ABQjournal: Mandated Minimum Wage Ships Jobs Outside City Limits By Kenneth M. Brown and Micha Gisser, The Rio Grande Foundation

Obviously a $7.50 minimum wage would send a bad signal to out-of-state firms considering moving here, depending on their wage structure.

But more important would be the not-so-subtle message that Albuquerque municipal government stands ready to insert itself into private working arrangements between companies and their employees. What’s next, they would wonder. Albuquerque would never again make one of those “Best Of” lists produced by Forbes magazine and others.

The logic of a mandatory minimum wage is flawed. Basically, it is the philosophy that a government can force producers to pay employees more than the value of their contribution to production.

Yes, let’s send a message to companies looking our way. Paint your CEO gold; bury your board in cash; reward your shareholders royally. But pay those at the bottom of it all enough to live on. If you intend to enrich the top by starving the bottom, look for a real Red State.

Brown and Gisser, who you can be sure made more than $7.50 an hour for this article, use the shotgun approach in their drive by the minimum wage issue. Raising the minimum wage will ruin everything every way imaginable. I, for one, would be delighted to see a single McDonald’s or WalMart close up and move to Los Lunas or New Delhi — ain’t gonna happen. I’m sure Texas will welcome the Rio Grande Foundation with open arms when they move to El Paso to save $2/hour per employee.

Note that B&G’s argument could be used to do away with the federal minimum wage entirely. It is, in fact, the job of government to “insert itself” in lots of areas corporations and profit-takers would rather government stay out of, including many matters of health and safety that impact the bottom line.

Opponents of a living wage often say if one doesn’t want a minimum wage job, one should get an education. I’ve taught UNM Continuing Education for over 17 years. Classes have never been more expensive. Someone on minimum wage can’t afford to take a class.

What has happened to the notion of risk-taking? Do we no longer believe in trial and error, experimentation, observation and revision? Can’t we try something and risk failure? Conservative no longer means cautious, it means fearful. Let’s try raising the minimum wage and reconsider it in a few years — if we were wrong, will Albuquerque really become a ghost town in that short interval? mjh