Seeing a flurry of social media posts about the minimum wage got me to thinking that it really is a terrible idea to have a federally-mandated minimum wage at all.
Companies should pay wages that are tied to an employee’s skill set and contributions to the company’s success. In fact, they pretty much have to, otherwise employees leave to go work for companies that do. That’s how it should work. Free Enterprise as a system is pretty good at taking care of that. In fact, there’s really no reason in this age to have a federal minimum wage. Federally regulating the wage floor has hurt the U.S., not helped it. It established a “good enough” mentality at which anyone with a W-2 can be content to do the minimum effort needed to get their federally-mandated minimum wage.
We’ve all be victims of this assault on the economy. Workers who give terrible service, who don’t care about making customers happy, etc. They have, I think, the most pernicious and damaging of entitlement mentalities that the government has enabled via bad ideas like a minimum wage.
Anecdotal stories about people making minimum wage after working at McDonald’s for several years says far more about the employee than the employer. I can’t imagine being that ineffective as an employee, or having so little ambition to better my position!
Also, one cannot ignore the fact that arbitrarily hiking the minimum wage for all workers puts people at the lowest income levels OUT OF WORK. The CBO predicted it (http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44995-MinimumWage.pdf), and it has already happened in the states that have raised the minimum wage.
Hopefully Trump and Clinton can read and do the math.
Free Enterprise Works – So Let It
Seeing a flurry of social media posts about the minimum wage got me to thinking that it really is a terrible idea to have a federally-mandated minimum wage at all.
Companies should pay wages that are tied to an employee’s skill set and contributions to the company’s success. In fact, they pretty much have to, otherwise employees leave to go work for companies that do. That’s how it should work. Free Enterprise as a system is pretty good at taking care of that. In fact, there’s really no reason in this age to have a federal minimum wage. Federally regulating the wage floor has hurt the U.S., not helped it. It established a “good enough” mentality at which anyone with a W-2 can be content to do the minimum effort needed to get their federally-mandated minimum wage.
We’ve all be victims of this assault on the economy. Workers who give terrible service, who don’t care about making customers happy, etc. They have, I think, the most pernicious and damaging of entitlement mentalities that the government has enabled via bad ideas like a minimum wage.
Anecdotal stories about people making minimum wage after working at McDonald’s for several years says far more about the employee than the employer. I can’t imagine being that ineffective as an employee, or having so little ambition to better my position!
Also, one cannot ignore the fact that arbitrarily hiking the minimum wage for all workers puts people at the lowest income levels OUT OF WORK. The CBO predicted it (http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44995-MinimumWage.pdf), and it has already happened in the states that have raised the minimum wage.
Hopefully Trump and Clinton can read and do the math.