Reaping Cannon Fodder

[Bradylama]

Libertarians have been praising Republicans for their reluctance to increase the minimum wage, yet what has historically been a unilaterally-acting administration has recently begun to accept the idea of raising the minimum wage. Why the sudden change? Increasing the recruitment pool is one possibility.

http://www.mises.org/story/2446
Everybody knows that an increase in the federal minimum wage constitutes a "raise" to all those who work now or will work in the near future at the lowest legal rate of pay. Why, 650 prominent economists, including five Nobel Prize winners, recently signed an open letter in support of raising the minimum wage.

Now, the minority, non-Nobel-Prize-winning view that is found, for example, among Austrian economists and 13,000 labor economists, holds, along with the Law of Supply and Demand, that if the price of a good (or service, like labor) is raised, less of it will be bought.

This means that employment among the young, the inexperienced, and unskilled will decline with the institution of a higher minimum wage. And at last count, 1.9 million Americans were working for the minimum wage. Not only these jobs, but all the millions more jobs between the present minimum wage and the new minimum wage, are threatened.

The civilian alternative for fresh high-school drop-outs and graduates will indeed seem superior to the military alternative by an increased margin. And it will be unattainable to that many more of them. Now, the recruiter will be able to choose, not just among those who can't compete for the scarce jobs that pay $5.15 per hour, but among those many more who can't win one of the even-scarcer jobs that pay $7.25 per hour — not only more cannon fodder, but better as well, all thanks to that "raise" the government "gave" them!

It sounds like the most likely reason an administration entrapped in military advernturism and incapable of meeting its recruitment quotas would suddenly do a complete 180 in regards to the minimum wage.

 

[Goweigus]

The minimum wage in Washington state was just raised to $7.95 , i think last year it was either about 7.65 or 7.3ish