A Minimum Wage That Will Work

The president’s call for a $10.10 minimum wage applies the worn-out notion that higher wages create more jobs. Despite repeated minimum-wage increases over the years, we have seen a continued flight to the sidelines by people who are unable to find jobs because they don’t exist. Many jobs don’t exist because employers refuse to hire people at such wages. Isn’t it obvious that, with a higher wage, McDonald’s $1 menu, for example, would cost $3, few would buy it, and Mickey D would have less revenue and far fewer jobs?

As a volunteer interviewer of the poor at a religious charitable organization in southwest Florida, I have come to believe that the most effective step we can take to ameliorate poverty, kick-start job growth and invigorate hope in every social stratum is to experiment with a $5 minimum wage.

A $5 wage will put money and hope into the lives of our poor in immediate, powerful and enduring ways. For all its $4 trillion stimulus, mere nickels of quantitative-easing funding “trickled down” to where the poor reside. But a $5 minimum wage will “trickle up,” directly from employer to employed—creating millions of jobs rapidly and putting them within reach of huge numbers of the poor.