A new Associated Press-GfK poll shows that a majority of Americans support a higher minimum wage as well as forcing employers in providing paid sick leave and parental leave to its staff. This suggests that President Obama certainly has support from the general public in this regard as he proposed all three in his latest State of the Union address.
According to the results of the survey, 60 percent of Americans favor hiking the minimum wage, while 20 percent are opposed. Meanwhile, another 60 percent favor coercing employers in giving paid time off to employees who happen to be ill. About two-thirds of respondents also support requiring employers offering paid time off for employees after the birth of a child.
Although Republicans are nearly as likely as Democrats to be in favor of giving paid sick and parental leave, GOP voters are less likely to be in support of raising the minimum wage.
Ostensibly, these Americans haven’t read any of the works by Murray N. Rothbard, who famously referred to the minimum wage as “compulsory unemployment,” Henry Hazlitt or Ludwig von Mises. Indeed, it can be rather generous to give workers a boost in the minimum wage, but it’s not practical or economically sound because it creates worse problems down the line.
Here is what Rothbard wrote about the minimum wage:
“In truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment, period. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.”
SEE: Minimum wage hikes to lead to higher unemployment, weaker economy in collapse
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The online AP-GfK poll was conducted with 1,045 adults between Jan. 29 and Feb. 2. It contains a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.
When has *any* economic theorist, left or right, been proven correct? Theory is just that. The effect that a minimum wage law has on the economy depends on a myriad other factors. Economies are complex systems – the outcome of single policies within them cannot in principle be predicted by any mathematical or theoretical means yet known.