If a man with a gun claims he can get your boss to increase your pay, but that doing so might have the unfortunate result of killing your boss and/or ending your job altogether, what would you say?
“I have mixed feelings on it,” Rebecca Pentz-Jones told the Washington Post regarding legislation to increase Maryland’s minimum wage. It’s a case whereby a man with a gun (government) forces a pay raise, but accordingly risks her job and her employer’s business.
Mrs. Pentz-Jones works at Dollar Tree earning $7.95 an hour, but would rather make $10.10 an hour, the minimum being pushed by President Obama.
Polls show public support for upping wages, but Maryland Senate President Mike Miller argues, “We don’t just pass things because they’re popular.” Perhaps Miller has a larger perspective in mind. When pollsters ask people what they think of raising the minimum if the raise would increase unemployment, support for the hike flags.
Maryland Democrats haven’t downed enough of the president’s Kool-Aid. They fear the Congressional Budget Office analysis correctly predicts Obama’s higher minimum wage would cost 500,000 to a million people their jobs.
“I feel like I’m on a battleground,” explains Sen. Katherine Klausmeier of Baltimore County, “between trying to help a person make a living and trying to save my small businesses.”
Prince George’s County Del. Dereck Davis notes that a higher wage “will benefit some people, but at the expense of others” and “could result in the elimination of jobs.”
“It gets very confusing,” adds Sen. John Astle. “Sometimes it makes me wonder why we even have a minimum wage.”
Me, too, Senator.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Maximum Mixed Feelings”
The minimum wage is a form of demagoguery, and actually helps very few and harms almost everyone else. If a $10 minimum wage is good why not $100?
It is clear that the American educational system has failed to teach either common sense or economics.
I don’t understand why everyone is always talking about raising the minimum wage when eliminating the Federal Reserve’s-produced inflation would be more productive and accomplish the same goal by maintaining the purchasing-power of the dollar.
Eliminating inflation would be far wiser and a lot more popular, especially among savers and the retired.
exactly sheldon. the Fed is owned by the biggest banks who would die without inflation. and SOMEHOW, the media either ignores it or is oblivious to it. why would people not want lower prices? cars, houses, food, etc. but this is not in the fed’s plan. they need you paying through the nose for housing or the status quo fails because of their reckless gambling(if i win, i win big and if i lose the gov’t bails us out mentality) along with their pensions and the bankers’ kingdoms.
It’s a violation of our freedom, when government meddles in employment law.
Government is supposed to defend our freedom by ensuring a free market in selling one’s labor, or buying it as an employer.
Preventing government from meddling in hiring/firing/wages/etc., would boost productivity and prosperity in the US. And it would also put a bunch of HR personnel out of work, who only contribute to a business in seeing that it is following the law, rather than helping produce the company’s products/services. But more jobs would pop up to which they could go. And likely it would be more beneficial to the people as well.