[Hoot Gibson]

Unless you're an idiot, which is possible, I think I am saying that even an idiot can see that the current minimum wage isn't a living wage, that many minimum wage folks get shafted out of health insurance, and that the current "structure" most often favors the Big, the Bad, the Monied elite. Who should set the minimum wage? My guess is your be all/end all answer is "market forces." We disagree. Human greed, human foible, the very condition of the human heart, as Adam Smith (and Jesus) recognized, render your position reckless, if not irresponsible.

I love it when liberals throw around pseudo-capitalistic arguments in favor of the socialist policies that they support. A well established principle of economics is that when a government sets the price of anything artificially high, shortages and black markets result. In the case of the minimum wage, areas with thriving local economies see businesses competing for labor and paying wages well above the legal minimum. In depressed areas, where the market value of unskilled labor is less than the legal minimum, fewer workers are hired, benefits are slashed, and some employer resort to illegally hiring workers "off the books."

Socialism does not work, CM. How many times in how many countries must socialism wreck economies for you liberals to understand that simple history. You want to ignore the evidence and attempt to rename the scourge that is socialism, and that ploy will probably work sometime - people have short memories. However, your timing - with a socialist US president - could not be worse to recycle the discredited economic theories of past generations of socialists.