And because the Law of Demand would no longer exist, there would be little or no unemployment among the poor as a result.
Excellent!
But now that the Law of Demand has been repealed, why not increase the minimum wage to $20 an hour, or $100?
Even better, why not repeal the Law of Supply and mandate that the cost of food, clothing, shelter and Yankees games be cut by 50%? Under Hillarynomics, surely the supply of these goods won’t decrease, and they’ll be half as cheap!
Or we can stop the political pandering and start dealing with reality. According to the Employment Policies Institute, the average family affected by the minimum wage has an annual income of $38,000 because seven out of 10 minimum‐wage workers live with a working spouse or relatives.
Furthermore, the average income of minimum‐wage workers increases by 30% within one year of employment on the basis of learned skills. Which is why any artificial barriers to learning those skills — which is what the minimum wage is — represents a cruel hoax to the working poor. Wage increases due to increased skill levels explain the remarkable fact that only 2.8% of workers over the age of 30 are receiving the minimum wage.
The Clinton administration and far too many members of both parties in Congress seem enamored of the labor policies of European countries such as France and Germany — policies that claim to be compassionate but that end up creating double‐digit unemployment and economic stagnation. We don’t need to import Euroscloris to the United States.
In fact, the primary reason to reject an increase in the minimum wage is rooted in the very essence of America: freedom.
If you as a job hunter wish to take a $5‑an‐hour job offered by a prospective employer who sees that as the value of the job, why should that be against the law?
Why, in the land of the free, should the federal labor police be allowed to step in and prevent that free economic contract from taking place? But if freedom isn’t reason enough to oppose the minimum‐wage law, consider this pithy comment from two real economists. Donald Deere and Finis Welch of Texas A&M University write:
