage to our free-market system and replace with a much "fairer" system that has the government being in charge.
Democrats have long been at war with American capitalism. Being socialists, or as some like to call themselves, progressives, they have what is a natural dislike for such things as profit, success and a system that actually rewards an individual, or a group individuals, who can come up with a good or service that other people might want to purchase. The wonderful thing about this country is that we are all free to work toward that end. The thing is, that some of us are able to succeed in that endeavor, but many more are not. But those of us who are not, more often than not, usually end up being employed by those folks who are. They are the small businessmen in this country who create the majority of jobs in this county. And commonsense tells us, or it should, that if forced to pay a $15, or even $9, minimum wage, they would be able to then hire fewer workers, thus driving up unemployment.
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