The most beautiful thing about the free market is the guarantee that all parties mutually benefit from engaging in any transaction. Since every agreement is based on the consent to fulfill respective desires through an exchange of goods and services, it is no surprise that efficiency, prosperity and innovation are realized to their full potential when economic freedom is at its highest.
This is a generally recognized principle. After all, there is a reason why North Koreans are starving while Americans feast on double cheeseburgers off the Dollar Menu. Yet ever since 1938, this freedom has been curtailed significantly. It was during the dark days of the Great Depression that the government first sought to control how much money employers can pay their workers in the form of a minimum wage. With this law, it became a federal crime to pay workers less than their congressionally mandated hourly salary.
It is now 2013, and economists cannot agree on exactly how this law affects workers and their bosses. Some say that artificially driving up wages reduces employment. Morality dictates that all those who work an honest day’s labor deserve enough to be fed and sheltered. Everybody understands the purpose is to help the working poor escape poverty. So what is all the fuss about?
It does not take a doctorate in economics to understand how hypocritical and counterintuitive supporters of the minimum wage are. If the aim is to help poor people, those with the lowest level of education, skills, connections and overall employability, then why make it so difficult for these people to find jobs? There is no greater way to encourage people to work off the books or engage in profitable illicit activity than criminalizing their employment up to a certain income. After all, the yearly salary of full-time workers on this wage is irrelevant if employers cannot afford to hire the people that earn it.
Additionally, since when has using the coercive power of the law to force business owners to help poor people qualified as good policy? If you truly believe that the minimum wage should be raised in order to eradicate poverty, try opening up a business and paying someone $9 an hour to do menial labor. For most, this is not fiscally possible, so many think it is okay to pass this burden on to the very people that drive our economy. By raising the minimum wage, we are engaging in a form of collectivism where the majority agrees that it is morally permissible to transfer wealth from one group of people (employers) to another group (employees). There is a word for this; it’s called stealing, and to deny this, one must explain why workers are more entitled to higher wages than employers are to keeping their money. We are not a democracy; justice is not determined by a show of hands.
The hypocrisy digs deeper. Not a single intern for any United States Senator or Congressman makes a cent for hours of secretarial work. Their wage is the experience and networking connections while working on Capitol Hill. This is a fair point, but if nonmonetary compensation is so highly valued, then why has President Obama insisted on making it harder for impoverished Americans to gain such opportunity by calling for bosses to raise their pay? For many underprivileged workers needing to put food on the table, working simply for experience and networking connections is not an option. Like labor, proper pay can come in many forms, and it is both narrow-minded and counterproductive to restrict the disadvantaged from working in jobs not accompanied by a minimum wage.
This country was not founded as, and was never meant to become, a democracy. Rather, we have striven to become a meritocracy, where it takes more than a congressional mandate to determine the true worth of one’s labor. If we trust the free market to determine the price of work for the 95 percent of people who don’t make minimum wage, it is a small leap of faith to believe it can take care of the rest. For the sake of those in dire straits, abolish the minimum wage, and see their boats lifted with the rising tide.