All's Fair in Love and Politics.

Ever since the implementation of a minimum wage in the early 1900's, Americans have been trying to raise it. Jennifer Avilez in her post Minimum Wage & Inflation seeks to promote this view by claiming that raising the minimum wage in Texas, which is equal to the mandated Federal wage of $7.25 per hour, will bring "more spending power" to the "6.3 million Texans" who receive that. In short, Avilez asks whether this is "fair" to those who do make that much seeing as the price of living is rising.

I'm here to claim that it is completely fair. Why would it not be? Do people deserve a certain standard of living no matter the type of job, no matter my previous experience? The true unfairness would be to force businesses to raise wages when they do not think it is economically viable.

Raising the minimum wage goes against much of basic economic theory, that is, the more you forcibly increase wages the less ability on the part of business owners and managers to higher more workers. So in effect, the people already hired do receive more income, however, less people are hired, creating more unemployment. Some do disagree with this view and report, as show here, that raising minimum wage has little to no negative effect overall on a city's unemployment. However, as explained here, the study that calculated the effects of the minimum wage increase in New Jersey in 1994, did not take into account the very small businesses and instead focused more on already established businesses that had more weight to throw around and little to lose with a slight increase in wage costs. The metaphorical David's of the business world were not so lucky though. When my current employers first established their businesses, they didn't even pay themselves, and they were working at a deficit for the first few years. A mandatory wage increase would have destroyed them. Avilez also points to inflation as being a problem. Stating that it should be regulated or at least have the minimum wage be gauged to correlate with inflation. I'm no economist, but inflation isn't something that is a causeless, controlling it isn't a matter of simple legislation, and increasing wages as inflation increases can only exacerbate the problem. For example, if the minimum wage was truly beneficial, then it would be reasonable to force businesses to have $100/hour salaries.

Lastly, this, like all other issues in politics and economics, is inseparable from a moral theory. Force is fundamentally antithetical to freedom and making rational, long term decisions. The average business owner is not trying to oppress their workers with poor wages and poorer work conditions. They know if you try to sell a minimum wage job you better have some extra benefits to back it up, e.g. HEB. I do not disagree that wages should be raised in order to be more competitive, especially in metropolitan areas where city living expenses cannot be managed solely by a minimum wage job. However, the means of raising them is where I stand firmly on free-market principles. Businesses raise wages in order to be more competitive. At my job, I was hired well above minimum wage with little experience and have worked my way up to what many consider a comfortable income for one person. All because my employers relied more on gaining competitive advantage by enticing good workers rather than placating a government mandate.