Minimum-Wage Debate Affects 0.4 Percent of Workers

Friday, 17 Apr 2015 08:43 AM

By Michael Carr





Should we raise prices for more than 300 million Americans to help 550,000 minimum-wage workers? Yes, we should, according to most media reports.

According to Federal Reserve data there are 550,000 workers over the age of 25 being paid the minimum wage. There are no data on how many work for large and presumably evil corporations and how many work for small businesses. There are no data showing how many businesses can afford to increase wages and still continue to operate.

The only data we really have are that 550,000 of the 129.5 million people over the age of 25 who are employed make the minimum wage. This might be a problem, but there are other problems that affect far more people.

Even if the low wages of 0.4 percent of workers is a serious problem, should we mandate a solution that could force some businesses to close? That would create worse problems for the newly unemployed that would then make $0 per hour instead of $7.25.

Debate over the minimum wage demonstrates that policy is made by sound bites and sad stories in the media rather than economic principles. Until debate is driven by intellectual discussion rather than emotion, deficits will continue to spiral out of control, regulations will increase unemployment and there will be more and more sad stories for the media to cover.

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