The debate over raising the minimum wage isn’t about policy. It’s about politics and playing to people’s emotions rather than good economic sense.
The argument in favor of raising the minimum wage comes down to this: You can’t raise a family on $7.25 an hour. If you were a politician, it would be awfully tempting to try to win votes by telling voters you think they deserve a 39-percent pay raise.
The truth, though, is that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour wouldn’t really help the people it’s supposed to help — young people entering the work force and those with little education, skills or experience.
“As a policy tool, it doesn’t reach the right people,” said Robert Nielsen, a University of Georgia economist who co-wrote a study on the minimum wage a couple of years ago. Nielsen and a colleague from San Diego State University found that most of those earning minimum wage aren’t family breadwinners, and most aren’t poor.
They reported that about nine out of 10 workers who benefited from the last increase in the federal minimum wage lived in households with incomes that were at least two times over the poverty line.
Moreover, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently said that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would result in the loss of 500,000 jobs as employers cut positions to offset the higher wages.
The National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s oldest and largest small-business association, has about 350,000 dues-paying members nationwide, including 7,500 in Georgia. Our positions are based solely on input from our members. Year after year, they’ve told us that raising the minimum-wage would hurt their businesses.
That’s in sharp contrast to the so-called Small Business Majority which, according to The New York Times, doesn’t have any small-business members and, according to the Washington Examiner, routinely takes positions that support the Obama administration but stand at odds with the mainstream business community, such as raising the minimum wage and higher taxes.
If you were to talk to small-business owners, they’d tell you they offer the best wages and benefits to attract the best employees they can afford. They’d tell you that an increase in the minimum wage would make it harder for them not only to grow, but to run their businesses.
And they’d tell you that politicians who can’t balance a budget have no right to tell anyone how to run a small business. President John F. Kennedy once said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” If President Barack Obama and Congress want to help working Americans, they should support pro-growth policies to help entrepreneurs and job creators, the engine of our economy.
Kyle Jackson is Georgia state director of the National Federation of Independent Business.
