Eliminating the Minimum Wage

By Joe Sinagra | The Save Jersey Blog

money - liberty coinThe minimum wage was a big issue when I ran for office in 2005, Save Jerseyans, long before last fall’s travesty became law. I suggested at an editorial review board that the minimum wage be eliminated. My opponent wanted to create a livable wage of $17.

Why stop there . . . make it $50? In the final analysis you are still going to have a minimum wage, it will never go away. It only stands to reason that when costs rise to compensate, there is always going to be a lower wage level.

If there were no minimum wage, I believe a free market would set the wage and I don’t think it would pay that much more or less than it currently is. Eliminating the minimum wage would spur employers to hire more people, rather than cutting back.
Why does government want to make it harder for small employers to hire people?

By raising the price of employment, you get less of it.

Companies would have to raise the wage to entice more candidates to apply if they were to hire for a position and were not getting any applicants. By the same token, if an interviewee felt it wasn’t enough they could either negotiate for a higher wage or turn down the position and go somewhere else. If you have no skills to bring to the table, you have nothing to offer so there is really nothing to negotiate.

There are those who say that Wal-Mart or McDonald’s makes tons of profits so they should pay more to their unskilled employees. Why do they feel that with the minimum skills that they have, they should also be entitled to a share of those profits? Either, as an employee, you gain experience, get promoted and move up . . . or go to school and attain the skills needed to get ahead.

Yes there are also those with skills who have lost jobs and now seeking employment. But I don’t believe those people are starting at the bottom of the scale, they may start at a lower wage because of taking work that had nothing to do with their previous line of employment, but they do have job skills to bring and are starting at a higher wage then if they had nothing with which to bargain.

The problem, as I see it, isn’t wage but it is twofold: (1) there aren’t enough jobs to go around and (2) there are many jobs where the market can’t find sufficiently skilled workers. You have more people looking for work than available labor. When business is forced by government to pay higher wages, it creates less work for those seeking employment, or it will eliminate those with the least amount of jobs skills. When you have a job market with millions of applicants, the employer has to up the ante, either by requiring more education to be able to choose an applicant, or pick the best person with the most experience. The employer will seek more qualified individuals at the higher wage to fill the position and add more responsibilities to the position to justify the increase.

By forcing a required pay scale on a free market, it creates higher economic conditions and only escalates into higher prices, goods, raising the cost of living faster than if left alone.

It eliminates jobs for the unskilled and uneducated. When the jobs aren’t there, they aren’t there, and an employer when forced to pay a higher wage is not going to hire someone at that level with nothing to offer.

The job market would seek its own pay level for the employee and the employer.

A higher wage does not necessarily equate to more jobs, it only narrows the field to the more competent person to fill what jobs are available.

Joe Sinagra
About Joe Sinagra 73 Articles
Joe is a U.S. Air Force veteran, small businessman and former candidate for the New Jersey legislature and New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. He continues to actively work for GOP causes and candidates in the Central New Jersey region.

1 Comment

Comments are closed.