Aruna Roy's 'Minimum Wage' breeds Poverty

I am sick to my stomach having to listen to propaganda spouting socialists parading as economists on TV, night after night. The latest socialist rabble rousing on the idiot box comes in the wake of Aruna Roy quitting the NAC. And pray why has Roy quit? She's unhappy the government's not raising minimum wages under the MGNREGA.

Well, what can I say? She's quitting because someone in the government has got the good sense to not rob the industrious to pay the slothful!

About minimum wage, there isn't a worse tool to keep the poor poor than minimum wages. Note Thomas Sowell on 'minimum wage',

Most studies of minimum wage laws in countries around the world show that fewer people are employed at artificially higher wage rates. Moreover, unemployment falls disproportionately on lower skilled workers, younger and inexperienced workers, and workers from minority groups.

The new Cato Institute study cites data showing job losses in places where living wage laws have been imposed. This should not be the least bit surprising. Making anything more expensive almost invariably leads to fewer purchases. That includes labor.

While trying to solve a non-problem -- supporting families that don't exist, in most cases -- the living wage crusade creates a very real problem of low-skilled workers having trouble finding a job at all.

People in minimum wage jobs do not stay at the minimum wage permanently. Their pay increases as they accumulate experience and develop skills. It increases an average of 30 percent in just their first year of employment, according to the Cato Institute study. Other studies show that low-income people become average-income people in a few years and high-income people later in life.

All of this depends on their having a job in the first place, however. But the living wage kills jobs.

As imposed wage rates rise, so do job qualifications, so that less skilled or less experienced workers become "unemployable." Think about it. Every one of us would be "unemployable" if our pay rates were raised high enough.

I would love to believe that the Hoover Institution would continue to hire me if I demanded double my current salary. But you notice that I don't make any such demand. Third parties need to stop making such demands for other people. It is more important for people to have jobs than for busybodies to feel noble.