We say we're trying to help the working poor while we actually will be helping young part-time workers. There is one thing, however, upon which there is agreement. Economists from all persuasions agree that increasing the minimum wage will mean lost jobs and it will mean inflation.
The minimum wage has caused more misery and unemployment than anything since the Great Depression.
The question of the minimum wage goes beyond the immediate problem. It strikes at a basic underpinning of our democratic system. It touches on the ability of individuals to enter freely into contract without coercion and without arbitrary restrictions for mutual profit. Have we so soon forgotten that the American Revolution was fought in part because of such restrictions? Have we forgotten that there is a correlation between a free market economy and the amount of personal freedom enjoyed by the inhabitants of a country? I certainly hope not. What we are accomplishing by setting a minimum wage is restricting the ability of persons to freely contract for their services and, in so doing, effectively limiting their opportunities to achieve economic well-being.
Under these inflationary pressures many of the industries and small businesses employing marginally trained or unskilled workers will be forced to cut back on the number of those employees or go out of business. The very worker that the Federal minimum wage was intended to aid will find himself out of work.
I am vitally concerned about the thousands of teenagers and young adults who will either lose their jobs or be rendered unemployable in the unskilled labor markets as the result of increasing the minimum wage to $2.50 or more per hour.
But where will employers obtain the money to pay for that increase? It is unrealistic to assume that somehow the increase will be squeezed out of profits….In plain fact, the burden of an increased minimum wage will fall heavily on those least able to bear it. The fringe employers, the unskilled worker, the young and the handicapped are those who will be priced out of the job market.
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