The Democrats Have Been Handed a Gift
The Democrats have truly been handed a gift from the Republican Party.
If they are smart, they will use it.
This week, the Republican Party showed the American people just whose side they are on.
The Republican-led Senate defeated a Democratic measure to increase the minimum to $7.25, from the current $5.15. The minimum wage has not been raised in 9 years.
So what did they do after defeating the minimum wage bill? Republicans then turned their attention to helping the insanely rich. Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a measure to lower the estate tax (taxes paid on inherited estates).
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Comment by MOS— 2006/06/22 @ 09:48 PM — (Reply)
if you feel bad enough just hand the person at Mcdonalds a couple of more dollars the next time you get a cheeseburger.
In truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment, period. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.
All demand curves are falling, and the demand for hiring labor is no exception. Hence, laws that prohibit employment at any wage that is relevant to the market (a minimum wage of 10 cents an hour would have little or no impact) must result in outlawing employment and hence causing unemployment.
If the minimum wage is, in short, raised from 5.15 to 7.25 the consequence is to disemploy, permanently, those who would have been hired at rates in between these two rates. Since the demand curve for any sort of labor (as for any factor of production) is set by the perceived marginal productivity of that labor, this means that the people who will be disemployed and devastated by this prohibition will be precisely the "marginal" (lowest wage) workers, e.g. blacks and teenagers, the very workers whom the advocates of the minimum wage are claiming to foster and protect.
The advocates of the minimum wage and its periodic boosting reply that all this is scare talk and that minimum wage rates do not and never have caused any unemployment. The proper riposte is to raise them one better; all right, if the minimum wage is such a wonderful anti-poverty measure, and can have no unemployment-raising effects, why are you such pikers? Why you are helping the working poor by such piddling amounts? Why stop at $7.25 an hour? Why not $10 an hour? $100? $1,000?
It is obvious that the minimum wage advocates do not pursue their own logic, because if they push it to such heights, virtually the entire labor force will be disemployed. In short, you can have as much unemployment as you want, simply by pushing the legally minimum wage high enough.
It is conventional among economists to be polite, to assume that economic fallacy is solely the result of intellectual error. But there are times when decorousness is seriously misleading, or, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, "when speaking one's mind becomes more than a duty; it becomes a positive pleasure." For if proponents of the higher minimum wage were simply wrongheaded people of good will, they would not stop at $7 or $8 an hour, but indeed would pursue their dimwit logic into the stratosphere.
The fact is that they have always been shrewd enough to stop their minimum wage demands at the point where only marginal workers are affected, and where there is no danger of disemploying, for example, white adult male workers with union seniority. When we see that the most ardent advocates of the minimum wage law have been the AFL-CIO, and that the concrete effect of the minimum wage laws has been to cripple the low-wage competition of the marginal workers as against higher-wage workers with union seniority, the true motivation of the agitation for the minimum wage becomes apparent.
This is only one of a large number of cases where a seemingly purblind persistence in economic fallacy only serves as a mask for special privilege at the expense of those who are supposedly to be "helped."
Once in a while, AFL-CIO economists and other knowledgeable liberals will drop their mask of economic fallacy and candidly admit that their actions will cause unemployment; they then proceed to justify themselves by claiming that it is more "dignified" for a worker to be on welfare than to work at a low wage. This of course, is the doctrine of many people on welfare themselves. It is truly a strange concept of "dignity" that has been fostered by the interlocking minimum wage-welfare system.
Unfortunately, this system does not give those numerous workers who still prefer to be producers rather than parasites the privilege of making their own free choice
Comment by you need educating— 2006/06/23 @ 12:42 AM — (Reply)
All your "facts" are quite interesting. I like how you refer to the "marginal" people(e.g. blacks and teenagers). How is a "marginal" person to survive? If I work for 5.15 an hour but the grocery store I work for continually cuts my hours and the cost of living continues to rise then what? I suppose I could tell the phone, gas electric companies that I am "marginal" and perhaps they will cut me some slack. I notice that certain members Congress whine about the cost of living in Washington DC, heck there is a Congressman living in his office because of this. So when the Congressional year comes to a close and they vote themselves a raise, from my "marginal" salary I should not be the slightest bit ticked off. What group are you part of? Certainly not of the "marginal" people.
You certainly have to know that restaurants, airlines et al, pass on to the consumer the higher costs of gas etc. So there goes more of my "marginal" salary. I suppose because I am of the "marginal" people I should not go out to dinner or take a vacation with my family? Perhaps we should stay in our "marginal" homes and choose activities for "marginal" people while your non-marginal world goes on about its business. In Washington DC the homeless rate and the people requiring social services has gone up every year for the past 6 years. But that's not your problem, you are not "marginal" are you?
Comment by one of the "marginals"— 2006/06/23 @ 07:21 AM — (Reply)
they won't survive on 7.25 either
Comment by — 2006/06/23 @ 07:42 AM — (Reply)
exactly why just making the minimum wage 7.25 is a joke...read the whole article and "marginal" is not intended as a slight (racial or otherwise) try not to read too much into that but try and understand the meat of the argument...7.25 will not help you..what would help you is if there was a program that taught you a skill so you could make more than minimum wage and you could get off this government welfare program
Comment by you need educating— 2006/06/23 @ 07:56 AM — (Reply)
It is unacceptable that for 9 years, Republicans have refused to help raise the minimum wage.
The effects of this are there for anyone to see.
Because the minimum wage has not been raised, you have a lot of people (the "working poor") who work 2, and even 3, jobs. And to no fault of their own, they still can't make it above the poverty line.
We need a decent minimum wage so that we can grow our middle class. The middle class is, I believe, the heart and soul of this country. And whe we lose the middle class, we lose a piece of America.
In fact, I just talked about this on the blog this week. Statistics show that our metropolitan areas all across this country show a frightening dwindling of middle class neighborhoods. The gap between rich and poor is growning as middle class neighborhods give way to poor neighborhoods or rich ones.
http://progressiveminds.bloghi.com/2006/06/21/the-widening-gap.html
Also please read these op/eds from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/opinion/23fri1.html?th&emc=th
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/opinion/23fri2.html?th&emc=th
Comment by SMillard— 2006/06/23 @ 08:53 PM — (Reply)
I agree, who in their right mind would work ANY WHERE for 9 YEARS and NOT WANT A RAISE? What "you need educating" is saying is that in his world, even the people who collect garbage, bag your groceries, or fix your car will have PhD's and make as much money as they can. Also, he has all of the answers. We should be awed by such brilliance and I'm sure he is well compensated for it.
Comment by — 2006/06/26 @ 11:50 AM — (Reply)
as a matter of fact I am but the "he" is a "she"
Comment by you need educating— 2006/06/26 @ 11:56 AM — (Reply)