MINIMUM WAGE INSANITY - EXPERTS WITHOUT SCHOLARSHIP

I still see self-appointed "experts" expounding the virtues of compulsory minimum wage laws as if there were no empirical evidence of such experiments in the past.  But there is enormous experience with such "good intentions," and they never work.  http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/negative-effects-minimum-wage-laws  I try to point out the scholarly analysis that demonstrates the folly of such efforts, but facts mean nothing to liberals convinced of their own superior intellects.  They insist that paying unskilled laborers more money for the same labor output will allow them to raise their standards of living and stimulate the economy by their ability to spend more.  To these "geniuses," this tactic places more money into the economy.  It NEVER occurs to them that the money for this strategy is already IN THE ECONOMY!  It cannot come from anywhere else.  All this is is a redistribution of money from someone who has earned it to someone who has not.  The true earner who HAS added to the economy does not get to spend the fruits of his own labor.  He is compelled to give his profit to someone else to spend and is thus thwarted from the opportunity to invest in his own business and to make the economy grow.  And what happens when the economy doesn't grow as fast as the population does?  Do I need to explain that?

In spite of all the sanctimonious assurances, the only effect minimum wage laws have is to make the cost of labor more expensive.  This is the very definition of inflation!  And what is the purpose of every labor union if not to make the cost of labor more expensive?  I have tried to point out to union stooges that by securing greater benefits for workers there is no possibility that standards of living will rise and that such practices actually dig workers into a hole that gets deeper and deeper.  As an example, I had a minimum wage job 50 years ago that paid $1.30 per hour.  I could purchase more than 5 gallons of gas for my hourly wage and a McDonald burger was just 15 cents!  If we raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, the unskilled worker will still not be able to buy as much gasoline as I could 50 years ago.  The liberals will scream in rage that this means that the minimum wage should be $25 an hour!  They never ask what the price of gasoline will be with a minimum wage that high.  They are unable to discern the connection between wage inflation and price inflation.  So why do government tyrants try to impose both wage and price controls as they try to rein in inflation?  It appears that even political opportunists get the point--but not true liberals.  Perhaps they do understand it but also recognize that the masses can never resist the fraud of this shell game.  The larger paycheck is just too irresistible to the useful idiots among us who never comprehend that their money gets increasingly more worthless with each increase in wages for the exact same labor output.  

There is only one way to raise one's standard of living and that is to increase the skill and productivity of one's labor.  Paying a higher price for the same set of labor skills at any level just makes your money less valuable--the less your paycheck will purchase.  The liberals and their useful idiots blame inflation on corporate greed and ignore the greed of labor unions and everyone else.  Politicians get elected by pandering for votes and promising citizens a free lunch of one sort or another.  It's an old story--panem et circenses.  Rome collapsed and so shall we.  Government is power; power corrupts.  The only cause for poverty is corruption--not greed.  It is political and personal corruption that dooms us.  No one running for office understands this.