Be Careful With What You Wish For

Now while the supporters of the minimum wage bill call the passage of this bill as a victory for "working families", they fail to realize that more often than not the individuals working these jobs are teenagers, folks just entering the workforce waiting for a better job, individuals supplementing their spouses income but very seldom do you find a family of four living on minimum wage. One only has to look at this piece from the Arizona Central to realize that a minimum wage hike much like anything in economics has a significant economic trade-off thus for the employer to continue to pay at this new wage they are either going to have raise prices on goods or services or cut costs which in most cases means cutting their work staff by getting rid of the least experienced and younger workers. It might not mean much to these politicians that raising the minimum wage costs young teenagers jobs but they fail to realize that by killing such jobs they rob these teenagers of part-time or even summer jobs which provide them with a sense of earning their way in the world and gaining much needed work experience that in turn helps them out when they venture into the real world after they graduate from high school or college. So even though the Republicans in the Senate got tax breaks installed in the bill to ease such burdens on small employers, I think that before Speaker Pelosi and her band of merry Democrats get to excited about pushing through a hike in the minimum wage (Everything is done but a conference to pound out the difference between the House and Senate as well as the President's signature) they should take a good look at what harm such legislation can cause. They should remember that these teens and new workers who will lose their jobs from this hike will eventually be eligible to vote and might aid others in casting out the whole lot of Democrats who pushed through such legislation.