A Living Wage
We keep hearing people who want to "fight for 15" and are advocates of a "living wage". Well, I'm not going to spout off the generic, "entry level jobs aren't careers" because you never know what someone has been through. Let's not jump to conclusions. Circumstances occur in which someone has no choice but to get a job at a fast food joint. I will, however, outline the consequences of having a mandatory minimum wage.
So many people fail to realize that when you force an employer to pay their employees more, they're not going to take the cut out of their own pay. If that were the case, they would have already done it. Compassion is not something that can be forced. Raising the minimum wage has always resulted in an increase in the price of goods as well as an increase in lay offs. It just doesn't work.
Something else that people don't realize is that raising the minimum wage causes college degree inflation. The kind of job that I could fetch twenty years ago with a bachelor's degree now requires me to have a master's. As an employer, if I'm going to be forced to pay my employees more, they had better be worth it.
As the minimum wage increases, so do the other pay levels. Otherwise, companies would have a lot of disgruntled employees. If I've been working at a company for 5 years and I started at $10 per hour and now I make $15 an hour, but someone else just got hired at $15 due to the minimum wage increase, we're going to have a problem. Employers know this and act accordingly.
Cross this kind of inflation with the inflation of the US dollar and you've got for a recipe for economic collapse. Although, of course that may just be the best option at this rate. There's no turning back now.
People tend to forget that the true minimum wage is and always will be zero anyway. Ever heard of an unpaid internship? Personally, I would like to gain experience and get paid for it. I don't even need a whole lot of money, I would be willing to work a part-time job along with my regular full-time job in an industry which actually is appealing to me. I would do it for less than the minimum wage just to gain experience and then take my knowledge elsewhere. Unfortunately, the government will not allow such a voluntary interaction between two private parties. So now, not only is it more difficult for me to achieve proper schooling, as previously mentioned, but I also have a much more difficult time gaining experience.
What I believe to be the most obvious negative consequence of the minimum wage however is lack of incentive. Why not just give up on my dreams and work at Taco Bell for $15 an hour? Think about it. All the Baja Blast Mountain Dew that I could ever want. I don't even have to get drug tested. Like I said, this is not always the case, but for some people it can be. If you take away a person's drive for success and placate them then it's much easier to control them.
Don't fight for $15. It's not a living wage, it's a surviving wage. Living by force is no way to live. Fight for freedom, voluntary associations, and the ability to forge your own path.