The Minimum Wage Should be Abolished.

Society has the noble goal of reducing poverty. In order to reach this goal, do-gooders with no understanding of basic economics enact a law that increases unemployment and the cost of living. In fact, the sponsors of these initiatives are often clueless as to the great harm that they needlessly inflict on society. Ironically, the public continuously votes to institute this masochism year after year. Yes, I am talking about the minimum wage. Few politicians, even those on the Right, would ever dream of running a campaign to abolish the minimum wage, even if it would have the effect of improving the standard of living for millions of Americans. Consequently, politicians simply debate whether or not to raise the minimum wage, rather than whether to abolish it entirely. Allow me to illustrate for you very clearly why the minimum wage hurts society, especially the poor. Imagine you are a small business owner. Now, suppose that you had a total of $1000 a day that you could afford to pay your workers and still stay in business. (The numbers are arbitrary, but I'm using simple values to illustrate a point). With that $1000, you could pay 20 workers $50 a day, 10 workers $100 a day, 5 workers $200 a day, and 2 workers $500 a day. Assuming that you require 5 workers to get your job done, but you would really benefit if you had 20 workers, you would of course hire 20 workers at $50 a day. Those 20 workers are 20 more people off the unemployment rolls. Those are 20 more people that can take home an honest wage. Those are 20 more people that have money to spend. Those are 20 more people that benefit the economy. Now add ignorant do-gooders into the picture who think that $50 a day is "exploitative." As a result, these do-gooders who really care about your workers create laws that require you to pay everyone $100 a day. So, you know what you must do: You must first fire10 workers so you can now pay 10 workers $100 a day. That is the reality. We all know that the people who received the pay increase from $50 to $100 are doing better, but what about the 10 people who were just fired? Not only were the people fired, but your business is less efficient after losing 10 workers. Therefore, you need to increase the price of your goods or services. This makes it impossible for the 10 unemployed people to afford the cost of living. Does this make any sense? Now, the do-gooders notice that the cost of living has increased after their first implementation of the minimum wage of $100 a day. So, like clockwork, they pass legislation to increase the minimum wage to $200 a day. You know the drill by now. This new initiative just required you to fire 5 more workers so that you could pay 5 workers $200 a day. So, in total, you have just fired 15 workers because the government wants to help the workers (Great logic). Again, you will also need to raise prices to make up for the lack of efficiency. But, keep in mind that your business is not an isolated incident. Millions of businesses around the Country just fired their labor force as well. Many of them, in fact, could not afford the increased labor costs and went out of business. Other people decided not to start a new business because it would be too expensive. Ask yourself again, "Why would anyone in their right mind want this?" The truth is that the minimum wage is created by two groups of people: 1) Do-gooders who do not understand economics; and 2) Unions. Unions use the minimum wage for contract negotiations. Their argument is that if the lowest skilled worker is paid $200 a day, their "skilled" workers should be paid $400 a day. So, this is nothing but an unholy alliance between the Unions and the ignorant; the ignorant being in the majority. Now politicians see a storm of people on the unemployment rolls and fight to pass legislation that would act as safety nets for these people. Where do you suppose they get the money? Right! They tax businesses like yours so your former workers can sit at home and not work because you are not allowed to pay them their market value. Oh, by the way, you have to fire more workers to meet this new tax burden too. This next election is clearly going to have an impact on the minimum wage. Barack Obama (Ignorant "Do-Gooder") and Hillary Clinton (Union Supporter) are likely to become President. Both of these candidates want to increase the minimum wage as often as possible and increase safety nets. Sadly, the public is on their side on these issues because they do not have the time to learn the economic reality. It just takes too much effort to sit down and explain the truth to the American people.