Vigilant Investor

Here is a fine critique of the minimum wage from The Filter to add to some of our previous comments on the subject.

In Pennsylvania, the city of Pittsburgh and its Allegheny are always flirting with a “living wage”, as is PA Governor Rendell, who argues we must remain wage competitive with neighboring states. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress might even be willing to create even greater impediments to doing business in the U.S. by attempting to steal the issue from the Democrats. Emerging nations are certainly looking forward to ever more orders emerging as U.S. labor grows more dislocated compared to its emerging competition.

At least there is a silver lining emerging from this all, even if it is indirect. I noticed that, according to the Wall Street Journal, even lawyers jobs are being sent offshore to India. Perhaps Congress — a majority of whom are lawyers themselves — will finally get the message as they suffer from the symptoms caused by so many such inefficiencies in the U.S. that have, up to this point, spared their elite class. If only we could offshore politicians, we’d be in great shape!

Update: I should have noted that Wal-Mart has decided to call for a minimum wage hike. That’s all fine and dandy, because all things being equal, if minimum wages go up, a giant corporation like Wal-Mart can absorb the costs better than the smaller competition given it achieves efficiency through its global structure and ability to afford hundreds of attorneys to find efficiencies in other areas.

All and all, this is a negative for the U.S. worker and the economy as a whole, and nothing more than piling on an already stumbling economy.

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