It seems like no matter WHEN I turn on the TV, I’m attacked with Political Advertising for Democrats who always slap on “…and I’ll raise the minimum wage” at the last second. The thought that they know people will vote for them simply because they said “raise the minimum wage” makes me lose my faith in the voting public every time I hear it.

The line that bugs the ever living CRAP out of me when you hear folks talking about the current $5.15/hr wage that the Federal Government demands as a minimum is;

How is a single mom supposed to raise a family on $5.15 an hour?

Short answer… she’s NOT.

If you’re relying on a minimum wage job to house, clothe and feed your family… you’re a MORON. Minimum wage employment is NOT meant to be a sustainable income, it’s designed for school kids, and as a means of “extra” income for those of us who have other jobs.

The problem is that politicians want to keep jacking up this wage as some sort of cushion that allows maximum reward for minimum effort. If everyone in my office (of which there are 6 of us) was earning the minimum federally allowed wage of $5.15 and along came our government demanding an additional $0.85 an hour for each of us, that’s an additional $5.10 an hour labor burden on the employer. If the employer has limited labor funds available to pay his employee’s guess who gets to either jack up his costs or fire some employee’s.

According to Benjamin Powell, director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation;

“We all know that if the government raised the minimum wage by $20 an hour, many employees would be laid off. Businesses are not charities; they hire workers only when the workers create more revenue for the business than they cost in wages and compensation. We know that many workers’ productivity is less than $26.75 an hour and that they would be laid off if the minimum wage were that high. Yet people kid themselves when they believe smaller increases won’t harm employment.”

“In 2004 the Employment Policy Institute studied the impact of raising California’s minimum wage by $1. They found that approximately 18,600 Californians would lose their jobs and in the process would miss out on $220 million in total income.”

Minimum wage laws DO NOT benefit those that the politicians tell you they benefit… the biggest beneficiaries of minimum wage laws are the Unions and their Management. Many Union contracts contain a clause that tie their union wages to an index based on the Federal Minimum Wage. So an increase for our low-skilled workers not only puts many of them out of business (less competition for the Union worker) but it increases Union wages at the same time.