Jobs ARE Waiting! Lower/Eliminate Minimum Wage

This is something that doesn't take much brain power to understand, but one will have to admit, the howling that will ensue can not be underestimated. Can you imagine hiring people to do a job that normally demanded $7.50/hr and now they will being the same job for $5.00/hr but have a job?

This is impossible you say given our desperate situation - maybe so as the person that is unemployed can make far more on unemployment. Again what if there wasn't any unemployment? Would the person take the job? I believe so.

I once, some years ago, was looking for someone to help me do some labor on the farm so I asked my neighbor if he wanted to help out as I knew he was unemployed. He said how much and I said $5 an hour. The job entailed shoveling sawdust for horse stalls. He said no as he wouldn't work for anything less that $8. He said he would rather just stay home and do nothing. He, by the way, was laid off from an union job. I offered cash but it still was a no-go.

I believe we are headed for a fork in the road. Those that see America as a place of opportunity will take one fork and the other direction will accommodate all the rest that see America as a place to rest while others do the heavy lifting. Who will win? From what I see happening at the "listening successions", opportunity is knocking.



THERE IS AN ENDLESS NUMBER OF JOBS

Source: Jarrett Skorup, "There Is an Endless Number of Jobs," Mackinac, January 13, 2010

Earlier in the week, the Obama Administration said it would be "unrelenting" in putting Americans back to work. Indeed, Congress has named this its "top priority." However our elected representatives don't understand that there are, in fact, countless jobs in an economy. The amount of jobs are endless, what's up for discussion is how much someone is willing to pay for that job and how much someone else is willing to do it for. This is known as "supply and demand," says the Mackinac Center.

The best thing Congress could do if it really cared about job creation would be to lower or eliminate the minimum wage, says Mackinac: A high minimum wage prices low-income and low-skilled workers out of the job market.

When an employer is forced to pay more, and doesn't believe an employee is worth that amount, the job is eliminated.

Frankly, this often hits minority workers (particularly in Detroit) at a much higher rate and is often the cause of the disproportionate amount of unemployed blacks.

In 1970, economist Paul Samuelson was asked about a proposal to raise the minimum wage from its then existing level of $1.45 an hour to $2.00 an hour. He answered: What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2.00 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?

Economists are in near-universal agreement: Raising the minimum wage, as Congress has done repeatedly the past few years, almost always causes higher unemployment and more harm than good, says the Mackinac Center.

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For text:
http://www.mackinac.org/11892
For more on Economic Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=17