The International House of Bacon

I’m trying, at least with the daily reason posts, to stay away from simple ideological differences in favor of more objective situations where we can look at the situations and make some sort of clear distinctions.

This, unfortunately, probably isn’t one of those times.

One of the most unheralded points of Obama’s platform at this point is his push for a living wage. From here:

As president, Obama would further raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation, and housing — things so many people take for granted.

Putting aside any disagreements I have with the minimum wage for a moment (and I have many), does anyone in the mainstream think this is a good idea? Speaking only from my experience, there is no clear idea of what a “living wage” is, given regional differences - 75 miles north and our cost of living is noticeably different. A guy in Nebraska making $12/hour is in a radically different place than the guy in New York City financially. A one-size-fits-all wage policy like this, which would undoubtedly be a significant burden on the very businesses supplying otherwise good wages for many of the areas in questions, can only spell trouble.

I know - the statistics suggest that a minimum wage hike like the one we recently saw probably doesn’t affect employment in a significant way. We’re also not talking about $3+ increases. We’re also talking about a rising unemployment rate NOW. Like the windfall profit tax proposal, I don’t know why Obama thinks fighting the costs to the lower and middle classes is best done by increasing those very costs. It just doesn’t make sense to me.