The minimum wage has been used as a tool to buy votes, under the guise of providing a “living wage.” However, what politicians don’t tell you is that every time the minimum wage increases, available job openings for entry level, or low skill positions decrease. Minimum wage laws make large businesses contract, and hurt small businesses even more, who can’t afford to pay wages to hire desperately needed help for start-ups that have razor thin profits, or aren’t even breaking even. Laws passed to impact wages in big cities with high costs of living are forced upon businesses in small towns that can’t possibly afford to pay them. They do not discriminate, they simply mandate.
Increasing the minimum wage is no magic bullet to cure poverty, or enrich anyone. It doesn’t pay a “living wage” no matter the increase. This is because every product made, every good and service, every ounce of food bought, must cost more due to a forced increase in wages. This means we are simply staying even at best, but in almost every case, costs outpace wages, so we are actually poorer, in a market that now has fewer jobs.
The Libertarian Party will seek to end all minimum wage laws. This provides the most flexibility to find work, plummet unemployment rates, keep workers, and inspire entrepreneurship, while limiting forced costs on the economy that undercut savings, and spending power for everyday people.
Additionally, the Libertarian Party stands against cronyism and strong-arming partnerships between unions, lobbyists and state governments that create mandates for individual workers to be forced into unions. We will fight to enact “Right to Work” legislation on a federal level to ensure individual’s rights to work are not bundled into mafia-like forced unionism, and their jobs are not at risk if they refuse to join a labor union.