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POV: Have Gun, Will Nudge
by Ayn Rand | March 1962
It's Not the Unions — It's the Labor Laws
by Doug Altner | March 19, 2014
Regulatory Strangulation
by Steve Simpson | March 13, 2014
Obamacare creates a new class of free riders
by Rituparna Basu | January 23, 2014
Obamacare Is Suffocating An Already Sick Health Insurance Patient
by Rituparna Basu | January 22, 2014
The Broken State of American Health Insurance Prior to the Affordable Care Act: A Market Rife with Government Distortion
by Rituparna Basu | January 21, 2014
Obamacare is Really, Really Bad for You, Especially If You're Young
by Rituparna Basu | August 21, 2013
Justice Department should let US Airways & American Airlines merger proceed
by Tom Bowden | August 16, 2013
Why Is Apple Inc. On Trial? For Good Behavior, It Turns Out
by Tom Bowden | June 20, 2013
The Forgotten Man of the Minimum-Wage Debate
by Doug Altner | June 19, 2013
Why Delivering Beer Isn’t Easy
by Doug Altner | June 11, 2013
What Explains GM’s Problems With The UAW?
by Doug Altner | May 20, 2013
What Are The Search Results When You Google ‘Antitrust’?
by Tom Bowden | April 18, 2013
To Protect the Defenseless, We Must Abolish the Minimum Wage
by Don Watkins | March 27, 2013
I’ll Buy My Own Contraception, Thanks
by Rituparna Basu | November 13, 2012
Why The Glass-Steagall Myth Persists
by Yaron Brook | November 12, 2012
Why Ayn Rand’s Absence From Last Thursday’s Debate Benefits Big Government
by Yaron Brook | October 15, 2012
Changing the Debate: How to Move from an Entitlement State to a Free Market
by Don Watkins | July 02, 2012
3 Things Everyone Needs to Know About the Apple Antitrust Case
by Don Watkins | April 10, 2012
What's Really Wrong with Entitlements
by Don Watkins | February 21, 2012
The Entitlement State Is Morally Bankrupt
by Don Watkins | September 13, 2011
How Important Is the Obamacare Litigation?
by Tom Bowden | August 12, 2011
Atlas Shrugged: With America on the Brink, Should You “Go Galt” and Strike?
by Onkar Ghate | April 29, 2011
The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved With Pre-existing Conditions (Part 3)
by Yaron Brook | April 06, 2011
The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved with Pre-existing Conditions (Part 2)
by Yaron Brook | March 10, 2011
In Defense of Finance
by Yaron Brook | February 15, 2011
The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved with Pre-existing Conditions
by Yaron Brook | February 10, 2011
The Avastin Travesty
by Tom Bowden | December 12, 2010
Apple Now Targeted for Success Like Microsoft Was in the 1990s
by Tom Bowden | October 04, 2010
The Un-American Dream
by Don Watkins | August 27, 2010
What About Private Health Emergencies?
by Tom Bowden | April 08, 2010
What’s Really Driving the Toyota Controversy?
by Don Watkins | March 26, 2010
Anti-Smoking Paternalism: A Cancer on American Liberty
by Don Watkins | March 06, 2010
Apple vs. GM: Ayn Rand Knew the Difference. Do You?
by Don Watkins | March 02, 2010
Smash the Labor Monopolies!
by Tom Bowden | September 15, 2009
America’s Unfree Market
by Yaron Brook | May 2009
Atlas Shrugged and the Housing Crisis that Government Built
by Yaron Brook | March 2009
The Green Energy Fantasy
by Keith Lockitch | February 25, 2009
Stop Blaming Capitalism for Government Failures
by Yaron Brook | November 13, 2008
The Resurgence of Big Government
by Yaron Brook | Fall 2008
The Government Did It
by Yaron Brook | July 18, 2008
From Flat World To Free World
by Yaron Brook | June 26, 2008
How Government Makes Disasters More Disastrous
by Tom Bowden | April 29, 2008
Life And Taxes
by Yaron Brook | April 17, 2008
War On Free Political Speech
by Yaron Brook | March 21, 2008
To Stimulate The Economy, Liberate It
by Yaron Brook | February 14, 2008
Exploiters vs. Victims in the Grocery Strike
by Elan Journo | January 30, 2004
Prescription Drug Benefits Violate the Rights of Drug Companies
by Onkar Ghate | July 24, 2002
Drop the Antitrust Case Against Microsoft
by Onkar Ghate | March 17, 2002

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To Protect the Defenseless, We Must Abolish the Minimum Wage

by Don Watkins | March 27, 2013 | Forbes.com

A few years ago, I was in need of some extra cash so I decided to sell my laptop on eBay. A few days later, I got an offer. It wasn’t great, but then neither was my laptop. But before the payment went through, I got a call from the government. 

“We have decided that the offer you got was too low. We’re not going to let you sell your laptop for anything less than three hundred dollars.” 

“But no one is willing to pay me three hundred dollars,” I said. “I’d rather have two hundred bucks than nothing.” 

“Oh, no, you can’t do that,” I was told. “That would be unfair to you.” 

Far fetched? Maybe — it didn’t actually happen to me. But the fact is it happens to defenseless victims every single day, albeit in a somewhat different form: through enforcement of the minimum wage.  

Right now there is a campaign underway to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 or more, and polls indicate that Americans overwhelmingly support it. And who wouldn’t? Who could object to making sure that everyone can earn a living? Who would oppose guaranteeing that every American is paid fairly? 

Well, the problem is that the minimum wage doesn’t ensure everyone can earn a living — it ensures that many of us can’t earn anything. And it doesn’t guarantee that everyone is paid “fairly” — it unfairly denies us the freedom to decide for ourselves what pay to offer or accept. 

I remember when I got my first job. I had just turned seventeen and after a bit of a search — I think I submitted three applications at the local mall — I got a call to interview for an entry-level position as a ticket taker at the mall theater. I sat down with Michelle, the theater’s hiring manager, and after going over my work experience — “I once helped my dad wash his car” — Michelle offered me a starting position at $5.35, just above the minimum wage at that time. I remember thinking: it’s not much, but it’s better than anyone else is offering me, and it’s certainly better than being out of work.

And that’s how employment should work. Employment is a contract — an arrangement between a person who wants to work and someone who wants to hire him. But under minimum wage laws, Michelle and I weren’t the only ones who had a seat at that negotiating table.

Had Michelle only offered me $5 an hour and had I wanted to accept it, Mr. Minimum Wage Enforcement Goon — I picture him as Bluto from Popeye — would have crossed his arms, sat back in his chair, and shook his head. And had he tried to enforce today’s minimum wage of $7.25, well, then, it’s very likely I would have never gotten the job to begin with. 

The question is: Who invited him? Why was my employment agreement anyone’s business but mine and Michelle’s?

Here’s one answer: “But it’s not voluntary! You needed the money, while the movie theater could have afforded not to hire you.”

But the fact that someone badly wants or even needs something doesn’t imply that his efforts to get it aren’t voluntary. I may have needed a job, but it’s not like Michelle could have zapped me with a cattle prod to stop me from going to work at Subway.

Michelle’s only power was the power to offer me a better deal than any of her competitors. We sometimes forget that companies have to compete for employees the same way they have to compete for customers. When I interviewed with Michelle, I was no more powerless than a consumer shopping for condiments: Heinz is free to charge a thousand bucks for a pint of mustard, but it’s not free to keep you from buying a jar of Grey Poupon instead. 

Did I wish I could have gotten more than $5.35 an hour? Sure, but no one was offering me that, and as an ambitious but inexperienced worker eager to get my start, I understood why: I wasn’t worth more yet. I wasn’t just getting the paycheck — I was building the skills and resume that would make it possible for me to make a whole lot more than $5.35 some day.

That’s the logic behind internships, which few people object to. Young people regularly work for low and even no pay in order to build their resume, learn useful skills, and make networking connections. If you forced companies to pay interns significantly higher wages, you would achieve only one result: you would prevent young people from realizing those benefits. By the same token, if the government had stepped in and forced the movie theater to pay a wage higher than what my ability justified, it wouldn’t have magically made me more productive — it would have made me unemployable.

Those who don’t think the world owes them a living understand that they can’t expect to get paid more than the worth of their value to an employer, and that to earn more they have to become worth more. Such people know that a low-paying job can be the best path to a high-paying job. Contra the minimum wage cheerleaders, it isn’t low pay that’s unfair — it’s preventing people from offering and accepting jobs that’s unfair. 

Then again, maybe it’s not those who believe in individual responsibility that the supporters of the minimum wage are trying to appeal to.

About The Author

Don Watkins

Former Fellow (2006-2017), Ayn Rand Institute