Minimum wage should be $0. Hawley and Republicans are wrong to try to raise it. | Opinion
$15 an hour? Republican Sen. Josh Hawley is teaming up with Sen. Bernie Sanders to push a liberal policy on federal minimum wage. Why?
Republicans, for a long time, had the right idea on economics with their embrace of the free market. The phrase "Free markets, free people" has been often quoted as a description of the GOP's economic view for decades.
Now that is rapidly changing.
President Donald Trump has already made his economic illiteracy clear, and Republicans in Congress have proved their fiscal policy to be entirely irresponsible, but now a Republican senator is endorsing a higher federal minimum wage, among other ill-fated left-wing policies.
The correct minimum wage is $0, and Republicans would be wise to revisit the free market principles that guided the GOP of the past.
Republican Party abandons conservative free market principles
The Republican Party is completely abandoning the market-based approach to economics that it had become synonymous with for decades.
The first apparent example of this is Trump’s protectionist tariff policies, which hike taxes in the interest of protecting certain industries from foreign competition. These taxes are passed on to the consumer and limit growth.
The newest example is Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who is in cahoots with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, in proposing legislation that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, up from $7.25 an hour.
Hawley has a history of opposing free market principles, including legislation capping credit card interest rates, opposing right-to-work laws, and now his endorsement of a higher minimum wage.
Hawley’s growing left-wing economics are a part of a troubling trend within the GOP, in which Republican elected officials are becoming more sympathetic to state involvement in the economy far beyond simply encouraging competition.
For a long time, we had the prudence not to embrace policies that gave the state more say in the economy, but now Republicans are increasingly willing to do so. Nothing about these types of policies is conservative, and they are damaging to the country and the Republican Party. The result is that both major parties have prominent voices advocating for more government involvement in the economy and, in turn, our daily lives.
Americans don't need a federal minimum wage
Employment is an agreement between individuals. The true value of labor is somewhere between the minimum wage someone is willing to work for and the highest wage that someone is willing to pay.
Republicans have long resisted minimum wage raises because minimum wage laws are seen as an intervention into the market approach to wage setting. Republicans rightly criticized California's $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers at the time of its signing in September 2023, and that bill led to at least 9,600 job losses a year later.
Private sector fast-food employment in California decreased by 1.1% despite 1.6% growth nationally over the same period.
Minimum wage laws surely increase the standard of living for those employees who are able to keep their jobs, but at the expense of those who are priced out of the labor market entirely. When President Joe Biden and Democrats made their push to raise the federal minimum wage in 2021, estimates foretold that while wages would rise for 17 million Americans, 1.4 million would lose their jobs.
That push was unsuccessful at the time, and average hourly pay has risen since then, which both lowers the number who would be priced out of the market and the number who would see financial benefit from a minimum wage hike, but such a policy remains ill-advised.
In addition to all of that, federal minimum wage laws impact regions very differently. If there are to be minimum wage laws, they should be enacted at the most local form of government possible.
There is no reason why New York City residents should be under the same minimum wage as rural Montana.
A higher federal minimum wage implies that the federal government is better equipped to make judgments about local economies than local governments themselves.
Many blue cities have already enacted their own minimum wage laws, thereby making it so that a higher federal wage would even further disproportionately impact more rural Americans, who have fewer job prospects than those in large cities.
Republicans are ditching the free market principles that made America wealthy in exchange for the Democrats' love for big government. All of this is happening because Republicans in the Trump era crave power rather than prosperity. It's far easier to promise the government will fix your problems than to give people the freedom to fix them themselves. Democrats have known this for years, and Republicans like Hawley are taking a page out of their playbook.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for Paste BN and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.