One economic topic that directly impacts many college students is the minimum wage.

In fact, it is an issue politicians often use to appeal to young voters.  University of Missouri-Columbia student Will McMahon chimes in that with some sound economic thoughts on the matter:

I remember the first time I ever heard someone earnestly suggest that the minimum wage should be set at $15 per hour. Searching for a good laugh, I had looked up the platform of the Socialist Party USA. There it was, right in between the article calling for guaranteed employment and the one demanding worker ownership of all corporations. I had myself a good laugh at all of this and dismissed it as bolshevik nonsense. Never did I suspect that the idea of the $15/hour minimum wage would return to haunt us. Boy was I wrong.

There has been an undeniable groundswell of support for outrageously high minimum wages in recent months. Back in March, Elizabeth Warren suggested that the that the minimum wage ought to be $22 an hour during a senate hearing. Though her analysis was flawed, it made for just the kind of YouTube video that members of the left-wing intelligentsia love to brag about to their “backwards” conservative friends. As I write this now, fast food workers in my home town of Saint Louis are on strike for a $15/hour minimum wage. They join a strike that has been in progress for about a month, having started in New York and spread to Chicago.

….The really troubling thing about this push for a higher minimum wage is the dishonesty behind it. It is reasonable to assume that political leaders understand the principle that making something more expensive lessens demand for it. President Obama understands this principle, at least as it applies to tobacco. In a proposal to increase taxes on tobacco products earlier this month, the president said “Researchers have found that raising taxes on cigarettes significantly reduces consumption.”

I find it hard to believe that a man smart enough to successfully run for president could be unaware that the same principle might apply to employment, that making it more expensive for companies to hire new employees might lessen their desire to do so. And yet, just this week, Mr. Obama made the case for a higher minimum wage during his trip to Texas. A cynical man might get the impression that the president, and politicians of his ilk, even understanding the ramifications of such a policy, would pursue it anyway, to the detriment of their supporters, if only to gain a little political power.

The striking workers in Saint Louis, Chicago and New York are the real victims here. They’ve been duped into supporting a policy whose consequences will be hardest on them. Somehow, a $15/hour minimum wage doesn’t seem quite so funny anymore.