The Tragedy of the Minimum Wage

An increasing percentage of adults of average intelligence are making at or near the minimum wage, which is a tragedy from any perspective, and thus a popular solution today is to double the minimum wage.

Bernie Sanders is the Presidential candidate promising to double the minimum wage. He says it’s because he really cares about people, and because people have a right to a living wage, and because it would strengthen the economy by enlarging the middle class, which would thus increase consumer spending.

Imagine if Bernie Sanders won and implemented his ideas. Then, if a 30 year old man had been making minimum wage and it were suddenly doubled, he could afford to marry a woman who was making minimum wage, and they could afford to have kids.

That example sounds pretty good if we stop thinking at this point, but if we think for ourselves …

It is pretty easy to see that:

• Bernie Sanders’ positions on economics are nearly identical to those expoused by Barack Obama throughout his entire life, and yet, after Obama has been President for more than 7 years, an ever increasing percentage of adult Americans are doing jobs that pay at or near the minimum wage in most cities. Therefore, Bernie Sanders’ policies as President would be likely to increase the percentage of Americans making at or near minimum wage, and the people who were fooled by Obama are likely to be fooled by Bernie Sanders.
• The labor of a burger flipper at McDonalds is worth far less than the labor of a doctor, scientist, engineer, or programmer.
• It is a disgrace for any average man born in America to be flipping burgers at McDonalds … for ANY wage … because it is such a waste of his potential, and thus it would be an atrocity for government or anyone else to pay him to waste his potential, thereby trapping him in such a job.
• A higher minimum wage would force up prices and wages until eventually inflation will have caused a doubled minimum wage to only buy the same amount of stuff as before.
• A higher cost of labor would force companies to lay off many workers.
• A higher cost of labor for simple jobs would make it more cost effective for companies to replace those jobs with automation (software and robotics).
• Such a sudden increase would cause people to tragically make unsustainable life choices because they would assume that they would remain employed and continue to have twice the buying power as before, but future layoffs and inflation, caused in large part by doubling the minimum wage, would pull the rug out from under them after they had over extended themselves, which would be another atrocity in addition to paying them to waste their potential.
• By trapping adults in dead end jobs that waste their potential, a doubling of the minimum wage would thus be an atrocity tantamount to the atrocity of perpetrating government dependency on the black community.

For many, allegory will be more clear than abstract reasoning, so let’s consider how the future would unfold for one man, Chris, if Bernie Sanders won the 2016 Presidential election and promptly doubled the minimum wage.

The Life of Chris

Chris graduated from college with a liberal arts degree in 2009, so he had voted for Obama of course, and even though he had been making minimum wage since the beginning of the Obama administration, he voted to reelect Obama because he still believed the media, who were still telling him that Obama was going to fix everything. He still believed the Myth of Obama created by the media.

Chris was flipping burgers at McDonald’s and thus was contributing pretty much nothing to the world, and for this reason, the world was contributing pretty much nothing to Chris.

Since graduation in 2009, Chris had dreamed of making enough money that he could get married and support a family so that his wife could stay at home and raise the kids so they wouldn’t turn out to be little sociopaths. He had seen how well this had worked for his parents and his brother, which is why he wanted to emulate this aspect of his heritage, even though he saw his family as “not smart enough to vote for Obama”. At some level, he also understood that he had also avoided the trap of drug use because of his parents and his brother.

However, by 2016 Chris had declared bankruptcy. He was at the lowest point in his life and had pretty much given up on Obama. He was ready to make the effort to become a computer programmer, like his brother, which he accurately concluded anyone of average intelligence (like his brother) could do at any point in life if he were willing to make the effort.

According to standardized tests, Chris was actually slightly less intelligent than his brother, and thus both were considered average by what Chris called “conservative” testing methods. Whereas, Chris felt with deep conviction that he was actually smarter than his brother because he was more liberal and because all of his friends agreed with him. He could go all day every day and not meet anyone else in Seattle who disagreed with him. He also believed with deep conviction that he was not “misinformed by the media” like his brother because he did not even own a TV.

Therefore, in 2016, Chris, and all of his friends, voted for Bernie Sanders. They refused to vote for Hillary Clinton. They would not be fooled again like they were with Obama who they were beginning to feel must have actually been “some kind of Neocon”.

Although Bernie Sanders won, Chris didn’t know that, like Obama, Bernie Sanders had won in all the states that used electronic voting machines. Also like Obama, Bernie won in some precincts with more than 100%.

Bernie’s election had once again filled Chris with the hope that he had slowly lost throughout the Obama administration. Then, a few weeks after Chris had begun studying computer programming, Bernie Sanders doubled the minimum wage by executive order. He did this in his first week in office and thus suddenly affirmed everything Chris and his friends believed.

Chris was thinking that computer programming was harder than it actually was because he was still a few weeks away from developing the necessary personal discipline. Chris thus decided that it would be very liberating to free himself from the difficulty of becoming a programmer at this time. He could always do it later.

Chris was flipping burgers at McDonalds and was thus contributing pretty much nothing to the world. However, the world was now forced to contribute twice as much to Chris. Somehow it all seemed fair and just to Chris and his friends, and they knew that it was all because Bernie really cared about people, and because they were smart enough to vote for Bernie.

Out of convenience, Chris married a woman who also made the newly doubled minimum wage. Although they did not make as much combined as his brother, they could buy cheap stuff from China and could thus afford to raise a family with the help of free day care from the government. Of course, their kids were raised by daycare and TV, and were thus little sociopaths compared to his brother’s kids.

Chris’ potential, and the potential of his wife, and many of his friends continued to be wasted … but it gets much worse ...

The higher cost of labor then forced many companies to permanently layoff an ever increasing number of minimum wage workers because it was more cost effective to automate the labor of those minimum wage workers. Of course, that caused many new jobs to be created around the world in corresponding skills, such as computer programming. His one libertarian friend, Jim, called it creative destruction, which is why Chris believed with deep conviction that libertarians were stupid people who didn’t care about anyone – except for Jim.

The higher cost of labor also caused inflation, which eroded the extra buying power of the higher minimum wage, so Chris and his wife made twice as much money, but after ten years, everything cost twice as much. By then, he was 40 and becoming a computer programmer was harder, so he postponed it again.

In addition to the damage of inflation, Chris could no longer afford to buy things made in China because Bernie Sanders had imposed a tariff on Chinese products. Bernie claimed that cheaper labor in China was causing American jobs to go overseas. Bernie didn’t know that his higher taxes and heavy regulations were retarding American job growth and innovation. He didn’t know that such policies were a large part of why so many Americans were in minimum wage jobs in the first place. He did not know that freedom is what creates a middle class.

The Chinese government had learned from what once made America great, so they did not reward mediocrity and they did increase freedom. As a result, their people and businesses were thus forced to grow and excel and innovate, which anyone can do, if they must, and thus, products made in China became more expensive and of higher quality than products made in America.

Then Chris’ wife, who had escaped so many previous layoffs, got permanently laid off herself … and commited suicide …

Of his three little sociopaths, one ended up in prison and one died of an overdose, but before further tragedy could strike, the next president (another Democrat) started a war with China because Democrats believe that WWII was good for the economy. Then, like in WWII, all basic necessities were rationed so they could be redirected toward the war effort. Instead of cars and washing machines, people made tanks and bombs, and thus his wife could have gotten a job in a government factory …

His remaining son was drafted of course, but at least he had a job … except … then his son died in battle … and Chris commited suicide … and it was all because Bernie Sanders cared so much about people …

Chris’s friend Jim observed that hundreds of millions around the world died, and that it was those who were most dependent on government. Jim also observed that, perhaps not so coincidentally, this was also the goal of eugenics, which has always been a goal of progressives, and which is thus a goal of the New World Order.

Jim observed that it was almost as if Bernie Sanders were a useful idiot for the NWO.

Then Jim learned that the Federal Reserve was also a large cause of America’s economic problems and that Bernie Sanders had sold out Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed” bill by introducing an amendment that neutered it.

Perhaps Bernie was not being played by the NWO at all. Perhaps Bernie was one of the players.