Milton Friedman - Raising the Minimum Wage

3 years ago
5

Milton Friedman explains that raising the minimum wage drastically over a short period of time ensures that there will be less jobs as a direct result. It's quite simple really, if I'm a business owner with two employees making 7 dollars an hour and you pass a law that makes me pay each of them 15 an hour from now on, I choose the best one of the two, I lay off the other other one, and now the one employee I have left has to do twice the work because he or she just received an 8 dollar per hour raise, and if they can't handle the increased workload then I end up going out of business and where three people once all had jobs, now zero (0) people have jobs.

I understand why people would like to increase their pay, but raising the minimum wage is the last thing that should be done in order to make that happen because ultimately, it is bad for everyone in the country, and it is almost guaranteed to reduce the economy exponentially.

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