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IPFS News Link • Minimum Wage

Help Unskilled Workers: Abolish the Minimum Wage

• https://www.lewrockwell.com by Walter E. Block

The minimum wage law does not require that a single solitary employee receive a boost in salary. Rather, it mandates that if such a person is hired, he or she must be paid at the level stipulated by law. A minimum wage of $15 per hour, which the United States is considering, need not lift anyone's wage to that level. A person with productivity of $10 per hour, say, might not be hired at all, since employing people who lose you $5 per hour is an invitation to bankruptcy.

The minimum wage is not an employment law; it's an unemployment law. It decrees who will not be hired — namely, anyone whose productivity is below the designated wage. It doesn't create a floor, raising wages. It's a hurdle that potential employees must clear in order to get a job. And the higher it is, the harder it is to clear.

If the minimum wage really were a rising floor, boosting everyone's compensation as it rose in height, why stop at $15? Why not make it $150, or $1,500? We would all be rich! And not just us. We could abolish foreign aid. Instead of sending money or CARE packages to poor countries, we could just advise them to institute a minimum wage or, if they already have one, raise it to the skies.


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