The Minimum Wages of Politics (Updated)

 

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE       "Economic inequality” is to be the great theme of the remainder of the Obama administration, the president announced in a speech that combined rank economic ignorance with shallow demagoguery. And the first item on Barack Obama’s new economic agenda is an increase in the federal minimum wage to $9, higher than the minimum wage in any state excepting Washington.  (Emphasis added)

Comical Conservative

"President Obama can reliably be counted upon to ignore elementary economics — which is to say, reality — when it is politically attractive to do so, and this case is no exception. A wage is a price — the price of labor — and raising prices lowers demand, other things being constant. The effects of a minimum-wage increase probably would not be dramatic on their own, since relatively few employed Americans make the minimum wage, though it will raise the bottom rung of the economic ladder another few inches out of the reach of those without sufficient skills or education to command a higher wage in the marketplace."
....
Low-information voters and Democrats in general may not grasp this next point since their priority is keeping power at this nation's expense:
"There is a way to increase wages while increasing overall employment, and that is to raise the demand for labor. Unfortunately for the planners and schemers in Washington, doing so requires more than simply passing a law. Higher demand for labor is the result of a growing and productive economy...."