Minimum Wage Debate the Great McGuffin of our Times
We are fighting with each other over a few dollars, while CEOs and large companies quietly keep the wealth gap growing. Governments, public corporations, and lobby groups have used the recent debate over raising minimum wage to collectively pull the blinders in front of society’s eyes. A few basic facts about the debate need to be exposed and brought to the forefront:
- Treating all employers the same, under one blanket rule, is absurd. A barber employing their son and Walmart employing a temporary foreign worker should not have the exact same payment obligations. Larger employers should be held to a higher standard. They are not, and even worse, public corporations have managed to completely silence this argument.
- The minimum wage debate pits the middle class against the poor. Instead of looking at the real issue, wealth inequality, we are left squabbling over break times for Tim Horton’s workers. Meanwhile, the international company which owns Timmy’s gets a good laugh watching coffee drinkers and franchise owners (who have little say in corporate policy anyway) fight it out.
- Raising minimum wage will not solve our current societal issues, or even meaningfully address them. The rise of automation, outsourcing, and artificial intelligence are the greatest risks to modern employment, not minimum wage. Until our laws are based on the realities of today’s economy, not principles established in WWII, every change will be a meaningless platitude masking our descent into a two class society.
- A high minimum wage means small businesses can hire less employees. Further, it makes starting and growing a business much harder. This will result in more individuals needing to work for large companies. These companies have no incentive to pay high wages to employees as they are well known and have a constant flow of new applicants. We are quickly headed to a world where most people are either unemployed or working minimum wage for a big box store.
