The FairTax, Join in!

[senseinobaka]

Final-Fan said:

Lingyis said:
minimum wages seems like a minor detail to get caught up with in the grand scheme of FairTax proposal. if FairTax can be implemented, minimum wages is a pretty simple thing to get rid of.

Why on earth would we want to get rid of the minimum wage? But yes, it's pretty irrelevant to the FairTax debate.

 Minimum Wage has a lot of problems to the fiscal conservative. It's one of those things that sound nice and important but then you look beneath the surface to some of the glaring problems.

1) Where in the constitution does it say the Federal government can force a person or company to pay a certain price for something? That is not free trade. And in the case of Min Wage the government forces someone to pay more than the value. This sounds mean spirited, but it isn’t. A grocery bagger is a good example, that child's labor is not worth much and the government should not force someone to pay more than it is worth. This does not mean the person is not worth much, it simply means the labor he is trading for money is not worth much money.

2) So Min Wage may increase what one worker makes, but what does it do for the person that now loses their job? It's sad, but the summer following the Min Wage increase was the summer High School kids and College Kids had the hardest time finding seasonal employment since Bush became president. Any educated person can deduce the consequence of raising price on a service. It reduces demand. Labor is no different.

3) It encourages businesses to cut out job categories. Let's go back to my grocery bagger. If the price for that labor is increased, what prevents the grocer to just say; "No more Baggers!"? Think about it. When was the last time you saw a bagger at Wal-Mart?  See, Wal-Mart doesn’t want to higher another person at $7.00 / hr, instead they by a $50 contraption called a Lazy Suzie, install it on the checkout counters and have the Point of Sale operator stuff the bags. Increasing Min Wage would only encourage businesses to follow suit.

4) My personal biggie. Its underhanded cronyism on the Democrat's Part. The biggest campaign supporters and the group that easily own the Democratic Party are Unions. Min Wage is a way of saying "Thanks" to the Union Bosses and uses legislation to make the Union Bosses much richer. How you may ask? Well union pay rates are pegged to the Min Wage. When min wage goes up then a union workers wage goes up. This screws over the business they work for, the consumers that will by their products, and in some cases the union worker. But it is awesome for the rich Union Bosses, because their salary is a percentage of the Workers pay. It's Sick.