[caption id=”attachment_83699″ align=”aligncenter” width=”5184″] (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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It’s time to stop believing in the patronizing Democrat argument for raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
I have no problem with higher wages and certainly understand that people need more than the minimum wage to provide for their families. More power to the companies, like the Gap, that want to take on that challenge and decide to raise the wage on their own without being federally mandated.
But the federal minimum wage was always designed to be a starting place. The wage was set on low end of the spectrum as an entryway into the workforce. The additional effect of this was that people would be encouraged to keep moving up the ladder, gradually increasing their wages through hard work and years spent on the job.
Democrats argue that the minimum wage should always be a “living wage” and should be designed to keep up with inflation. The main selling point has been that it improves the quality of life and the party claims this increase will stimulate the economy.
President Obama reiterated these arguments in his weekly address Saturday, saying that raising the federal minimum wage is the only way to make “a strong middle class.”
That reasoning, however, is based on the belief that people earning minimum wage cannot get jobs that would ever pay higher than that. Back when a group of Democrats were trying to do the poorly constructed “Live the Wage” political stunt, one of them even called minimum wage jobs the type of work most people “would not really want to do under any circumstances.”
Democrats believe that federal assistance is necessary because the workers are unable to raise themselves up and are simply never going to be skilled enough to find higher paying work.
It’s patronizing and frankly, absolutely wrong.
Upward mobility is certainly a challenge in the current economy. But that doesn’t mean people should stop striving for it.
In addition to some of the effects a higher minimum wage could have on small businesses and unemployment, making the minimum wage a comfortable place to be would make it far too easy for the American public to be content with staying there.
The only way to build the strong middle class Obama and his fellow Democrats are talking about is for people to climb up themselves without government assistance.
