The Young And The Jobless

The minimum wage hike has driven the wages of teen employees down to $0.00.

Editorial - October 3rd, 2009 - Wall Street Journal

Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.

There are two numbers that everyone needs to understand. The "official" unemployment number. And the "real" unemployment number. Most have heard that the "official" unemployment number rose to 9.8% last month. Most of those same folks have not heard that the "real" unemployment number, as it was measured back during the depression, went to 17%. That is the number of people who want to work but can't find jobs. For the young, the real unemployment rate is now over 55%.

Our grand government of bureaucrats have all kinds of reasons for saying you don't count as "officially" unemployed though. You know, really powerful reasons. Such as you have run out of unemployment insurance and also couldn't find an employer who would give you an interview. That means that "officially" you are no longer part of the "work force" and therefore you are not "officially" unemployed.

Those rules are as big a joke as the solutions to unemployment that are being made into law. As this article notes, government insists that they can set wages by the act of setting "minimum wage" rates. They believe setting those wages too high will not impact unemployment. No matter how many studies prove that "minimum wage" laws fall disproportionately on the young, the knowledge never makes a difference to those passing the laws. Not even studies that show the impact on those young will last for decades matter to these people either. Such studies are ignored. Our government policies today are being dictated by the same wishful thinking delusions that always destroy socialist countries. Socialism always fails.

Most Americans voted for a socialist in the last election. We have a socialist for President. We have socialists in a majority of the positions in Congress. We are practicing the same kind of corruption, bailouts and wasteful spending that socialist governments always practice. Why is anyone surprised that our young are suffering the same way the young always suffer in socialist nations?