The Minimum Wage is Not the Problem!

My recent article making a mockery of the raising of the Minimum Wage to $15 an hour: Minimum Wages Should Be $50 an Hour? Minimum Wage to the Moon, I Say! did get me some "good" mails. I won’t print them because they were so crazy or profane they were basically worthless… But I did get one that seemed to be pretty, well, calm, and seems to encapsulate the argument for the pro-raising the Minimum Wage crowd.

Anonymous writes:

"And who is going to buy all these products that robots are making when minimum wage never gets raised and the only thing people can afford are rent and food?"

Why complain to me? I was all for raising the Minimum Wage to $10,000 an hour, wasn’t I? If an arbitrarily selected number like $15 an hour is good, then let’s all become rich and make it $10,000 an hour, right?

Of course, that is total nonsense.

This reader's comment either intentionally ignores the 800-pound gorilla in the room or they are ignorant of what is really going on.  

How about asking the correct question? That is, 

“Who is ruining the purchasing power of our money? Why does the US dollar buy less than 4% of what it did 100 years ago? Why does the US dollar buy less than 25% of what it did in the mid-eighties? Why is the government ruining the purchasing power of our money?”

Dear reader totally misses the real issue here when they think that, because of automation, people won't have jobs. Let me ask, “And who bought the products when machines started picking the cotton and taking away the jobs from millions of slave laborers? Who bought Japanese automobiles when robots replaced 85% of the human workers in Japanese auto factories? Who did the shopping for your mother when she no longer had to hand wash the clothes and dishes or clean the house on her hands and knees?”

The Minimum Wage is not the problem. The problem is the government destroying your money.

What was the Federal Minimum Wage in 1964? $1.25 an hour. 

Five USA quarters minted in 1964 (and prior) were worth $1.25; the Minimum Wage. 

Today's Minimum Wage? $15.00? 

What is the value of those five 1964 silver quarters today? About $20.25. 

Like I said, it's not the value of the Minimum Wage, it is the US government intentionally destroying the value of your currency. Minimum Wage is a side show.

Until folks get educated on what Fiat Currencies are, and the value of real money, then there's no helping them.

The government loves it when people don't talk about the real issue here: destruction of the purchasing power of the dollar (This is quite simplistic, but how do you think they pay for these foreign wars and military bases all over the world?) 

The Minimum Wage is not the problem.