Q. When’s the best time to kick out the bottom rungs of a ladder?
A. After everybody’s climbed it.
So, when’s the best time to raise the minimum wage?
After everybody is being paid at a higher rate.
Contrary to innocent expectations, minimum wage laws don’t guarantee that people will be hired to work at or above the minimum. Instead, they prohibit businesses from hiring (or workers from accepting jobs) below the minimum rate. That is, rates are guaranteed, but the jobs are discouraged.
A recent push by House Democrats to raise the national minimum wage to ten bucks per hour was stalled by leadership. Left-leaning representatives cried foul. But a report in The Hill explains the reluctance: “Concerns about the economy have increased since last Friday, when a jobs report showed an anemic May during which only 69,000 jobs were added. A higher minimum wage could discourage employers from creating more jobs and that, in turn, could hurt President Obama in the election.”
It turns out that the more clever Democrats are considering, instead, a plan to slowly, gradually raise the rates.
This would mean fewer unemployed right away. The fewer people hurt, all the less likely that voters would put two and two together and blame them, and their minimum wage rate hike.
This is how politicians hurt Americans, most of the time: In increments small enough not to cause an uproar.
In this case, it’s the poorest who are hurt most, those who haven’t yet climbed the proverbial ladder. Democrats, ideologically blind to the results of their regulations, feel nothing.
Besides, they know that, in America, most poor folks don’t vote.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.