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About Me
- Connor Hamilton
- Hillsdale, Michigan, United States
- I am a junior History major at Hillsdale College in southern Michigan. I would like to write, or teach (or, if God wills it, both), in a way that honors God and benefits men. My interests include writing, reading, foreign affairs and politics, friendly discourse, and outdoor activities like hiking and cycling. I am interested in many historical eras, but I have focused on Europe (particularly Germany and Russia) in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the history of the Middle East, and Islam as a whole.
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2 comments:
I’ve always thought that minimum wage is totally unnecessary in this country. It’s not as if we have some sort of cast system that only allows certain people to have well-paying jobs. One of the truly great things remaining in this country is that fact that anyone, if he is willing to work hard, can get a good job and make decent money. I think that if an employer wants to pay someone 50 cents an hour, he should be allowed to do so. He probably won’t hire anyone, and it will be his own fault. If he does hire someone, that person can’t complain that he’s not making enough to support his family because he agreed to the wages. No one forced him to accept them.
As Stossel says, it’s just a “feel-good” law. If anyone opposes lowering minimum wage, he’s automatically an evil freak who wants poor people’s children to starve. Yet as Stossel says, very few people make minimum wage, and few of those who do have families. My older brother started working when he was sixteen (I think), and has never been paid minimum wages. No one should be raising a family if he doesn’t make enough to support one, and if he is doing so, then it’s his own fault that he can’t feed them, and the government should have no obligation to help him. Others may do so privately, but not the government. Just like gun control, raising minimum wage only hurts those it’s intended to help.
I suppose all of that’s been said before, but there’s my agreement with it.
~David
Thanks for the comment, David!
I think this issue is another case of government interference vs. changed hearts. One of the problems with minimum wage laws is that the government manufactures the standard. Stossel and you are right to say it's "feel-good"; it makes the government feel like it's doing something honorable. What they're really doing, though, is forcing companies to pay more than what the workers are worth. The companies will retaliate (even though it's a natural tendency, probably with nothing retaliatory about it) by raising their prices to cushion the shock of paying menial laborers $7.50 an hour or whatever the requirement is. Then the workers will go out with their new cash and find it's worth the same because everything costs more! It seems pretty simple to me. The real solution would be for people with high wages to (privately) help those with lower wages if real poverty threatens--and, more importantly, for people to learn a good work ethic so their labor is worth enough to support a family. Just paying them more than they're worth won't cut it.
I'm glad you brought up the example of your brother. In real life, I don't think wages are as big a problem as many people like to believe--once again, it just feels good to spout that the poor and getting poorer and scurry around enacting legislation that assumes the periodic table has a new element My, or money, that can be sifted from the topsoil.
Your gun control example is a good one too. That's an issue I may bring up here before long. :-)
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