Now that the Democrats have taken control of Congress, a hike in the minimum wage can't be far behind.
George Will says, in this column, that the minimum wage should be zero. He knocks the legs out from under all those supporters of the minimum wage hike, looking at who actually gets the lowest salaries and why.
Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum lives in families with earnings below the poverty line. Sixty percent work part time, and their average household income is well over $40,000. (The average and median household incomes are $63,344 and $46,326, respectively.)
Forty percent of American workers are salaried. Of the 75.6 million paid by the hour, 1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less, and of these, more than half are under 25 and more than a quarter are between ages 16 and 19. Many are students or other part-time workers. Sixty percent of those earning the federal minimum or less work in restaurants and bars and earn tips -- often untaxed, perhaps -- in addition to wages. Two-thirds of those earning the federal minimum today will, a year from now, have been promoted and be earning 10 percent more. Raising the minimum wage predictably makes work more attractive relative to school for some teenagers and raises the dropout rate. Two scholars report that in states that allow people to leave school before 18, a 10 percent increase in the state minimum wage caused teenage school enrollment to drop 2 percent.
I've spent some time over at Liberal Avenger says why I think raising the minimum wage is, at best, a feel-good measure that won't affect much of anybody. Locally, most of the traditionally minimum wage jobs are paying between $7 and $8 an hour.
It's understandable that Democrats are still in love with the minimum wage. They are stuck in the early 20th Century, when breadwinners made pennies per hour and babies starved because of it. But this is the 21st century and the people who tend to make the minimum wage are neither breadwinners nor supporting large families. But don't wake the Democrats from that fantasy.
|