I took on Thom Hartmann over the minimum wage increase proposed by President Barack Obama in his recent State of the Union Address. The outspoken Progressive talk show host argued that a minimum wage increase would increase fairness and boost spending in the economy. This type of fallacious thinking is laid bare when the economic reality kicks in. Raising the minimum wage forces employers to raise prices so the wage increase is cancelled out.

Hartmann also forgets that the first minimum wage laws were meant to keep minorities like unskilled blacks from competing with white labor. Raising the minimum wage destroys job opportunities for low skilled labor to get jobs that could have been created if the government was restricted from regulating the marketplace.

from Andrew Kirell at Mediaite:

In 1931 when the federal government debated the merits of effectively setting a minimum, union-level wage for government-contracted work, the law’s proponents openly acknowledged that it would prevent black construction workers from competing with the all-white labor unions.

What do you think? Should we raise the minimum wage?