The Wrong Questions Are Being Asked About Fast-Food Wages

By, Chris Rossini

The whole minimum-wage debate for fast-food workers keeps getting more ridiculous by the day.

The lack of economic understanding is just startling! You have Robert Reich circulating a petition that the minimum wage should be doubled to $15.

Then there's E.J. Dionne saying that customers should start pressuring fast-food chains to pay their workers more; because, after all, customers are workers too.

And then there's Mother Jones creating calculators that supposedly answer the question "Could You Survive on Fast-Food Wages?" This seems to be the big argument for the initiators of force. The economy is so screwed up that the low income earners cannot sustain themselves.

Naturally, the initiators of force, want to kick the low-skilled while they're down. With all the "help" that they've provided up to this moment, their accomplishments have amounted to nothing more than further grinding those with low-skills into the dirt.

A critical reason is because the wrong questions are being asked. The big question is not "Should the minimum wage be raised?"...It should be "Should there be a minimum wage at all?"

The answer, for anyone who understands the basic laws of supply & demand, is an unequivocal: "No!"

The minimum wage is nothing more than a tool for forced unemployment. A $15 minimum wage means than anyone who does not have the skills to earn $15/hr is forced out of the market. They are forbidden by law from making a voluntary contract with a potential employer to work for less money.

The government can create as much unemployment as it wants just by raising the minimum wage. Raise it to $40, $50, and even $100/hr, and almost everyone reading this article would be out of a job.

Perhaps it's time to to ignore those who lust for force, and start asking some better questions.

I've come up with just a few:

• Should the government have a monopoly on education?
• Should there be Federal Reserve with its constant debasement of the dollar, continue to make life miserable for the poor by robbing them of purchasing power?
• Should there be a military empire that sucks out TRILLIONS of dollars from the productive to create destruction around the world?
• Should there be so much red tape in starting a business, that most people just throw their hands up and give up even trying? We've reached the point where licenses are required for lemonade stands and garage sales!!
• Should our every move and breath be taxed to fund the biggest government that has ever occupied the Earth?

Perhaps these questions (and there are many more along the same lines) should be leading the headlines.

We'd be much closer to solving the problems of the low-skilled, instead of constantly making them worse.

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