by Jason Downs

Created on: June 03, 2009

Is raising the minimum wage a good idea?

The first response to this question should be the qualifier "to whom?" Is it a good idea to politicians, to people already earning minimum wage, to people who earn slightly more than minimum wage, to the consumer, to the unskilled worker, to the business owner, etc.?

Outside of corporate executives, plastic surgeons, and professional sports players, most people don't have an objection to someone making more money provided that there is some objective reason that they deserve it. People say things like "teachers should make what those NBA players make" anytime someone brings up a discussion on comparable wages.

However, the lack of contextual reality is often overlooked and things like "living wages" invariably come up at some point with respect to minimum wage. The problem with that is, as mentioned, that the context is often vague. Who really makes minimum wages, and whose business is it of anyone in government or other regulatory agency to decide what a person's actual "sweat" is worth?

By and large, the people who can only earn minimum wage do not have any significantly marketable skills. The concept of a minimum wage was not originally introduced as a means for people building wealth. It was a systemic answer to the abuses of labor and the subjugation of people who had worth beyond the means to acquire and demand additional compensation for the value of the work they produced. It was designed, primarily, to keep employers from universally depressing wages in a time where children were forced into "sweat shops" to produce products that actually required specialized skills to be created in a time where, even the most pitiful amount of income, was preferable to none.

However, we moved past that many decades ago. Politicians saw a way to make government control of wages into a new way of obtaining votes and maintaining their power over a voting block. It wasn't enough to just make sure that people weren't being taken advantage of for their circumstances. It became a way of convincing people to vote time and again for the people who could find a way for the masses to earn more money for doing the same job. It then became a way for the politicians to assert their authority over the business owner to pay progressively more money to their workers. That wave did not stop building, and there are many policies that have increased the burden on the businessman throughout the decades (like mandating healthcare),

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