Statists love to hand out money that is not theirs to give, and bash anyone who has restraint. For instance, anyone who questions the minimum wage gets basted with the silly characterization of un-caring elitists with a “let them eat cake” attitude as if claiming “that $7.25 (the current federally mandated minimum wage) is plenty for the American people” and “they seem to consider that $7.25 should be enough for working Americans to maintain one household.”

First of all, if raising the minimum wage helps our economy, then why not simply raise it until we are all “rich?” Obviously silly when taken to that extreme, so here are some hopefully enlightening illustrations on how the minimum wage hurts society:

1. It outlaws working for less than $7.25 per hour, thereby barring millions of teenagers and other entry-level workers from the job market.

Next time you hear about delinquent youth, ask yourself if they might be gainfully employed and wonder why it is illegal to hire them.

2. Jobs which are so easy or non-demanding as to only be “worth” say $6/hour are now illegal. For example making it un-affordable to hire transients or retards to clean up trash in the streets. How does this make sense, and who does it benefit? Hint: follow the money, and it points to big business benefiting at the expense of the poor. Now that manual street-sweeping is not affordable, the only ones who can do it efficiently are large street-sweeping trucks.

Next time you ponder the filthy streets in small towns or poor neighborhoods, know that it comes at the expense of not only fewer neighborhood jobs, but also to the gain of the few monopolistic companies with economy of scale to dictate which areas they can serve at a profit and hang the rest.

3. Artificially inflated wages are a barrier to starting many types of small business. Illustration: Opening a “Mom-and-Pop” restaurant is notoriously labor-intensive, and one reason is that they have less expensive kitchen automation than large chains, and another is that they are more likely to shop locally for fresh ingredients that require more prep time than the bulk/frozen/pre-processed food delivered by corporate-owned trucks to the franchises. One loop-hole in the minimum-wage allows family members to work for less. This one loop-hole is responsible for thousands of jobs, and millions of satisfied eaters.

Next time you enjoy a mom-and-pop meal, be thankful, and imagine how many other small businesses might be started and thrive if they could only be staffed affordably in their early start-up years.

Think of it like this: Minimum wage maximizes Leviathon, courtesy of Crony Capitalism.