By Rick Manning
As originally published at TheHill.com.
If President Obama has his way on increasing the nation’s minimum wage, 500,000 Americans will see their wages cut to zero, their jobs eliminated by this feel-good government mandate, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
That’s just another half million people’s hopes and dreams sacrificed as collateral damage to the ill-founded belief that the federal government can dictate wage and salary scales in private markets irrespective of the willingness of consumers to purchase products at the increased costs.
The CBO report’s findings are not a surprise. It is nothing more than one more affirmation of the damage done by artificially manipulating wages. Yet, Obama and his ilk continue to turn a blind eye toward the elementary market principles that dictate the massive job losses caused by artificially increasing labor costs.
The only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that the left doesn’t care if people at the lower end of the wage scale lose their jobs — or worse, that the left finds it to be a desirable outcome.
While conservatives are aghast at the concept of 500,000 people thrown out of the American Dream of working hard, building skills and building a life for oneself, the left no longer seems to share that vision.
Politically, the left benefits from another half million people off the employment roles as these new government dependents become welfare voters supporting the very politicians whose policies were directly responsible for their job losses.
At the same time, an estimated 16.5 million people are expected to see some increase in their wages. It can be anticipated that a majority of these people will also credit the Democrats for their largesse.
And the kicker is that by including automatic increases tied to the cost of living, these remaining workers will get a raise each year, regardless of whether their employer can afford to provide it. This process ensures additional job losses, accelerating the destruction of gateway jobs in America.
However, none of this matters. For those who benefit politically from government economic dependency, all that matters is that another half million dependency voters will be created with no political downside.
The inherent unfairness to the high school kid going from fast food restaurant to retailer vainly seeking employment doesn’t matter. For many job seekers, the soul-crushing realization that the above-the-table economy has no place for them destroys their connection to the legitimate free-market system. They will place the blame for this failure on our capitalist system rather than the bastardization of that system coming from craven political calculations of leftists in D.C.
Throwing away the hopes and dreams of half a million people is acceptable collateral damage to those who believe the end of achieving a permanent majority of government dependents is worth any means of attaining it.
This is the truth about the left. They package dependency as compassion, expecting that voters will never look beyond the sales pitch to see the evil that lies behind it.
Rick Manning (@rmanning957) is vice president of public policy and communications for Americans for Limited Government. Contact him at rmanning@getliberty.org.
