Minimum Wage, Minimum Brain

By Monty Pelerin

Minimum wage is always a popular subject with politicians around election time. Sadly, its advocacy is the worst and cruelest form of pandering possible. It is political hackery of a type that reveals the blatant cruelty of politics and the motivation of the politician who advocates it. Anyone who supports the minimum wage is of minimum brain or downright disingenuous. Most politicians are not of minimum brain.

An introductory economics course or plain common sense is all that is required to understand the harm of price interventions. To support the minimum wage is to either declare yourself stupid or to declare your supporters so. Minimum wage is targeted at minimum brain people — people either too ignorant or stupid to know better. What is so cruel about this tactic is that it harvests votes from the very people it promises to help while hurting them more.

Obvious economics is not enough to kill the fallacy of minimum wage. Most people find such reasoning and logic boring. Perhaps providing a frame of reference for the currently proposed level for the minimum wage is more useful. The author (unknown) of this bit of wisdom  provides a simple perspective. It contrasts the absurdity of the currently proposed level. Note, there is no correct level.

Personally, I would like this to be shown on the black board (if there are still such things) in every high school classroom in the United States. Low military pay was not mentioned in the State Of The Union speech, but of course increasing the minimum wage was … Minimum Wage for those fast-food employees striking for $15 an hour.

Let’s do some math: At $15 an hour Johnny Fry-Boy would make $31,200 annually. An E1 (Private) in the military makes $18,378. An E5 (Sergeant) with 8 years of service only makes $35,067 annually. So you’re telling me, LaTisha McBurgerflipper, that you deserve as much as those kids getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day protecting you.

Here’s the deal, Baconator, you are working in a job designed for a kid in high school who is learning how to work and earning enough for gas, and hanging out with their equally goofy high school pals.  If you have chosen this as your life-long profession, you have failed. If you don’t want minimum wage, don’t have minimum skills.

Any politician advocating a minimum wage should be removed from office on grounds of either stupidity or cruelty. The poor and uneducated have enough problems without being preyed upon by unscrupulous politicians advancing their personal careers on their backs. Minimum wage, for them, represents maximum pain.

http://www.economicnoise.com/2016/01/27/minimum-wage-equals-minimum-brain/

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