Minimum Wage - Discrimination

An important rallying cry, if not the prime directive for liberals, is EQUALITY.

Few things animate the Left more than prejudice and disparities of various sorts, including within the workplace.

In some respects, this may be to their credit.

Nevertheless, in ways remarkably inconsistent, liberals have discriminated against a small segment of employees and employers (about 1.6 million workers--see HERE), robbing this minority of their power to freely negotiate their own wages and receive value-for-value according to supply and demand just like the rest of labor market.

Within industries such as health care, technology, finance, education, transportation, entertainment, news, sports, etc., employees and employers alike get to set wages wherever they deem best. If the free market says that a person is worth millions of dollars a year for dribbling a basket ball and shooting it through a hoop for a couple of hours a day over several months a year, and another person is only worth tens of thousands of dollars for putting in countless hours nearly year-around teaching vital information and skills to our children and youth, then the respective parties in those industries are at liberty to exchange payment for labor services at those levels. They aren't told by the government what should or should not be paid.

But, not within the minimum wage sector. There, laws have long been enacted which arbitrarily stick the government's nose into this sector's business. There, the liberal government has presumed to know better than the market the value of unskilled labor. There, the liberal government has inadvertently institutionalized prejudice and inequality.

Now, the liberals my attempt to justify their prejudice by claiming that the ends of income equality or reduction of poverty justify the means of inequality and discrimination before the law.

However, the Leftist LUNC here is, and as will be established in the posts to follow, the hypocritical means do not achieve the desired ends, but tend to make matters worse for the very people it was intended to help the most..

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For an explanation as to why these Leftist LUNCs may occur, please see: Gov: Wrong Tool for the Right Job - Introduction and Cold Nanny as well as The Politics of Compassion, Emotions, Ignorance, Denial, Blame-Shifting, and Victimization