The White House discriminates against part-time workers and the unemployed

Notably absent from the White House’s oddly vertical tweet is any mention of part-time workers or those who are unemployed. That’s one hazard of trying to argue economic issues on a social media platform that allows only 140 characters.

But it’s bigger than a character limit: The reason the White House refers only to full-time workers when discussing the minimum wage is that no one would say that about someone who works only a few hours a week. Obviously, a part-timer who works ten hours produces only one quarter the value for an employer as a 40-hour worker, and so the employer can’t pay him as much. That doesn’t mean he “should have to live in poverty,” but his wage from his 10-hour job isn’t expected to exceed the poverty level on its own. As for the unemployed, they “shouldn’t have to live in poverty” either, but no one is proposing above-poverty wages for not working.

Employees cannot be paid at a rate higher than the value they produce — if they are, their company won’t last long. For the same reason, to raise the minimum wage even for a full-time job above what the market for unskilled work will bear is to invite a reduction in the number of jobs and hours for unskilled workers. This is why when the White House and Democrats in Congress proposed a minimum wage hike, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projected that it would destroy up to a million jobs.