A Service of The Arrow             Friday September 29, 2000

   Last month, in a massive bipartisan group hug, President Clinton and the Jello-spined Republican Congress finally agreed upon a proposal to get teenage workers fired.

   Of course, they’re not about to describe the $1 minimum wage increase in those terms, and it’s unlikely that teenage employees will lament the news. If Congress wants to raise the minimum wage to $6.15 per hour and force our employers to give us more for flipping burgers, bagging groceries, and selling movie tickets, we’re not about to take a vow of poverty. Why should we? We’re all going to get paid more, right?

   Not necessarily. Imagine for a moment that the federal government mandated a minimum price of $25 per CD on behalf of every artist in America. Christina Aguilera could buy a few more pounds of shadow for her eyelids, and Eminem would have more funds with which to purchase bail bonds next time he gets arrested. But if every CD came with a $25 price tag, wouldn’t you rethink buying that Jennifer Lopez CD that caught your eye with its sexy cover? Or, in the interest of maintaining gender equality, would you ladies reconsider forking over your hard-earned cash for N’Sync’s single, "Bye Bye Bye?"

   A minimum price of $25 would cause these CDs, and thousands of others, to go unsold. The artists hurt most by such a policy would be those whose work never should have, and probably never did, fetch a very high price in the marketplace. CDs would languish on the shelves as consumers made more discriminating choices as to how they would spend their money. Before long, many artists would be unable to sell their music, and would have to find other lines of work. You know, if something like this could put Chumbawamba out of a job, maybe it would be a great idea.

   It’s less appealing though, when applied to low wage earners. When the minimum wage goes up, teenagers are going to start costing their employers more money. Because they have become more expensive, their employers will scrutinize job performance more closely, fire marginally productive workers, and raise the standards for new job applicants. It may be tempting to deride employers as greedy and selfish, and to accuse them of firing workers to preserve their own incomes. Logic, however, does not support such accusations.

   When the price of any good (whether it’s CDs or teenage employees) goes up, those who purchase that good buy it in smaller quantities. That’s not selfishness. It’s common sense. When employers begin to purchase unskilled labor in smaller quantities, teenagers will be afflicted by the same unfortunate phenomenon that plagues the uneducated, Women’s Studies majors, and MC Hammer alike: unemployment.

   Remember how the $25 minimum price on CDs would put the worst musicians out of business? Well, the same is true of teenage employees; those who have the lowest skills, or are not as capable as their peers, will be priced out of a range where an employer would consider hiring them. There are some things in life that people buy because they’re cheap. Just as Yanni relies on pricing his CD Port of Mystery at $11.17, teenagers rely on their status as low-cost employees to make themselves attractive applicants for businesses. If, for any reason, teenage labor isn’t cheap, it will not be purchased. That’s why minimum wages cause unemployment among teenagers (see graph).

   There are many who honestly believe that, without an increase, those who currently earn minimum wage will never manage to secure a higher wage for themselves. This belief does not square well with the fact that the average income of minimum wage workers increases 30 percent within the first year of employment. Such increased earnings are possible because wages are not a static box beyond which employee earnings can never expand. Rather, they are the many rungs of an economic ladder that minimum wage earners climb by gaining work experience and job skills. Hiking the minimum wage effectively tears out the lower rungs of that ladder, placing employment and higher pay completely out of the reach of certain individuals.

   Other proponents of a minimum wage hike are prone to shed great crocodile tears over how "unfair" the current minimum wage is. I’ve never been able to understand this line of reasoning. If I, as a prospective employee, wish to work for $4.00 per hour, and an employer wishes to hire me for that amount, no one ought to interfere in such a voluntary exchange of work for money. The fact that the federal government does interfere in such situations is a far greater injustice than the fact that some are paid only $5.15 for one hour of their work.

   You may not believe $5.15 for an hour of work is a fair or sufficient wage, and you may be right. But it’s certainly much better than nothing, which is what a lot of people will have for a wage once this law takes effect. The minimum wage will go up. Some of us will earn a little more. Others will earn nothing at all.

   But hey, at least it will be more fair. Won’t it?

—senior Andrew Bissell

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