Matthew Lamb of The College Conservative offers a rebuttal of the oft-touted claim that raising the minimum wage increases the dignity of work. He argues instead that government-mandated minimum wage increases reduce the dignity of working and make it harder to find work.

Minimum Wages, Dignity, and Value

Proponents of raising the minimum wage argue that it will celebrate the worker and promote the dignity of work. For example, the Catholic bishops in Kentucky released a statement in January of this year, titled The Dignity of Work, calling on the Kentucky legislature to raise the minimum wage. They quoted Pope Francis, saying “It is through free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labor that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives. A just wage enables them to have adequate access to all the other goods which are destined for our common use.” Does raising the minimum wage enhance the dignity of work or make it easier for people to participate in the economy?

In reality, the minimum wage accomplishes the exact opposite of those things.

How does raising the minimum wage work? Congress or a state legislature passes a bill saying the minimum wage offered to an employee has to be $12/hr let’s say. What this means is that employees who produce a value to their employer of less than $12/hr will very likely lose their jobs. In other words, raising the minimum wage tells workers that, unless they meet a certain bar or standard, their work is not valuable and they should not be employed.

Here is another way of looking at the minimum wage and how it sends the message that some work is not even valuable. Joe is an aspiring musician. He knows that the CDs he makes are not of the same value as a Kanye or a Toby Keith CD, so he sells his CDs for five dollars: enough to cover his costs, and still low enough that someone may take a chance on him (it’s only five dollars, after all). But what if the state government comes in and passes a law (probably with support of the music industry) that says no CDs may be sold for less than $20? At $5, customers would have been willing to take a chance on an unknown musician, but at $20 they are more likely to just pay for the well-known music instead. Under the auspices of promoting fairness and helping the little guy, the government has now helped more famous music stars gain a monopoly on the music market.

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