We see evidence of chaos in nature as well as amazing order and balance.  Humans are constantly striving to conquer nature so that the inconvenience of struggle is, ideally and ultimately, eliminated.  We seem to now operate under the premise that no man should have to struggle and that we can govern struggle out of our existence regardless of the cost.  But, if you believe man has evolved and changed, what would that process of evolution lead to if we eliminated struggle from our lives?  With millions of years of human experiment, there is a wealth of data regarding the success and failures of man in his attempt to conquer the forces of nature. We have a long record of social experiment that include successes and failures. What can we learn from history? 

How is it that a new-born eventually comes to understand the wisdom of millions of years of human trial and error when the average life lasts less than 100 years?  Joseph Campbell studied the recurring themes in the fables and mythical stories of man across different cultures of the world that aim to teach the findings of the generations to instruct us “how to live”?  I think Campbell’s work is important and instructive and if a person wanted to consume one book by Campbell, I recommend The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers.

The aboriginal culture was the longest living, purely intact culture on the planet, what did they owe to that longevity.  Can we learn something from how they lived.  The primary foundation of their culture was a life lived in harmony and balance with the plants and animals with which they were dependent.  Mutant Message from Down Under by Marlo Morgan is a wonderful story illustrating the Aboriginal view of how to live sustainably in concert with the laws of nature.  One of the key elements lacking in the economy of the aboriginal was agriculture as we know it.  The aboriginal did not practice animal husbandry, did not herd animals to store food. We might judge the aboriginal society as unsophisticated and yet they survived as an intact culture for longer than any on the planet. Instead of trying to rise above nature and struggle, the aboriginal people of the Australian Outback wanted to live in balance with nature and embrace struggle as a part of live.

A look back at the history of man on our planet indicates that man’s shift from hunters and gatherers to an agrarian society with storage of surplus food was one of the most profound shift’s and changes in history and has had a profound impact on our planet.  Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, by Daniel Quinn (as well as his book My Ishmael) is a thought-provoking story causing one to consider the past and the path of man and his relationship with nature. In the book, Ishmael says: There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.  Guns, Germs and Steel:  The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond chronicles, in this non-fictional work, the rise and destruction of human civilizations in the history of man and the role of agrarian technology and food surplus in promoting population growth, dominance and superiority in civilizations.

The Journey of Man, A Genetic Odyssey by Spencer Wells describes the use of modern science to track the genetic mutations of humans back to his origin through the mail Y chromosome. The finding is that all people can be traced back to a tribe in Africa that lived 60 million years ago. The incredible undertaking shows how all humans are related and how we adapted and changed in different environments. The level of radiation or the predominant diet in a region, for example, would impact our need to absorb sunlight to produce vitamin D and therefore impact the shade of our skin. Does the thought that we all have the same origin change our acceptance and understanding of one another?

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville is a critique of the American experiment by a Frenchman who was originally chartered to travel to America to evaluate the criminal justice system. Tocqueville is able to identify the practical limitations and potential failings of a democratic system of self governance. This is a brilliant and insightful treatise that produced the famous reference: “tyranny of the majority.” These writings are potent and relevant even though they were written well over 100 years ago. I think every American would benefit from the incredible insights and predictive qualities of Tocqueville in Democracy in America.

Jonathon Haidt, a social psychologist, popularized moral foundations theory in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided By Politics and Religion. Intelligent and caring people can end up voting to support either liberal or conservative agendas. The one side assumes that the other side is either stupid, brainwashed, greedy or evil. But Moral foundations theory and the study of how differences in moral reasoning can produce different decision criteria, offers a possible explanation of how to good, intelligent and caring people can reach a completely different conclusion. Moral foundations theory offers six moral foundations or imperatives (with opposing factors listed for each) at work in moral reasoning: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Liberty/Oppression, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation. Haidt, with political origins and leanings as a liberal Democrat, studied the difference in the moral reasoning exercises of liberals and conservatives and compared those. What he found was that liberals consistently stress three of the six (harm, fairness and liberty, in that order) while conservatives stress all six foundations more equally. Haidt and other moral psychologists believe that the moral foundations are a decision criteria that stem from the process of human evolution as a response to adaptive challenges. It is not difficult to imagine why all six moral imperatives might be important considerations for group survival. The valuable insight from this work, in my opinion, is the development (mostly by liberals in my opinion) of the realization that there are justifiable reasons, rooted in the evolutionary development of man in a social setting, why conservative values (driven by the other three moral foundations) exist and why good and caring people can reach a different conclusion. When we consider the work of Jonathan Haidt we have to consider that although good and caring people can reach polar opposite conclusions, the opposite conclusions about how man should live and role of government in society will likely produce entirely different results.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, is a novel that imagines a world where the moral foundation of care is dominant to the detriment and even exclusion of decisions based upon the criteria of liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. In Atlas Shrugged, the productive citizens are shrinking in number while the dependent population is growing in number with the moral imperative or care calling the productive into servitude of the “moochers”. The consequence in Atlas Shrugged is the disappearance and unavailability of the productive and resourceful citizens and the implosion of society. I believe every citizen could benefit from reading the novel Atlas Shrugged. The novel allows for image of a society where dependency and self-responsibility take a back seat to entitlement. The novel warns us that decisions, while well intended are not immune to the law of unintended consequences when decisions are void of consideration of certain moral foundations that are a product of evolution based upon adaptive social norms in response to survival challenges. Unfortunately, Atlas Shrugged is extremely lengthy and is a significant undertaking for any reader. I believe it is an incredibly important work and, while I understand the reluctance of a good liberal to partake I would suggest that your conviction of belief will either be shaken or firmed from the challenge.

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, by Mark Steyn causes us to consider demographic shifts and the impact of increasing death rates coupled with decreasing birth rates in some countries and the threat of the opposite trend in other countries to the balance of power and our way of life. If the message in this book is considered with the history set forth in Guns, Germs and Steel it is not impossible to imagine that changing world population could lead to a shift in power and imposition of a new, undesirable, way of life could result. Mark Steyn has a brilliant and engaging writing style that will not disappoint.

I can only hope that my children read all items from my reading list above and will be encouraged to read from other people’s lists. In this way they will expand and challenge their thinking so that they can be responsible decision makers through an understanding of where we (humans) come, where we are headed and the possibilities for a change.

My mother, Linda, was the oldest of 7 children. She was raised in a small town in the Midwest. She attended a catholic grade school (I recall her talking about a strict nun.) Many people have told me that she was the most beautiful girl ever to come from McCook, Nebraska. Linda appreciated compliments but at the same time she was uncomfortable with the notion that she was beautiful and never quite accepted or entirely believed that this was the case. Linda attended junior college and worked as a receptionist and bookkeeper and was not a particularly sophisticated person. She was not versed in the matters of Washington or Wall Street. Linda was a compassionate and loyal person with a devotional love for her family and for the extended family of people in the circle of her life.
My mother went through a very tough divorce. Linda raised three boys on her own on a receptionist salary and enlisting help from her parents before she remarried a man who would provide for her and her boys and give her a complete family. She suffered two brain aneurysms in her life, one in her thirties and one in her fifties (almost exactly 20 years apart.) Although she had some imperceptible issues from the brain aneurysms, she was fortunate to recover remarkably well. Her family all reasoned that she had her full share of health issues and that she would now live a long life (her grandmother and mother both lived well into their 90’s.) However in 2006, Linda was diagnosed with glioblastoma (an insidious and incurable brain cancer) and she died in October of 2008 the age of 68.
I sat with her one night next to her bed while she was in a rehabilitative care facility after they attempted to remove the cancer from her brain surgically and held her hand while we watched a crime drama on TV. At one point she pulled her hand away and rubbed the incision on her head and said, “I had another one of those things.” I said, do you mean an aneurysm.” She said, “yes, one of those.” I said, “no Mom, you have a terminal form of brain cancer.” She asked some questions and then stared at the TV. I began to cry and then squeezed her hand and said, “Mom, I am so sorry.” She squeezed my hand and turned to me and looked me square in the eyes. In an effort to comfort me she said, “babe, no one ever said life was going to be easy.” And then she smiled at me as if to say that she was fine and went back to watching the TV and continued to stroke my hand. She was intent on comforting me at that moment.
My Mother said things to me like: “no one said life was going to be easy” as I was growing up. She used to tell me to make sure that I gave more to the world than I took because, “the only way for the world to keep spinning is for people to give more than they take.” When I was in college and having the normal struggles that a young person trying to find their way has, my mother sent me the serenity prayer. I will not recite the prayer here but it is about acceptance and self-responsibility. Many would have thought of my mother as less than a formidable person. Now that she is gone, I realize that she was the strongest of us all and she had “the secret sauce.”
I am not certain that people can find true serenity until they find self-responsibility and self-reliance. Certainly freedom is an important element of serenity. Maybe a person can find peace in captivity but that is not the kind of peace and serenity that I desire. My mother would provide love and comfort but the greatest gift she gave me was the ability to love, accept and comfort myself despite my imperfections and mistakes. My mother taught me that I am responsible for my own happiness and that the key to my happiness was inside me. She taught to be happy with more or less and to be grateful for what God gave me, for better or for worse. Linda gave me a measuring stick to evaluate my life that did not lead me to envy others or to expect others to make me happy. I think my mother gave me the means of being free even if I were physically held captive.
While my mother would comfort me in a time of need, she would at the same time challenge me to find comfort in the simple things and to appreciate the opportunity before me. That was incredibly empowering. She was a true leader and motivator in that respect. She gave me an endless internal flame of independence and freedom.
Amazingly, I hear leaders today talking about income inequality and promoting envy and dependence. I do not hear leaders teaching people to love themselves for other than their income or possessions or providing a way for people to measure their value or chance for happiness in other than dollars. I do not hear our leaders challenging citizens to give more than they take to help keep the world spinning. I do not hear leaders describe a path to self-reliance and serenity. Someone will always have more and some will have less in a free society. I hear our leaders encouraging comparison to our neighbors who have more measured by income and possessions. This comparison can only promote envy and anger. Dependency is another form of captivity that is more powerful than physical captivity because it imprisons the soul and isolates the soul from what it truly needs. What the soul thirst for is self-acceptance and an internal strength and flame that allows us to love and accept ourselves regardless of the station of our neighbor, for better or worse.

In December of 2013, President Obama spoke to the nation and indicated that the dream of economic mobility is breaking down and the growing income gap is a “defining challenge of our time.” The President vowed to focus the last three years of his presidency addressing the discrepancy and a rapidly growing deficit of opportunity that he said is a bigger threat than the fiscal deficit. President Obama said increasing income inequality is more pronounced in the United States than other countries and that Americans should be offended that a child born into poverty has such a hard time escaping it. He said “it should compel us to action. We’re a better country than this.”

It has been more than 9 months since President Obama made these statements and made his vow. It sounds to me like a very important issue. President Obama did not and has not, to my knowledge, provided more clarity regarding his this issue and his vow. What exactly is the objective as it relates to income inequality and disparity in incomes? I can only assume that President Obama is indicating that in America (and around the world), fewer and fewer people earn more and more and more people earn less. Is he indicating that the goal of his focus is for every person to earn the same, ultimately? He did not indicate if some level of discrepancy is acceptable? What about accounting for differences in behavior and capability when we look at differences? Are differences in inputs important in the analysis of differences in outcomes? This issue of income inequality usually includes a citation of the distribution of incomes in the broadest definitional sense but it rarely accounts for or references the differences in inputs (hours worked, education, ingenuity, research, capital investment, risk taking, luck, etc.) that can influence differences in income levels.

With most objectives, we have to define the issue and define the goals. With any process, we have to start somewhere. The United States is a big country and people in our country face many differences. I decided to focus on one income earning segment of our economy to highlight some real questions and issues that arise when we seek clarity regarding this issue of differences in incomes. It is clear to me that one of the best representative sectors of our economy, with respect to income differential, is professional basketball in the United States. More specifically the National Basketball Association (including it’s main major league and it’s developmental league.) Since President Obama points to broad income distribution statistics, without differentiating, we can assume that the income differences in the NBA (and other professional sports) are impacting, to some degree, the overall income differential in our country which referred to by President Obama when he identifies the issue.

The maximum salary for a D-League NBA player is under $30,000 with daily per diem and living expenses paid in addition. NBA players who are under contract and on the rosters of teams in the major league also receive a per diem pay but the average salary in the NBA (excluding the D league) for the 2014-15 season is $4,935,593. The top NBA Salary for the 2014-15 season is $23,500,000 for Kobe Bryant. The maximum NBA development league player salary is just more than ½ of 1% of the average NBA salary. The maximum NBA development league player salary is just 12.8% of 1% (.128%) the top NBA salary. The top 30 (7.73%) NBA players earn $528.46 million or 27.6% of the total NBA wages. The bottom 100 (25.8% ) of NBA players earn $100.32 million or 5.24% of the total NBA wages. Clearly the income distribution statistics for the NBA indicate that there is a major discrepancy and that there is a significant income gap (and that is just when considering NBA employees that are players.) If we were to look at professional basketball compensation including the concession employees, marketing staff, janitorial and facilities maintenance staff, etc., we would likely identify an even bigger discrepancy or gap in incomes. According to President Obama, this is an issue that needs to be addressed in a broad sense, so why not start with professional sports like the NBA. Next we can look at the film industry and the discrepancy between the average annual salary of Tom Hanks and the ticket taker or popcorn popper behind the concession counter.

Is it fair that Kobe Bryant earns 695.61 times what the maximum player in the NBA development league makes? Is there a plausible explanation or is there a defensible reason for this difference? When income gap statistics are quoted there is no qualification or differentiation so the inference is that all people are comparable and that the differences are a problem. What about the unemployed basketball players that aspire to be NBA players? Should we include the unemployed NBA players in this analysis? Are there differences between Kobe Bryant and the maximum salaried developmental league player that would cause us to account for the differences as actual being fair or justified. If the answer is yes, meaning that there are reasons for the differences that justify the differences, then is it possible that much of the differences in earnings of all American’s is explainable and justifiable? How do we know if we really have differences in incomes for all people that are not accounted for as due to differences in efforts, differences in risks taken, differences of investment of time or capital, differences in talent or differences in ingenuity?

President Obama does not begin to address all of the potentially valid and acceptable reasons why people may have different incomes. I would start by pointing out to President Obama the substantial differences for professional basketball players, professional athletes, professional sports employees, movie industry actors and other movie industry workers and ask him to tell us what he would propose to do to promote a shrinking of that discrepancy or gap so that earnings are more evenly distributed? I would ask him if he believes that the average developmental player deserves to make the same amount as Kobe Bryant. I would ask him if the ticket taker deserves to make the same as Tom Hanks? If his answer is no, then he has to admit that there may be a plausible and acceptable reason for vast disparity or discrepancy in incomes and that consequently we need to accept, in a free society, different results.

The compensation distribution in professional sports and the movie industry, especially if you consider all employees in professional sports and the movie industry, is substantially skewed. If we were to look at this issue across our nation segment by segment (or even door to door), would we be able to show the American people that differences in incomes are simply a byproduct of differences in people in a free society? Would we show the American people that differences in choices, differences in risk acceptance, differences in effort, differences in ability, differences in behaviors, differences in supply and demand for individual skills and abilities, differences in willingness to save and be thrifty, differences in investment of amount of time or capital, and other differences among many more are responsible for income differences? Would we show the American people that accepting freedom of choice for American’s is not exclusive of the requirement to accept different outcomes and different rewards?

If we go back in our countries history to the beginning, just after the ink on the US Constitution was dry, the role of the federal government was not to be a caretaker of it’s people. In fact, the opposite was true: the government only existed and was sustainable based upon the care of the people (“We the people…”)

The altruistic role of the local community is subverted by the liberal agenda to define the role of centralized government as that of a caretaker of the masses. Ultimately, in the role of the caretaker of the people, the federal government steals the opportunity for individuals in a local community to congregate and cooperate among themselves to solve social problems. This federal government welfare agenda eliminates the binding of the community toward a cause of social welfare that is tailored to the needs of a particular community. The centralized welfare programs must assume that all people in need in every community have similar needs and that they are all worthy of assistance regardless of their personal choices or behavior. Local programs at the grass roots level allow for discrimination so that people are free to give their time and resources to others that they feel are deserving. This key element of local grass roots giving allows for the local communities to avoid enabling bad behavior. A community (and certainly the federal government) cannot sustain a program of care for a growing population of unproductive dependents who take more than they contribute to the collective. The result is, for productive people, to have their property taken at threat of guns and imprisonment, and to have that property given to some (and a growing number) of people in their communities who demonstrate selfish, unproductive, and community damaging behavior. This removes the chance of the citizens to care for those fellow citizens in need who are honorable and responsible to the community. In other words, our allowance of the liberal agenda to define the federal government as a caretaker of it’s people has depersonalized our society and has limited the ability of people to voluntarily take care of it’s people.

The weapon of the liberal agenda is to demonize any who would not support the re-allocation of resources from local communities to allow the central government the power to address the apparent ills of society. The administrative cost of sending hard earned resources (not to mention that they are resources taken from private citizens) to Washington to be re-distributed back into the local community is high. What the liberal leaders have done is hijacked the purpose and role of local grass roots cohesive community involvement in favor of the impersonal and disconnected centralized social welfare function. The consequence is limitation of the cohesive quality of community cooperation and the elimination of positive local discriminatory practices.

While I am sure there are those who could write a paper on the current state of organized Judeo-Christian religion and it’s failure, in most every denomination, to maintain and grow participation, one of the major external causes of this trend is the growing role of the federal government as the caretaker and social net for people in local communities. There are other groups in communities besides those that meet in churches and synagogues, that are also finding it difficult to recruit young people. Membership in local grass-roots community organizations aimed at addressing local social issues is diminished as more and more feel they do their part by paying their taxes and expect the central government to take care of these issues.

So we move toward a new paradigm where it is no longer the expectation that mature and citizens will take care of themselves. Instead we find that more and more want to look away from self responsibility and the discriminating requirements of neighbors and to look to a central figure who draws it’s power from the vote of the growing mass of immature and dependent citizens. The central figure draws support with the promise that he will coerce others into caring for any who chose something less than self responsibility. These individuals surrender their proxy, dignity and self respect to a captor disguised as a savior.

The economically viable citizen in the America of the modern liberal must, on the penalty of imprisonment, work several months of every year to care for persons he has never met and many of whom escape the moral responsibility of working for themselves and providing for their own material welfare (even though they are not occupationally disabled.) The foundations of social cooperation in communities across America are not understood by the modern liberal. The capacity for individual altruism by discrimination and choice manifested as charitable acts in a community are the foundation of sustainable systems of social cooperation. When this selective moral imperative of group survival is changed to be the product of a legally enforceable demand by the central government in exchange for votes and continued power, the foundation for the community social net is weakened and we are set on a destructive path.

by Brian Boone

Different businesses entail a different level of risk.  A restaurant, for example, may require the owner to fund and make tenant improvements, enter into a long-term lease agreement to secure the physical premises and commit the time and expense to hire and train a core staff; and these commitments are required before the first entrée is served.  A restaurant owner can vary staffing and food ordering somewhat according to the volume of patrons and related sales, but the rent, the payments on the tenant improvement loan, the insurance, the payroll cost (and required benefits) for the chef, dishwasher, hostess, bartender, and an estimated level of supply and food inventory to insure quality and service are all fixed and have to be exceeded by sales, at a minimum for the venture to survive.  If the owner works in the restaurant as a manager, she must collect a base wage for her services as well if she is to pay her mortgage.  If a break even level of sales is not reached (a level that can cover all of these costs of essential resources) the owner will have to invest more capital (short-term) or will possibly have to shut the doors to patrons (long-term) and will suffer great loss of down payment capital and with liability to the landlord and bank for the tenant improvements.  Of course we see restaurants fail and close often.  This risk may differ from the risk of launching a new publication for local distribution.

In the example of the restaurant, it may be that the expected income to the owner assuming success, given the costs of resources, is sufficient to pay the owner a fair wage to compensate for the contribution of time and effort as well as additional income to provide a return on the investment of savings and to serviced the debt requirements compensate for the risk of borrowing.  Let’s assume that the government is proposing to impose a minimum wage (or wage increase) and that prior to the increase, the restaurant owner was able to attract an available supply of labor for dishwashing and table bussing at $6 per hour.  Let’s assume the government is proposing an increase to $12 per hour.  The restaurant owner may realize that the net profit he expects will no longer provide for a return on investment and will substantially increase the risk that she will even be able to draw a wage for herself that will allow her to pay her personal bills.  The owner will feel trapped in that the bank and the landlord, who rely on and “banked” on her success will still require payment.  The owner could try and raise the prices on the menu to offset the cost but, ultimately, the owner would likely cut her losses and would close the doors and might file for bankruptcy protection.  The restaurant shut-down would cost the Chef, the bartender, the hostess, the bussers, the servers, the dishwashers and the owner their jobs.

Many proponents of increasing minimum wage complain that an employee at the current level ($6 in the hypothetical example) cannot be self-supporting.  Is it important that any solicitation for labor in our economy provide sufficient compensation to allow an individual to be self-supporting?  What about the family where the wage of the dishwasher supplements the income from another household member?  Many proponents suggest that the higher minimum wage will put money in the pockets of consumers and that this will improve the economy.  If this is true, I am wondering why we would be so foolish as to stop at $12 per hour as a minimum; why not $50 per hour or $100 per hour or $1,000 per hour?  If your answer is that $50 is too high or is ridiculous then I ask you:  why is $12 the proper and reasonable amount?  Because risk profiles are different for different businesses, maybe the minimum wage should be different for different businesses?

There is one mechanism available that can effectively set minimum wages for businesses at unique and different levels:  the invisible hand of the free market that provides for the pricing of resources according to the free market bidding and competition for those resources.  If people are sitting with no-employment at all, the restaurant owner, may be able to attract qualified labor for dishwashing at a lower rate, but if there are higher rates paid by homebuilders for laborers to the point that there is a shortage of qualified dishwashers, the restaurant owner would have to raise the pay rate accordingly.  Opponents to the free-market method believe that there is some guy with a suit on in Washington (who, of course spoke to a guy with a very slick econometric simulation model in a spreadsheet) who can determine that some single rate works best.  Of course this “Washington suit” does not want the restaurant owner to shut the doors of the restaurant or for the car wash owner to close after he attempted to raise his rates to pay his laborers only to find that the restaurant owner (along with other employed and newly unemployed) has decided she has plenty of free-time to wash her own car, given the higher prices.

The neighbor may be willing to hire the boy down the street to mow his lawn at $6 but would mow it himself at the $12 rate thus removing critical supplemental income for a struggling family.  How can one minimum wage rate be optimum and effective for all businesses providing goods and services when each business is subject to different supply and demand dynamics?  If I am hungry and in a government funded shelter and I can earn $2 per hour to pass out marketing fliers to augment my need for public assistance, isn’t it better for me than not to work at all to provide something for myself?  If you set the minimum wage too high, the business owner may pass out the fliers herself or may choose a different media method for advertising her city bike tour business.  Then the resource of effort provided by the unemployed worker is lost as well as the chance at some level of self-sufficiency and self-respect.  If there is no unintended consequence of failed businesses and loss of available jobs, then why not raise the minimum wage to $25, $50, $100 or even $1,000 per hour.  The invisible hand of the free market is considered ineffective by many because there are some jobs that would be priced at such low rates, that the job would not completely lift the employee from poverty (without other family income , public assistance, or communal efforts.)  But the hand of the suit in Washington is also imperfect and inefficient because it eliminates the opportunity for citizens to even partially contribute to their families or to limit the need for public assistance by artificially raising the price of a resource thus eliminating jobs that would otherwise exist.

While a minimum wage is an idea that was born from noble aspirations, it serves to have the opposite effect than the one desired.  With a minimum wage, we will have more people without an opportunity to provide for themselves.  This unintended consequence is inevitable and cannot be ignored lest you agree then that $1,000 per hour or more would be an even better policy than $12 per hour.  Unfortunately with incredible appeal and political skill, the politician calling for a higher minimum wage (quite appealing to the voters) will find a way to deflect responsibility for the unintended consequences of the government meddling with the free market and will blame them on his opponent.

One might ask what minimum wage has to do with personal sovereignty and the cause of freedom?  Minimum wage interferes with the freedom of one to offer employment to another at a free market price and with the freedom of one to accept an offer of employment from another at a free market price.  This limitation on the free will of both sides of the transaction is argued to be justifiable given the intent of it’s policy without full regard for the practical impact of it’s policy.  The goal of causing hard working people to receive a higher wage is noble while the unintended result of causing people to be wholly unemployable and then, by necessity, dependent entirely upon those still employed, at or above the minimum, is counterproductive and contrary to the goal itself.