Unemployment: The Goal of the Minimum Wage

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 31 Jan 2003 08:26:26 GMT

Received via email from Michael D. Hensley, michael@thehensleys.com, on 9/29/2000. Posted with his permission. He sent this in response to the articles on the minimum wage that I linked to here.


Increasing unemployment is not just the *result* of an increase in "minimum wage", it's quite obviously the *goal*.

The articles arguing whether or not it will simply legitimize the claim that there is any reason to doubt that it will.

This becomes obvious when you remember that the Demopublicrats have no interest in helping the "poor", or anyone else. They operate out of perceived best self-interest, like everyone else -- they just have a very poor perception of what would be in their own best long-term self-interest.

Once you realize that, the obvious next question is "why do they support an increase in the minimum wage"? It's a very slick, two-level vote-buying scam.

The first level, of course, is the direct buying of the votes of all those who make minimum wage (and thus demonstrate their own lack of economic sense), plus any additional un-eductated guilt addicts that do buy the "help the poor line".

The second level is to buy future votes from the newly created un-employed via welfare payments.

We need to stop arguing on their terms (i.e. "Does an increase in the minimum wage help/hurt the poor") and work much harder on pointing out how irrelevent that whole question is.

The real question: does a decrease in *freedom* help/hurt the poor, and everyone else.

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