Character Defamation

It is illegal to print lies about a person or deliberately defame another person’s character. Is that a state law or a federal law? [Read more]

Minimum Wage

With the new minimum wage law set to take effect on July 1st 2009, it will make for an interesting study into the effects of K’s Law.

Legislators love raising the “minimum” wage because it makes them look like they really care about the nations least skilled laborers. The intention of the minimum wage law is to make life better for the people on the bottom end of the wage scale. The theory is, if we force employers to pay their employees more, life will be better for the employees. Let’s discover if this is true.

There is a sandwich shop not far from here which serves out-of-the-ordinary tasty subs. The four young ladies working behind the counter earn minimum wage. When the wage increase hits next month, the manager will be faced with a tough decision. In order to maintain profitability and keep serving subs she will either have to raise her prices (and lose valuable customers) or let one or more of her workers go (increasing the workload of the others).

If she chooses to let someone go it will most likely be the least skilled worker. Life will definitely be worse for this young lady as she will be out of work. In addition, the remaining workers will be forced to pick up the slack making life worse for them.

“But won’t the remaining workers be getting more money?” I hear you say? True, but because of that they will have the incentive to stay working at minimum wage instead of increasing their skills and seeking a better paying job. What’s more, when they take their new earnings to buy pizza across the street they may find the owner has raised his prices rather than layoff workers. Their new money is worth less in the marketplace.

It is the intention of the law to make life better for the least skilled workers, but instead the law eliminates jobs and incentivises workers to stay at lower paid jobs instead of making their own lives better by increasing their skills and getting better jobs.

Minimum wage does the EXACT OPPOSITE of what it is intended to do making life worse for everyone.