Once again Democratic politicians want to increase the dosage of a popular but extremely toxic form of public policy snake oil. In his State of the Union message Tuesday President Obama proclaimed, “Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth no one who works full time should have to live in poverty, and raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour. We should be able to get that done.” Pat Quinn, the governor of Illinois, last week proposed raising his state’s minimum wage from the current $8.25 an hour to $10 an hour.
A spokesman for Governor Quinn said, “The governor feels very strongly that nobody should work 40 hours a week and live in poverty. It’s obvious the governor feels such an increase will be good for the economy and good for workers who drive our economic growth. So many people are struggling to make ends meet earning the basic minimum wage—and these ends never get met.” If that’s what the governor thinks, he couldn’t be more confused.
As H. L. Mencken observed, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” Minimum wage laws score extremely well on all three counts.
Minimum wage laws are an important public policy issue not only for the damage they do to individuals and the economy, but also as an illustration of the profound difference between liberal and conservative approaches to problem solving.
Read More at spectator.org . By Ron Ross.
Photo Credit: The US Army (Creative Commons)
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As usual, the alias is talking to his “Obama telephone” surrogates who re-elected him. All NWO propagandists underscore his speeches to the stupid, and are beginning to populate the patriotic blogs.
Americans, unite and demand from your representatives and senators that they support impeachment proceedings against him and his appointees. And swiftly.
I know many peoples concern concerning minimum wage, but would it be desired to do away with a minimum wage and leave it to the employers decision ????
Labor prices go up with minimum wage increases. Add 40% to the minimum wage, and you add at least 30% to the price of whatever is being sold. A Burger will go from 4 dollars to closer to 5. So the people at the bottom of the spectrum really don’t benefit, as retail prices for everything go up proportionately to the price of production.
If we really had compassion, we’d raise minimum wage to 25 dollars an hour, so the minimum wage earners would get around 50K per year. Then they’d have plenty of money for consumer goods, and –
What’s that? You say that won’t work? Right you are, and neither will 9 dollars for the exact same reason. Wages in a free capitalist society will settle on what the employer is willing to pay and the employee is willing to work for. Offer too little, you’ll have no work force; ask for too much, you’ll have no job.
Yep, of course when the minimum wage goes up, the costs of virtually everything else does too. Another problem with this are the companies that already HIRE at minimum wage OR Higher !!! And they too increase their prices even though they are not affected by the increase. Maybe when minimum wage does increase, companies shouldn’t be allowed to increase their prices beyond a certain percentage. Something has got to happen. If minimum wage were to be done away with, there are states where MANY employers would take advantage of the unemployment situation, and offer less. Using this may very well find alot of folks going to work for these substandard wages, just to have a damn job !!!! And it’s not right.
Obama…. aka ….the give away king….. sad that a person has to BUY people’s votes. He reminds me of a man riding along wanting to pick up this little girl walking home from school with bad intentions… and the driver in the car says to her… ‘I’m looking for my puppy.. would you come help me find him… I’ll give you 10 bucks if you will…’ so naturally, the little innocent girl hops in the car with him…. never to be seen again….
Characteristics of minimum wage workers:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2012/ted_20120306.htm