Minimum wage hikes equate to more unemployed youth

Dude Where’s My Job? points out that government interference in free markets may be able to force employers to pay more but doesn’t create any new jobs and causes suffering among the very groups that the interference was supposed to help.

According to economist David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, employment for high school dropouts and young black adults and teenagers falls by 8.5 percent. In the past 11 months alone, the United States’ minimum wage has increased by more than twice that amount.

So it should be no surprise to see teen jobs disappearing or to hear bleak testimony from employers across the country that make these hiring decisions.

A few observations: 1) I find it interesting that high school dropouts and young blacks are lumped into the same group. We should be asking why. What is it about dropouts and blacks that go together? A culture of inner city ignorance perhaps? 2) Minimum wage laws do not create jobs in the exact same fashion that taxes do not create wealth. These laws, just like tax laws, are a redistribution scheme that moves money from some pockets into other pockets without anyone really earning those monies.

Does anyone have the nuts to suggest to me that workers who get a government handout in the form of a mandatory minimum wage increase are so grateful that they work that much harder? You better be a damn huge squirrel before you get in my face and tell me that a worker given a government mandated 33% raise will suddenly work 33% harder. In the mean time, those of you who whined and moaned about how people cannot make a “living wage” from whatever it is the market valued them as being worth per hour were not getting busy and voluntarily donating your own vast fortunes to ensure that these folks were taken care of. Instead, you were voting to take jobs away from high school dropouts, most of whom are apparently black. You are clearly racists! Suck on that.

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