Minimum Wage – Econ 101

A couple of months ago I stumbled across a story regarding fast food workers, minimum wage and Labor Day – they decided that they needed to strike to protest the current minimum wage.

Their arguments are as old as they are wrong minded.  They claim that everyone deserves a living wage and that the best way to accomplish this is to increase the minimum wage.

Fast food workers in several states and abroad plan to walk off the job today to call for higher pay and better working conditions. The Associated Press reports that the protesters in the U.S. are demanding a $15 minimum wage. In Massachusetts, they are also pushing for union rights and paid medical leave.

Forget for a second that very few people work for the minim wage, most of those that do end up with a raise, and even of those that don’t – a significant number live in a household that has earns enough money to live on.

The fact is, labor, not the laborer but the labor, is a commodity.  Raise the price of it and people will purchase less of it.

Case in  point – McDonald’s simply hires fewer McWorkers to work in their McBurgerJoint.  I witnessed this first had just a few short weeks ago.

Raising the minimum wage might help the very few who earn it but it will certainly hurt those who fail to obtain employment as a result of being priced out of the market.

One response to “Minimum Wage – Econ 101

  1. People also don’t seem to realize that many small restaurants can’t compete against the big corps like McD’s when it comes to paying a $15 min wage, so their “living wage” bs actually helps the “fat cats” and hurts the ppl that would fight against them.

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