Have You Ever Wondered...

...what the Minimum Wage would be if there were no Minimum Wage?

Think of it:  If the Feds didn't stick their gigantic, gaping maw into our daily lives, inserting themselves between us and those we might wish to employ, or employ us, then what might those prospective employers actually be willing to pay us to obtain our labor?

Think a bit further:  If this capitalistic, market-based economy in which we're told we live was to actually be operated that way, then employers would compete for our labor!  They would pay us what we're worth, not just the minimum they can get away with.

And, conversely, given that we're guaranteed the freedom to "pursue" happiness, not to actually achieve it, perhaps that "what we're worth" number could be quite a bit less than normally expected these days.

As a graduate economist, a guy with a successful bizz career, a guy who has hired and trained and managed hundreds of folks, including many just starting out, I hereby offer up the admittedly-radical theory that the MinWage is a net deterrent to a starting pay that mirrors the applicant's true value.  

What is the "Minimum Wage" anyway?  It's a "snatched-out-of-the-air" number chosen by politicians to make employers pay their newby employees more than they're actually worth.  Remember, they're spending somebody else's money!  They're pretty good at that, right?

It was just a few years back that minimum wage jobs...only paid a minimum wage.  Little Johnnie needs an after school job so he can earn some money to gas up the Family Truckster and take Cute Suzie to the movies.  He knows less than nothing, has almost no skills and is worth farrrrrr less than the MinWage.  But the Feds decided that they must place a floor on that number, lest an evil employer try to screw an ignorant employee like Little Johnnie out of his labor.   

And that number has been determined by each individual state, with the caveat that they must be equal to or greater than the standard Federal MinWage.  Greater's fine, just not less.  And that number kept on creeping up, only slightly, as the years wore on, settling at about $7.65 right about now.  However, the imposition of that MinWage standard has imposed a deterrent to hiring for decades.  If you've got a job to do that's not worth upwards of $10 an hour, which is what the MinWage would cost if grossed-up to cover matching contributions and taxes the employer must pay, then you simply don't hire.  Period.

Make it too tough for an employer to hire, he'll not hire.  Get in his stuff too deep and he'll just rebel.  

Buuuuuuut, states like CA and NY and MD and OR and WA decided somewhere along the line that it's THEIR job to decide how much a Korean grocer, or an Italian restauranteur or a Chinese laundry, or a Mexican gardener should pay its  help.  Talk about chutzpah (Jewish deli)!  And once they got started, and learned they could pander to a whole new group of people looking to trade their vote for "stuff," they kept on increasing the amount of "stuff."  In the case of the MinWage, from modest increases in the beginning, it's now almost universally $15.00 an hour over just the past couple of years, with plans to jack it up even further!

You might wish to know this whole "Fight for Fifteen" campaign was financed and has been orchestrated by the unions, who are looking for an entire new flock to fleece, as their membership has dwindled alarmingly over the years.  So if they can get the politicians to make the employers pony up $15 an hour, then they can force the newby employees to unionize, and then pay monthly dues.  Dues, I might add, that would erase the hourly increase their new members just realized.  Yep, the MinWage is becoming the "living wage."  Except it never really works that way...

BTW, you might want to also think about the fact that our newly-minted U. S. soldiers and sailors make LESS than $15 an hour...

Sooooo, in this day and age of everyone getting a trophy for just participating, perhaps people don't want to compete for their wages.  Perhaps they'd rather just leave the negotiating to the Gummint.  I mean, after all, aren't these the very same folks who tax the guy who hired you for hiring you, and you for having taken the job?  Should THESE be the folks who are calling the shots as to what everybody makes? 

By the way, Little Johnnie, no gas for you and Suzie.  Tough noogies...