The Rage Over Minimum Wage

MY TAKE

Ive been told that Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and other have recently been in Ohio complaining about the current rate of the minimum wage in American. Evidentally, some grassroots groups right here in the Buckeye state have been planning to take matter into their own hands and get legislation passed in the state legislature to raise the wage. Clinton and Edwards are in the camp, like the majority of the Democratic Party, which says that having a low minimum wage hurts tons of working families in this country and blah blah blah. For those of you who dont know, the minimum wage is currently $5.15 and has been since 1997.

In my opinion, the minimum wage should be extremely low, to give people an incentive for actually getting a good education which will allow them to make more money to support them and their families. I do understand that not everyone is cut out for higher education, but those people can still learn a trade at a vocational school which will be much to their benefit. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics says that more than 80% of people making the minimum wage have no dependents, meaning the obvious, that most are teenage kids. Trust me, if your are middle aged with children and your making minimum wage, you probably have many other problems unrelated to anything Im talking about here.

This whole debate has a eerie existance of hypocracy if I say so myself. Remember how the Democrats always moan about how Republicans use issues like gay marriage and flag burning just to rally their base around election time? Well that is exactly what the Dems are doing here. Minimum wage has been a constant issue of their platform since is was instituted by FDR, and now they are using it to get themselves much needed votes for the upcoming election. Its a loser now and always has been. I dont think that many people making minimum wage who are over the age of 18 vote in huge numbers, but I guess I could be wrong. Probably not though.

Here is what I suggest: I personally would support raising the minimum wage, but only to $5.65 tops. With gas prices where they are and inflation rates rising, even high school kids should be able to enjoy themselves and their paychecks a little more. Plus they tend to spend money like crazy, which in it of itself helps the overall economy. I however do not, and will never support raising it to $6.85, which is where the likes of Hillary wants it. Thats way too much and will cause a lot of inflation just by itself. It would be nice if the Democrats tried it my way, instead of trying to lie to the American people by telling them that a low minimum wage hurts countless families in this country, which again just aint true. Im not really worried about this entire issue though, with Republicans in control of basically the entire country, I wouldnt invision any raise in the minimum wage in the very near future. Yet another reason why we must prevail on November 7th, 2006. Dont let these people ruin the economy the Bush administration created.

-Brad