I just find it sad that we have moved so far from the constitution, and the freedom the founders fought for. Where does the Fed get the power to tell me what I pay my employees?? There is NO guarantee right to work. I haven’t found it in the Constitution of the US or Utah. More importantly there is no right to work for me. If I don’t pay you enough, take your skills and go find someone that is willing to pay you what you think you’re worth.

Now I, let me repeat this part, I have the moral obligation to pay my employees a good wage. It’s the right thing to do, but it shouldn’t be dictated to me by the Gov.

I wonder when we really stopped being a free people. I really wonder if anyone has noticed that we are not??

P.S. I find it somehow disturbing that you were a sophomore in 1978. This had to come out sometime.

There’s also another disturbing series of trends in states where the minimum wage is higher than federal. Those states have significantly higher taxes, slower average wage growth, and a higher percentage of state funds spend on social services for the indigent. It’s a myth that a minimum wage helps the poor otherwise we’d see less need for government social services. I imagine the high taxes and slowed wage growth have a lot to do with that.

Minimum wage is just that: a minimum. It is what unskilled labor is worth. If there is a glut of unskilled labor, the prices go down. If there is a shortage of labor (like we have right now) the prices go up. Even fast food places are starting at $7-8 per hour, well above the minimum.

Then there’s the lovely shell game played by the minimum wage lobby. They say “we want to raise the state minimum wage to $7/hr” when their bill actually says “we want to make state minimum wage $1.85 higher than federal.” Then they try and work the feds into passing a raise on their end to $7 per hour, and we’ve almost double minimum wage in this state.

Why should we trust a group who will willingly lie and manipulate the numbers like this? Answer: we shouldn’t. Those leading the charge for increasing the minimum wage are liars.

The other common argument I hear is that no one but students get paid the minimum wage anyways, so why does it matter? I guess I just forgot that we students don’t really count as people. Never mind that my college president’s salary has gone up 57 percent in the last 9 years, while minimum wage has gone up 0 percent during the same time period. Never mind that my tuition has more than doubled in the last 9 years, while I still struggle to find a job that pays more than $5.15/hour in a labor-saturated university town.

Your argument about Utah’s incredibly low unemployment underscores the perfect timing for such legislation. If indeed an increased minimum wage will cause unemployment, why not do it while there are a gazillion “Help Wanted” ads out on the street? If businesses are booming, shouldn’t employees have some stake in that revenue?

Finally, I don’t buy the whole sob story about working for free in the Legislature that I hear so often. You might not get a ton, but I would be living pretty if I received the daily $120 stipend, $42/day per diem, $75/day for hotel expenses (even for those that live close enough to drive to the Capitol each day, presumably like yourself). Those numbers are from five years ago, so they might have changed, but if so, I’d bet they only went up. And don’t forget the alleged double-dipping into campaign accounts for personal use by some legislators, the lobbyist gifts, and what about that sweet health insurance coverage?

As a state senator, my grandpa made $5 a day when they were in session, without all the other perks in today’s system. Now I don’t propose we go back to that. Then we’d just have a state legislature composed of the rich. You deserve to be paid a fair wage.

But so do the rest of us.