The Minimum Wage War

The Minimum Wage War

The minimum wage controversy concerns the minimum wage needing to be a "living wage” and not a starting wage paid to those just entering the workforce.  Minimum wage workers are demanding an increase in the minimum wage to around $15 depending upon the area they live. Many politicians, at the City, State and National levels are also demanding an increase in the minimum wage. But let us be clear, their demand is not based upon bettering the lives of the working poor, “minimum wage workers”. Nor are their demands being made because it is the right thing to do for the working poor. It is simply because the working poor will vote for those people who give them stuff and things. It is simply political pandering for votes and power.

Sadly, increasing the minimum wage will not aid the poor. Nor will it better their lives.  The minimum wage increase will only serve to give the working poor a false sense of increase. True some will for a short time experience an increase in disposable income.  They will no doubt believe they are finally getting a head of the game. But, as the minimum wage takes effect some companies will find that workers who were worth the old minimum wage are simply not worth the new minimum wage and hours will be reduced and layoffs will begin.

Some companies who need minimum wage workers will increase the price of the product they produce. The increase, even in the smallest product, will in the end cause other companies to increase their prices.  The ripple effect will take effect shrinking the gains made by the increase. As wages and taxes increase so do prices.  The ripple effect of price increases will in short order take away the wage increase and within a very few years the minimum wage worker will be right back where they started.

The tragedy of the minimum wage controversy is that, in the end, the only winners in the whole thing are the politicians who pander to the poor. The minimum wage worker either ends up out of a job or within a few months will be right back where they started.  Minimum wage workers, sadly, operate under the assumption that their wage increase has no effect upon the economy. Not understanding that their wage increase is simply passed on to the consumer and as prices increase the minimum wage increase slowly disappears.

                                                                                                                                 

The minimum wage increase will cause some employers to lay off workers or reduce the number of minimum wage workers. Some companies will simply do away with minimum wage workers by modernizing equipment to replace the worker. We live in an age of robotics. Robots don’t take time off, they don’t ask for more money, they don’t have attitudes and they don’t protest. They require some maintenance and up keep but that is it. Some fast food companies are transitioning from minimum wage workers to robots. As the technology increases minimum wage work will decrease. Workers will have to become more and more skilled, educated and technologically advanced to become employed. The day of the unskilled worker is drawing to a close.

Since its inception under Franklin Delano Roosevelt the minimum wage has done nothing more than cause inflation, cost jobs the poor desperately need and create a false sense of security among the working poor. It drains ambition from those who otherwise might be motivated to gain the education, experience and work ethic necessary to advance from minimum wage to higher wages. They, thanks to their political benefactors remain stuck in the cycle of poverty. While the politicians who manipulate them are reelected over and over again ever promising but never really delivering on those promises.

Nothing is quite so sad as men and women in their thirties, forties and fifties protesting for a minimum wage increase. Lives that could have gained so much stuck in the never ending cycle of minimum wage jobs and depending upon the government to give them raises. Raises not based upon merit, not based upon their being good employees who are worth a raise but a raise based only upon political consideration.

Wouldn’t it be better to incentive employees to better themselves?  Wouldn’t it be better to assist them in learning skills that would put them, by their merit above the minimum wage? Would it not be better to assist employers in establishing on the “job training programs?”  We always have funds for politically correct programs. We have plenty of money to pay our legislators inflated salaries for ineffectively running this country and piling up debt year after year. Couldn’t we as a nation develop programs in which small companies would receive incentives for training minimum wage workers. Couldn’t programs be established that would strongly encourage minimum wage workers to develop skills necessary to get off the minimum wage merry-go-round?