The Democrats are getting another woodie over raising the minimum wage.  Everyone, other than those who are in a Karl Mannheim induced ideological coma or who remains mentally enthralled to the indoctrination they received from a publicly paid educrat, knows that government creates unemployment with such thug-like interventions, which impose government force against our individual rights of contract and free association.

Why are Dems so evil?  Do they really think that they are helping the poor by throwing them out of work?  While the stupid ones probably do, their leaders know better as they actually carry water for the union bosses to compel, by statutory fiat, pay increase for those earning more than the statutory minimum wage.  As a matter of practice, many union contracts are often tied to the minimum wage, so when the federal government raises the minimum wage it uses government force to artificially increase wages on a broader scale than accounted for in the political debate, where you are being lied to.

This is really a debate about unions’ political power and their ability to use their “investments” in Democratic incumbents, which is political corruption; according to the Center for Responsive politics, unions spent an estimated $163 million on Dems the 2012 election.   In his recent book Unintimidated, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker discusses his experiences with public employee unions in both Milwaukee County and at the state level.  Based upon his negotiations with union leaders, Walker observes that they would rather that employees be put out of work than the union agreeing to reasonable changes to work rules or previously established compensation and benefits.  This carelessness regarding the livelihoods of their members demonstrates why union membership is dropping, especially as workers are gaining legally protected rights to drop out of the unions and union coercion.

Government imposed higher wages for those who have jobs sounds like a good idea to those who take a disintegration view of reality and ignore all of the cause-and-effect relationships that exist in actual reality.  However, in reality, higher wages come from increased productivity resulting from either increased skill from experience or capital investment by the business enhancing an employee’s capacity.  In attempting to fake reality by commanding by government an unearned increase in wages, unions and Democratic politicians destroy opportunities for those who are not working or are in entry level positions.

What to do?  If you are unemployed, underemployed, or love someone who is, then contact your Congressman and Senators and demand that the government stop stepping on your neck, your loved one’s neck, and the neck of potential employers.  Related to minimum wage laws, what is needed is more than blocking a proposed statutory increase in the minimum wage; in fact, the existing individual-rights-violating minimum law should be abolished.

The principles expressed by the Supreme Court in Lochner v. New York, and later overturned when a switch in time saved nine, are mostly correct and relevant to today’s government created mess in employment and unemployment.  While the Supreme Court has failed in its obligation to protect the individual rights of you and those who you love, it is now time to demand that the legislature, your representatives, do so.  Justice Rufus W. Peckham wrote for the majority of the court in Lochner:

The general right to make a contract in relation to his business is part of the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and this includes the right to purchase and sell labor, except as controlled by the State in the legitimate exercise of its police power.

Liberty of contract relating to labor includes both parties to it; the one has as much right to purchase as the other to sell labor.

Independent of constitutional and statutory rights, which are the means by which government protects individual rights, we each have an independent and individual right, according to our nature as humans, to contract that should not be infringed by our neighbors, the union bosses, our Congress, and our government.