"The only way to explain Republican bulldozing of the first minimum wage increase in a decade through the House of Representatives last week is election year political banditry -- even though it was paired with a cut in estate taxes. Before the Senate debates this bill, it is important to remind ourselves that government-mandated minimum wage helps no one in the long run. Parents of high school students and advocates for the poor should be outraged at the proposed increase because it discourages employers from hiring teenagers and low-skilled minorities.Presumably, those interested in increasing the minimum wage are not trying to cause many teenagers to become unemployed. Nor are they intending to reduce the number of low-skilled workers who have jobs. Nor are they intending to reduce the incomes of employers, or increase the prices paid for goods and services. But each of these things will happen, according to economic analysis, if the minimum wage is increased.
[. . . .]
Emotionally, the issue is a winner -- who can be against lifting the prospects of the most poorly paid workers among us? But when viewed through economic analysis, the bill appears less rosy. Such an increase actually hurts teens and low-skilled minorities in the long run because minimum wage jobs are usually entry-level positions filled by employees with limited work experience and few job skills. When the government forces employers to pay their workers more than a job’s productivity demands, employers, in order to stay in business, generally respond by hiring fewer hours of low-skill labor. Low-skill workers become too expensive to employ, creating a new army of permanent part-timers.
[. . . .]
University of Connecticut economics professor, Kenneth Couch, estimates that a one-dollar rise in the minimum wage in the current economic environment would further reduce teenage employment opportunities by at least 145,000 -- and possibly as many as 436,000 -- jobs."
Certainly those employees who continue in their jobs will earn more income because of a government forced increase in the wage they receive, but such an increase in their incomes will just as certainly come with a decrease in the incomes of those who become unemployed (or unemployable) because of the increased minimum wage.
I think many people of faith strongly support an increase in the minimum wage, but I suspect they are perhaps unaware of the actual economic effects of such an increase. Perhaps they realize the full range of economic effects, and find some moral justification for government acting to gain these effects. For myself, I cannot find in my Christian faith support for using government's force in this way, because it seems to me to amount to taking from some to give to others. It seems to me that increasing the minimum wage will take income from those who will become unemployed (or become unemployable because they are a teenager), to increase the incomes of those who remain employed. I also see force used by government in a way that means people spend more for goods and services and thus have less real income for use in support of their own livelihoods and the livelihood of their families.
Of course, someone may want to argue that the economic analysis is not correct. That the minimum wage increase will not decrease the incomes of employers, nor will it increase the prices paid for goods and services, nor will it cause people to loose jobs they would have otherwise had. What I am interested in is, assuming the results described by Mr. Bradley and myself here will occur, how can we see an increase in the minimum wage as moral?
