NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com), July 24, 2008 - The national minimum wage went up 70 cents on Thursday as the second of three planned increases mandated by Congress took effect. The national minimum wage will increase to $6.55 per hour as part of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007.
Let's imagine that the old metaphor "climbing the ladder of success" isn't metaphorical but literal.
So there's this whopping big ladder leaning against a whopping big building, and the building has a whopping big sign pointing upward that says "Prosperity" and there's another whopping big sign pointing toward the ladder that says "Success."
So the way things work in a free libertarian society where everyone gets an opportunity is that a person seeks out one of the multitudinous Ladders of Success and starts climbing in the hopes of reaching Prosperity.
So let's say you're a young person of no particular skill but you're bright enough and motivated enough that you've landed your first job.
It's a crappy job there on that bottom rung, maybe flipping burgers or flipping bed sheets in a motel room or flipping a mop across a dirty floor, but you figure you won't be doing this forever. It's an opportunity. You'll learn something, sharpen a few skills, and use the experience to move up to that next rung on the Prosperity Ladder.
You're making $5.85 an hour and that's good enough for now.
And you also have a friend standing flatfooted on the ground who would love to hop up onto that bottom rung next to you and make $5.85 an hour, which would be $5.85 an hour more than your friend is making right now.
Then along comes Congress. As the fair, caring, sensitive, compassionate, progressive, and socially responsible Congresscrats do periodically, they decide to help poor little ol' you by ramming through the Fair, Caring, Sensitive, Compassionate, Progressive & Socially Responsible Minimum Wage Act.
So now your knees are quivering, standing there on that bottom rung, sweating out how the results of this benevolent legislation will hit you. Your boss is bound to say one of these things:
"Here's your raise, kid. Keep working."
"Here's your raise, kid. But now I can't afford to hire that friend of yours standing flatfooted on the ground, so you're gonna have to work twice as hard for your money."
"Sorry kid, I can't afford to keep you. You're gonna have to join your friend standing flatfooted on the ground, and all my other workers are gonna have to work harder to make up for it. And I'll be passing the extra labor expenses along to my customers like every other business is doing, so now you're not only unemployed but everything will cost more too."
If you were unlucky, you're standing flatfooted on the ground next to your friend looking up at that bottom rung of the ladder. Only this time the bottom rung is higher than before. Seventy cents higher.
What happens is that every minimum wage law raises the lowliest jobs on the lowest rung of the ladder higher and higher until, for some people, the poorest of the poor, the least educated and the least skilled, can't jump high enough to grab that lowest rung.
What the Congresscreeps have done, in the name of compassion and fairness, is to "raise the bar" of opportunity to a height where it can't be reached.
The fair, caring, sensitive, compassionate, progressive, and socially responsible Congresscretins have always known the results of their actions. If raising the minimum wage actually works, why stop at 70 cents? Why not go for two bucks? Or 20? Or 50?
They know it's idiotic. They raise it a few pennies because it brings in a few votes from the poor and the unskilled who don't realize it's idiotic.
They do it for show. They do it for politics.
Good luck, kids.
Garry Reed is a longtime advocate of the libertarian philosophy of non-coercion that espouses personal autonomy and individual responsibility, civil rights and economic liberty, maximum freedom and minimum government. His Web site is (http://www.freecannon.com).
