Now, The Maximum Wage

The minimum wage has always been a phony issue, a perpetual exercise in economic demogoguery. George Will reminded us of that once again just the other day, as the restored Donkocratic overlords have started their domestic reign of terror with that same hoary old canard:

Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6% (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum lives in families with earnings below the poverty line. Sixty percent work part time, and their average household income is well over $40,000. (The average and median household incomes are $63,344 and $46,326, respectively.)

Forty percent of American workers are salaried. Of the 75.6 million paid by the hour, 1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less, and of these, more than half are under 25 and more than a quarter are between ages 16 and 19. Many are students or other part-time workers. Sixty percent of those earning the federal minimum or less work in restaurants and bars and earn tips - often untaxed, perhaps - in addition to wages. Two-thirds of those earning the federal minimum today will, a year from now, have been promoted and be earning 10% more. [emphases added]

How many times does it have to be said: almost nobody earning the minimum wage is trying to support a family, and almost none are at the minimum for very long if they're worth a damn at their jobs. Thus, boosting the minimum wage really doesn't economically benefit anybody, while it most certainly does raise business costs, destroy more entry-level jobs, and boost high school drop-out rates.

But it most definitely offers a political benefit, because while the numbers behind who is at the minimum wage and for how long don't lie, all the Democrats have to find is one or two propaganda props from that tiny group of struggling household heads and hold a press conference, and the Republicans will, as usual, flee in stark raving terror. And, true to form, the GOP legislative remnant is eager to help pass another hike, and President Bush is eager to sign it, even though neither will get any of the PR credit for it.

But that's just the first salvo. As House Financial Services Committee Chairfruit Barney Frank felt cocky enough to let slip on Neil Cavuto's show this past week, the Democrats are looking to impose a maximum wage - an earnings ceiling to go with their earnings floor - and they're putting out a typically dishonest spin on it:

FRANK: Yeah, they said this is awful, please take $210 million and go away. I think the shareholders ought to have the right to say we're unhappy without having to bribe someone with $210 million. That's a lot of money.

CAVUTO: Where would you draw the line? Would you put a limit -

FRANK: Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil -

CAVUTO: Congressman, would you put a limit -- would you put a limit on all CEOs' pay?

FRANK: If you're going to interrupt every five words, we don't have a show.

CAVUTO: No, all I'm asking for is an answer, congressman. What I'm asking you is where do you draw the line, congressman, on pay? On all CEOs, on basketball players, on who?

FRANK: Will you please let me answer the question.

CAVUTO: Go ahead. You had it.

FRANK: The answer is whenever the shareholders want to. It's the shareholders' corporation. And I believe that what we need to do is to step in and amend the law, because in some states, many states where corporate law is set, shareholders who want to have a vote can't get one. [emphasis added]

There you go. They'll start with CEOs, because everybody knows that CEOs are the scum of the planet, the corpulent, dark-suited, balding, mustachioed guys with the pocket watches in the breast suit pocket and the black top hat like the little man in Monopoly, the scheming crooked tychoons out to screw the little guy like Randolph and Mortimer Duke in Trading Places. It's bullshit, of course, but that's what the Democrats have brainwashed a renewed majority of Americans into believing. And once the maximum wage weasels its way in the door by that little bit of communistic imagery, the sky's the limit. This is precisely what Cavuto recognized and effectively nailed Frank on, and why Frank was so day-glo obviously evasive.

Thank God for Fox News.

The other thing to notice is the "shareholder" gambit. That's what Frank is hanging his, er, "helmet" on - doubtless a bid to "proletariatize" the growing investor class and co-opt them away from their natural home in the Republican Party by pitting them against the companies in which they have directly or indirectly invested via IRAs, 401(k)s, etc. Only that, too, is horsecrap; "shareholders" would just be the Donks' human shields for another massive intervention into a formerly free economy. In essence, Frank and his ruling junta would become America's Supreme Shareholders on everybody else's behalf; as if to say to the "rich", "If you won't let us tax it all away from you, we'll just outlaw you making it in the first place."

Yeah, that'll do wonders for the poor bastard on the assembly line who has managed to build up a nice 401(k) nest egg over the years, won't it? But he won't know it, because nobody reads their quarterly investment statements, but everybody watches the six o'clock news.

Judging by the '06 midterms, what other conclusion can one draw?