Unions and feel-good liberals are back in the streets to “fight” for a $15/h minimum wage. Protesters in many cities across the country took to the streets on November 29 to show their discontent with their present work conditions. If you know how ridiculous such demand is, skip to the next subtitle. If not, keep reading below to know why the minimum wage is a terrible idea.
No, I am not some cruel person whose unfetteredcapitalistneoliberalpuppyeatingkochbrother greed has destroyed his heart. Quite the contrary: it is because I care for all humans that I want this ridiculous law to be abolished.
Why is it ridiculous? Simple: minimum wage laws forbid employers to pay people below a certain amount. Therefore, people who are not productive enough to meet with the salary requirement will be fired/ will not be hired. This Unlucky Brian meme summarizes it well.
It has always been what its supporters sought in the past when they adopted such measures. The Davis-Bacon Act (which created the federal minimum wage) was adopted explicitly to keep lower-skilled (African-American) workers from the South to work in the North and therefore “protect” good Northern worker jobs. Other racist countries like Canada and Australia adopted the minimum wage for the same reason, i.e. price out “undesirable” workers to keep “good” White working jobs.
If you’re still not convinced, let’s use Frédéric Bastiat’s favorite weapon: reductio ad absurdum (shrink down to ridicule). Let’s assume there were a movement that asked for a $1,000/h minimum wage. You would all agree that this amount is much too high and that it would simply destroy all jobs, right? I’m pretty sure most of you would also agree that $100/h is still too high a minimum wage. Why would it be ANY different for ANY minimum wage amount?
Besides, considering the vast differences in the cost of living across the U.S., such a measure would be devastating for states like Mississippi and Arkansas. Their low cost of living means that small business creation would virtually come to a complete stop since most entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to afford such high wages. It’s not like other small and medium business owners would, either…
Fight against #wageeugenics
Even the Congressional Budget Office has predicted massive job losses should the federal minimum wage be hiked to even just $10.10/h. Imagine $15/h…
Therefore, I need your help to make #wageeugenics go viral. While being exposed to the truth won’t change liberals’ minds, uniformed voters and people mildly interested in politics are within our reach. They need to know that a minimum wage will make low-skilled workers like teens and people with no more than a high school diploma unemployable since they won’t be able to produce enough to be “worth” $15/h. They will therefore be stuck in a vicious circle where they will either try to get a college major with a mountain of debt and little employment perspectives or be stuck on welfare with little incentives to get out of it since acquiring a job would amount to an effective 60 percent income tax rate – or worse – since they lose all their benefits like food stamps or subsidized health insurance cold-turkey.
Let #wageeugenics become viral!