This is one of the issues that millions of Americans vote on with their hearts and not their heads. It’s really difficult to win an argument with facts and figures and deep economic analysis when all your opponent has to do is make some grand statement about hard-working people and their poor deprived dependents. Intellectually, most everyone knows that it’s ridiculous to expect McDonald’s cashiers to make $30,000 a year, but there’s a big gulf between intellect and emotion.
Alfonso Amador, senior vice president of the National Restaurant Association, said, “There seems to be a perception that every job needs to be able to maintain a family of four. Not every job is there to sustain a family of four.”
This idea, promoted by Democrats and labor unions, that fast food restaurants and other industries that rely on unskilled workers should be forced to subsidize some imagined standards of living is utterly ridiculous. The minimum wage is there to prevent outright exploitation, and it’s not even clear that we need it for that. The market has changed a great deal since minimum wage laws were introduced; we should be edging closer to eliminating it altogether than towards raising it to unsustainable levels.
The vast majority of restaurant owners are struggling every day, trying to meet the demands of the market without pricing themselves out of business.
By perpetuating government dependency, Democrats have ensured that generations of families remain poor. They’ve divided the population into rigid classes that don’t actually exist, taught their constituents that the game is rigged against them, and used the inevitable failures to promote ever-increasing systems of welfare.
It’s not just about bad economics, and it’s not just about the plight of the struggling restaurateur. Our country was founded upon a belief in self-reliance and the indomitable will of the individual. When you persuade millions of Americans to believe that they can’t win without the government’s help, you’re committing a moral sin that keeps people from living a full and prosperous life.
Marion McKeever
Schroeder
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