The idea that higher minimum wage helps the working poor is utterly ridiculous. It’s a lie spread by liberal politicians and their supporters so they can take more tax money from individuals.
According to the Calgary Herald, rising minimum wage was the cause of 25,700 jobs disappearing in the city. But things will likely get worse as Alberta’s minimum wage will soon grow to $15 an hour. The Bank of Canada warned that minimum wage hikes could cost the country up to 136,000 jobs by 2019. Ouch. That’s some hard cheese. 🙁
Minimum Wage is a violation of basic human rights
Instead of protecting our life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness the government actually violates our rights by creating a minimum wage law, which prevents mutually beneficial, voluntary labour contracts between two parties from taking place. It’s absurd that some government official can think they have the right to prevent others from offering their personal services for pay.
You have to be an egotistical control freak to believe that you somehow know the magic amount of what a minimum wage should be. You also have to believe that this one arbitrary number can be fairly applied to millions of agreements and transactions between people living in different cities, with different costs of living. That kind of patronizing thinking is pure buffoonery to me.
What gives them the right to decide how much my service is worth? Apparently these politicians think it doesn’t matter if the work is shoveling snow, teaching calculus, or giving CPR, because everyone’s time and labour is magically of equal value! But anyone who reads this blog regularly is smart enough to realize this is simply not true in the real world.

When I worked at a warehouse earlier this year I was making about $14/hr. My coworkers and I were pleased with our pay. Nobody talked about unionizing because we were all treated fairly. But if minimum wage were to increase then some of us would lose our jobs for sure. Even if we want to come back the law would make it illegal for the company to hire us at $14/hr. It would be very difficult for laid off workers to find a similar job that pays better. Raising the minimum wage displaces workers and increases the incentive to leave the job market altogether to live on social assistance. This is very damaging to the lives of low income workers.
How Minimum Wage hurts the poor the most
There is a myth being spread that governments can somehow mandate employers to pay all their minimum wage workers more money. And therefore, an increase in the minimum wage will benefit those workers.
Unfortunately the reality is not that simple. The actual fact is that governments can only give employers the choice of either paying their workers more or employing fewer workers – both scenarios are bad news for low income earners.
- If the owner employs fewer workers, the least skilled employees are the first to get canned.
- If workers are paid more, the least productive employees will lose their jobs and be replaced by other people who are more qualified and can provide more value to customers in the marketplace.
If an employee only creates $12/hr of value then it wouldn’t be sustainable for a business to pay him $15/hr for his labour. Either that worker’s productivity/ skills/ efficiency have to improve, or he will be laid off. Companies can also invest in new technology to bypass human workers altogether.

Furthermore increasing the minimum wage across the board will create inflation and raise the price of goods and services. The people who are most disadvantaged by rising minimum wage are the working poor because their cost of living will increase disproportionately to everyone else. The dollar is devalued and the affordability gap widens between the rich and poor.
So if the idea is to help low income workers, then increasing the minimum wage is the antithesis of what we need to be doing. If you are making around minimum wage, then logically speaking you should be the most against raising it because you are most at risk of losing your job.
Why the Minimum Wage is Racist
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