Wage at the Minimum

I am a minimum wage guy. Well, almost. I get 10 cents more per hour ($7.35) than the federal minimum wage requires.

The default opinion on minimum wage laws seems to be Higher! One major reason being for those who are supporting children, single parent homes especially. Also the mystically defined "living wage."

Every so often I think about the mandated minimum wage and it makes my stomach turn a little. There are faulty, yet well intentioned lines of thought wrapped up in the issue.

The first one I think of is why stop at $7.25 an hour? If we want people to have full lives with all opportunities available to them, let's hike it up to $50 or $100 an hour. I feel it would be difficult to find someone who believes that would work out well for more than a month. Companies cannot pay that much. So why think they can pay $7.25 an hour or any other "low" rate? How many firms close because of this unaffordable price control? It merely creates shortages, nothing else.

Allowing companies to pay a rate they determine to be affordable would not be a bad thing. Entry level jobs would be more plentiful, there would be more firms thus increasing competition, not only in product or service pricing but in wages as well, which would be beneficial for workers. Benefits would increase as well.

It's an issue that is easily sold to voters by politicians because of its assumed value, thus making it popular to say one is for raising the minimum wage.