When the government imposes a legal minimum hourly wage above the wage currently prevailing for various types of labor services, the law necessarily threatens the employment of any and all workers whose estimated value-added is now less than the mandated legal minimum wage.

Most of us both value and take for granted the ability to make decisions about our own lives. When busybodies put their noses into our personal affairs, we often say, or at least think, “Mind your own business!” And yet, we live in a world in which government won’t leave us alone, and instead, very actively tries to mind our business for us.

Take, for example, the legal hourly minimum wage. The federal government began dictating the minimum lawful amount an employer must pay someone working for them in 1933, as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. It was declared unconstitutional in 1935 by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was reinstituted in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standard Act, and the Supreme Court upheld it in a 1941 decision.

The Minimum Wage vs. Personal Choice

When first implemented, the federal hourly minimum wage was set at 25 cents/hour. Today, it ranges at $7.25/hour. But, in recent years, there has been a call to significantly increase it to as much as $15/hour. A variety of cities around the country have, in fact, instituted such legislation within their jurisdictions, with a number of state governments proposing increases in that direction within their respective boundaries.

Essential to human freedom is the liberty for each individual to say “yes” or “no” to an offer made by another concerning some potential association, interaction, or exchange among two or more persons.

The assertion is made that anything less than an hourly wage in that general amount (or more!) is denying a person the chance to earn a “living wage.” It is offered as paternalistic intervention in the labor market, meant to improve the working and living conditions of those who may be unskilled or poorly experienced to have a chance to earn enough to get ahead in life.

Who, after all, can be against someone having some minimal amount to live decently? Only the cold, callous, and uncaring, surely; or those who are apologists and accomplices of the greedy, selfish, and profit-hungry businessmen who have no sense of humanity for those who are in their employ. That’s why there needs to be a law.

Left rarely asked and less often answered is, who is the government or those behind such legislation to tell people at what hourly pay they may work in the marketplace and how much an employer is required to pay them? Essential to human freedom is the liberty for each individual to say “yes” or “no” to an offer made by another concerning some potential association, interaction, or exchange among two or more persons.

Forcing or Prohibiting Exchange

Suppose I go into a shoe store and, after looking around and trying on a few pairs, I decide to leave the store empty-handed because the store does not have the styles or the fit I’m interested in, or because the shoes are not offered at prices that seem worth paying. But suppose, now, that a large gruff fellow stands in the doorway, and declares, “The boss says that you can’t leave ‘til you buy shoes at the price he says you gotta pay.”